SA Diversity Tour (18-21/03/2014) Day 62-65

Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park

We were very excited about going to Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and left Upington very early to make the 3 hour drive there. I had not been there for about 20 years and remembered it as a terrific place to be. At the time of making the booking, we could only get camping at Twee Rivieren but when we arrived, we were told there is place at Mata Mata and we gladly changed some of our first days for it. 

 

 

What a huge disappointment!! According to their website, most of the roads are said to be accessible to vehicles like mine but they were so bad that we had to drive not more than 20km/ph and so bumpy, it took us hours to get there. About the only thing we saw along the way was a lion laying hidden by some bushes, a few Gemsbok and some Wildebeest.

 Mata Mata itself is totally run down although it looks like they are building a new ablution block. They had some rain there a week before we arrived and when we went to ask, were told their grader was not working and they did not know when they would fix the roads again. Typical darn government owned place!!

We once again changed our bookings for Twee Rivieren as the roads there had not been as bad as further north. SO the next morning, back down we went!! After three very bad days where we were basically restricted to going only to the first watering hole about 5kms away, we went to ask them if they could change our booking to some other camp such as Augrabies, Addo or Mountain Zebra as it did not us much good not being able to go anywhere. We were not very politely told that they could not and that if we wanted to leave, we would lose the money we had paid for the other 4 days we were going to stay!! When I questioned the conditions of the roads and mentioned that it said vehicles like mine could go on them, I was told that their website now said 4x4 vehicles only!! Even the people there WITH 4x4’s were complaining!! So my advice is: DO NOT GO TO KGALAGADI!!

The only thing worth seeing at Mata Mata was the Yellow Mongoose digging for food in the camping area. The rest of the area was a total waste of time!