Khutse GR - Thunderstorms in the desert Day 3

Rare sighting, flooded roads in the Kalahari sands. 

It was drizzling when we woke up but not nearly as hard as overnight. It started raining just as we got to bed and rained steadily the whole night. By 3am, it was bucketing down so hard that we thought that we'd be swimming around the campsite the next morning. 

Luckily by 5am, when the alarm went off, the rain had petered out to a drizzle and completely stopped by the time Dru got out the tent to put the kettle on the gas cooker to boil. Our tent hadn't fared as well. The little velcro straps that tied the canvas to the aluminum tent structure had leaked through tiny holes where the stitching was, resulting in droplets running down the inside of the tent and wetting the mattress. 

Mahurushele pans, water on pan and rains clouds above. 

In all four corners of our tent, the mattress and sheet were wet - a total design flaw in our opinion and a matter we'd be taking up with the tent manufacturers. We quickly got up and packed away what little remained of the campsite before the inevitable rain would start again. 

The Black Chester Prinia. 

This was forecast to be the heaviest rain day of the weekend so it was just as well we were heading home. And there was water everywhere. It really had rained so hard in the Kalahari that not even the sand could absorb all of it and standing water was all over the roads. 

Luckily it was sand roads though; because if it had been black cotton soil like on the pans we would be going nowhere. In fact, we didn't even go near the pans - there was just too much water. After crossing the cutline and seeing the Khutse Game Reserve sign reflecting in a big pool of water - something we never thought we'd see - we made our way through to pools of rainwater in the rain and finally got to Khutse Pan. 

Roads already flooded and more rain on the way, need to get off the tracks fast. 

Again, being a pan there was no way we were going to set a tyre on it so we headed to the same campsite that we'd been to yesterday with the elephant destroyed tree. This time it was standing in a pool of water and we could see it had already gone down. 

We stopped there to have some coffee, while the clouds kept getting darker and darker. Considering that it was quiet and that we had a 100km run on what we expected to be a muddy mess of a road, we decided to head out early and get home if nothing else, but to dry out our tent if we had sunny weather. So we packed up and drove out, stopping at the gate to sign out and promising the ranger that we'd let him know how the road back to Lethlakeng was. 

Rains is also the time of the babies, Red Hartebeest. 

Mostly okay, but a few hairy spots, we were happy to get off the road before the heavy clouds broke again and added more water to an already saturated gravel road. Back home and we managed to get the tent dry in the 2 hours of sun we had before it started raining again. 

A wet weekend indeed, but we did manage to see lions for the first time in ages at Khutse - always a win for us!

Was going to a messy drive home.