Khutse GR - Day 2

Storms all around us

It was a dark and stormy night… 

The storm must have started around midnight when we were asleep and it sat on top of us for about 2 hours. It was vicious with lightning lighting up the sky and the thunder reverberating through the tent. And plenty of rain hammering the front of the tent it was a pretty scary experience hoping that lightning wouldn’t hit us. 

It went on for about 2 hours or so but luckily we were able to sleep through some of it. Eventually when Dru woke up around 2.30am it was to find his side of the mattress soaking wet. The rain was so strong that it was bouncing up from the canopy into the tent from underneath and soaking the mattress. There wasn’t much to do except fold the sheet over the wet part and hope it didn’t soak through for the next few hours. But the real reason we woke up was the sound of lions roaring! 

And more clouds coming

We weren’t sure how many but we estimated around 4 lions all roaring simultaneously but not in the same place. In fact one sounded like he was sitting on the main road just outside our campsite. It was fabulous to hear lions roaring in Khutse again, we haven’t heard that in over a year. But they definitely made up for it now because they called consistently for the next few hours. In fact when we finally got up at 5am, the one nearest to us was still roaring. 

Red-crested korhaan hiding from the heat

We were convinced that he was on the veld in front of our camp and the rest were at the waterhole so we had high hopes when we set out for our morning drive, wet tent and all. Well, it was not to be. An annoying hour later and the lions were nowhere to be found. They weren’t at the e waterhole and we couldn’t spot them in the veld despite driving up and down. 

A lone bull elephant visiting the waterhole

The only highlight was a honey badger foraging in the soft ground. It was really frustrating to be so close yet so far. And there was no spoor on any of the roads giving us an indication of where they went. Finally we found some tracks on the other side of our campsite towards Moreswe so we followed the single male track until it veered off the road a few kilometers later. Another dead end. 

Wattled starlings having a drink

Eventually we gave up and went to sit at the waterhole for a while but it was dead. And we were aware that we had a very wet mattress. It was raining lightly on and off but at the first sign of sunshine we headed to a campsite to make some coffee and give the mattress some air. Unfortunately it didn’t last long when it started to rain again so we packed it all in and went to sit at the empty waterhole again. 

After a while the sky showed a bit more promise and we went back to a campsite to give the mattress some sun. This time we had a good 2 hours of sun and we managed to not only dry the mattress and tent, but also got the sheets dry and figured out a plan to stop more water from raining in if we had another thunderstorm this evening. Our timing was good because that was essentially the best sun we had for day. 

Drying out our mattress

It clouded over and started to drizzle on and off for the next few hours. We had our lunch which we’d prepared the previous day along with some braaied kebabs and then it was water-holing for the rest of the day. Now we were supposed to be camping in Mahureshele the evening but because the lions were around Molose we wanted another night here. 

Because we didn’t have a booking and didn’t want to take someone else’s campsite, we figured we’d wait as long as possible to see if other campers arrived and at the end of the day we’d claim a campsite that wasn’t in use, if any. In the meantime we’d just chill out at the waterhole and hope the lions arrived for the evening, but it was a quiet afternoon with the only animals coming to drink being 4 elephants while the resident herd of springboks grazing on the periphery. 

Eventually we gave up on the waterhole the sunset had fizzled out without much colour and nothing was around so we headed to an open campsite. In fact, they were all open so we went back to the one we’d had the previous night. Despite predictions, the rain stayed away and we had a pleasant night under light cloud and stars. With the sound of an owl in the distance, we headed to bed hoping for some better luck tomorrow.