Walking the Red Sands 25th-29th June 2013 *

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AstroMatt
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Walking the Red Sands 25th-29th June 2013 *

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After being picked up out side the park in the community vehicle you are driven along the fence line to the Khomani San's community gate. This is the point at which all luxury and civilisation is thrown away...the !Ae!Hai Kalahari Heritage Park (part of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park) lies before you. After travelling over a few dunes the vehicle comes to an unexpected halt, we all get out and are asked to accompany the guides and bushmen with eyes closed to the top of the nearest dune, from here you get your first glimpse of the Kalahari desert with dune after dune stretching to the horizon.
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Thirty minutes and a few bumps later and we arrive at Lion's Dune, which will be our camp for the next four nights. Unlike the surrounding dunes this one has a bare sandy top with a slight bowl shaped depression. In order to minimise our impact on the dune we are asked to carry all the equipment up keeping to one track...treading lightly is their motto. Camp is set up quickly as there are no tents and we are soon on to our briefing and dinner. We are informed that there is a one match policy...one match....one fire...4 days, its our job not to let it go out but at the same time we have limited wood so we have to use it wisely. Water is the other primary restriction, there is only 120 litres for all 13 of us, again the onus is on us to use it wisely. Now comes the serious stuff...as if limited water and wood isn't already. Richard (the lead guide) briefs us on the dangers, at any time there may be a lion around the corner or a brown hyena wandering around, he assures us that these are remote possibilities but still very real ones. Night time is the danger time, as Toppie one of our bushman guides says "It's the big man's time". It is now as the sun is dropping that the night watch is explained. Each of us will spend 1h15mins every night watching for animals, this involves regular walks round the perimeter of the camp (unfenced) scanning for any untoward eyes and keeping the fire ticking over with a small lick of flame. After your time is done you must wake the next person up and only once they have joined you at the fire can you head to your sleeping bag...we all know how easy it is to fall back asleep once woken and you don't want a situation where no one is on watch.
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With these formalities done we turn to dinner and the camp fire. It is now that we are formally introduced to the bushmen guides. Oom Toppie and Oom John, both sons of the late Dawid Kruiper are our eyes, ears and noses out here in the Kalahari. They are joined by a younger trainee guide, Honeyboy, it's his first trail but you can see that he's as comfortable out here as the older gents.
Quickly the sun drops and we are treated to a bowl of Thai green curry to stave off the chill air. This is out first introduction to the basics of living in the desert, washing up...water is precious so you can't waste it, so what do you do, take inspiration from nature and use the sand. All plates, cups, poitjies etc are washed up using the sand, which when combined with a left over tea bag makes a surprisingly good scouring pad. After a few minutes the plates are gleaming. With full bellies and the temperature rapidly dropping it is time to head to bed and test out those sleeping bags, this is also the beginning of the watch. Gazing up at the stars above we all slowly drift off dreaming of what tomorrow holds.
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I'm woken 2.5 hours before sunrise to begin my watch and boy is it cold. Slinging on a jacket I make my way over to the fire for a cup of tea before making my first perimeter round. With an almost full moon up head touches are almost useless, but the big mag light is a comfort when staring out into the shadows. Minutes tick away and I don't see anything, finally after 40mins I get my first sighting...an owl perched on the top of a nearby bush. Before I know it my shift is over and I wake the next person, crawling back into bed for one final hour.

Breakfast consists of a few rusks and some porridge, whilst we are all standing around in the chill breeze we notice that the bushmen aren't to be seen....our first lesson, "do as they do". They are hidden in the lea of the dune where it is significantly warmer even through there is no fire. Once all 10 fingers and toes are defrosted it's time to get ready for our walk. Once again we are briefed on the potential dangers and the walk protocol, there are no guns on this trail, so if we do bump into anything interesting we must do exactly as we are instructed by the bushmen and Richard. With that over it's time to do what we all came for....walk in the Kalahari and learn from the people who know it best.
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Not fifty metres into the walk and we stop, we all look around and wonder what on earth for. Toppie points to the ground and asks what we think caused the few scrape marks are on the floor. None of us are sure, possibly digging for food is one suggestion. We are all wrong, just by looking at it and pointing with his walking stick he explains that it is an African wild cat's litter box and the scrapes are from him covering his scat. He gently pushes the end of his stick into the ground and as if by magic he pops up the scat that was covered. This is why we are all here, to learn and absorb just a little bit of the wealth of information that these three men have about this vast wilderness. The walk proceeds slowly with many stops to explain different spoor and scats that are lying around. Here we get a lesson in tracking, always walk into the sun so that you have the sun, spoor and you in a line. That way you can see all the nuances of the spoor. After a while we pick the pace up, cross a few dunes and reach our mid way point. Here on top of a dune in the desert we split up for some time on our own and to reflect on what we've experienced so far. There really is no better way to relax than to sit with the red sand between your toes and listen to the wind blow through the dry Kalahari grass. All too soon and we are back on our feet again. John has noticed that up ahead there is a herd of Red Hartebeasts in the dune street (the bit between the crests), we cautiously approach them keeping well hidden. With John and Toppie leading the way we slowly peer over the crest of the dune to gaze down on these wonderful animals. Later in the walk we spot ostrich, gemsbok, and a mated pair of steenbok. After taking in so much on the first walk it is a welcome relief to get back to camp for ham and cheese sandwiches and an afternoon siesta.
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The evening walk is conducted at the same leisurely pace, out here it isn't about covering distance, it's about noticing the small things like the many buckspoor spiders dotted around the tops of the dunes. These ambush predators spin a web and then conceal it with sand on top. They wait patiently for any sense of movement on the outer edges of any of the 3 or 4 entrances. The slightest touch will bring them pouncing out. After wandering along the dune crest John and Toppie decide to show us some spoor on another bare patch of dune. Here Toppie points out the spoor from where a caracal has dragged a steenbok across and down the dune, he demonstrates the strong gait and posture the caracal would have when dragging an animal from its mouth. There is a real sense that these ancient people can in some way become the animals they are describing.
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As the big man's hour approaches we make our way back to camp. Tonight's feast is lamb stew, followed by many stories of exciting encounters with the wild animals of Africa, but what we are all looking forward too is bed and our watch. I'm on first tonight (after an adjustment of two shifts forward so that we all get different watch experiences). Tonight it's dark and cold with the moon only rising at the end of my watch. It was a quiet watch with no animals but I'm rewarded with a long stretch in bed.

"Ice!'' and "My pillow is frozen!'' are the common first words uttered on the second morning. It is bitterly cold which makes getting out of the warm sleeping bag pretty tough, however it's surprising how quickly you jump up when you hear a lion roaring about 500m away! We scan the dunes in the direction of the calling but can't see any evidence.
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After a quick bite to eat and a few minutes by the fire and we are already heading off in search of our morning visitor. Just as they predicted we pick up the spoor about 500m away. John and Toppie start discussing the spoor dissecting each part, they come to the conclusion that he's probably slept in and lost his pride and is now running and calling at the same time to catch up with them. We start to track the lion stopping occasionally to see how the gait changes. John tells us how the lion is tiring going up the dunes and which foot is which. It's quite clear that this guy is on a mission and we aren't going to catch him so we take a detour to go and look at some of the medicinal plants. The first one we try is gemsbok cucumber root...apparently its a powerful laxative but each root varies so be careful if you try any! After sampling the many bitter tastes of the medicinal world of the Kalahari plants its again time to head back to camp for lunch and a break.
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This afternoon's walk is an exploration of the local homes, we head out in search of the local homes of the porcupines. After a while we pick up fresh evidence that porcupines are in the area, gemsbok cucumber roots have been dug up everywhere. John explains that to the bushmen the porcupine is called the Doctor. This is because he eats all the medicinal roots and so he must be very healthy, and as a consequence eating a porcupine is a bit like your multivitamin. We eventually find their home, a cavernous excavation of sand in the ground. So big that when John walks down to the entrance he is almost lost underground. After peering around he notes that this den isn't used by the Doctor any more, but that it has now become the home of many other animals. Out here in the desert nothing is wasted, homes are recycled, maybe a porcupine is the first inhabitant, then an aardvark digs a bit deeper and modify it to his liking. Then maybe a brown hyaena moves in for a bit. A few bat eared foxes take up residence at the outer edges, and finally a new porcupine family may return. Everything is shared and nothing is wasted. After finding a few more empty local homes we head back to camp, but first we set a camera trap up on a near by Acacia tree to capture what is walking around at night.
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Over a plate of steaming ostrich goulash and a crackling fire the bushmen start to tell us one of their many stories. The first is about Klaas, the jackal and how he got his black back. Klaas saw the sun one morning and was overawed with her beauty. He went to speak to the Sun and in a way that only a jackal can, he asked he if she wanted a lift. He offered to take her anywhere she would like, refused at first but after Klaas's persistence she agreed and asked to be carried away. Klaas soon realised the mistake he made when his back started to ache under the weight. After hours of walking he could go on more more and asked the Sun to get off. She refused saying how he promised. Not wanting to break his promise he continued, but sneakily he had spied a low hanging branch of a shepard tree. HE quickly sped up and ducked under the branch and knocked the Sun off. Although free of his burden Klaas looked at his back and found it scorched from the heat of the sun. After a couple of other tales about Oom Pete (kori bustard), Oom Tokkie (Cape penduline tit) and Klaas it was time to head to bed and to get some sleep before the midnight shifts began.
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The cold weather had properly set in and nothing was moving in the dune streets. Again we awoke to ice on our bags, this time we had learnt thought and had packed away the mornings clothes to keep them frost free! Although it was a bitterly cold morning we were told it would get hot soon and headed out on the walk. We stopped at a few more plants but the goal today was to harvest some specific medicines for the elders back in the community. We soon came across our target, 'Devil's claw'. The dried out flower of this plant is a nasty looking thing with many curving parts and barbs. But the bushmen say that the root is an excellent remedy for osteoarthritis. The doctor had already been to this plant and so a lot of the digging had been done for them. Honeyboy jumped into the hole and started to carefully select which roots would be suitable. John at this point explained that you really have to watch the animals to know what to eat. If the animals don't eat it then there is something nasty about it
like poison, so don't eat it. With the first part of the haul gathered it was off to the local shop...the Doctor's home. This time we found one that was inhabited. We knew this by the many quills lying around. John and Honeyboy quickly set about collecting all the quills, some resting on the edge of the excavations. John told us with a grin that he can walk there but we can't or it will collapse! After a stop at a driedorren bush to pick up a mixing spoon we find ourselves back at camp.\\

This afternoon is our last on the dune and the bushmen have got their tools out and have started to make some crafts. Honeyboy has collected a curved stick from a raisin bush that he is going to transform into a (knob kiri) walking stick for me. He carefully heats it over the fire and starts to straightened it bending this bit and that till it is as straight as an arrow. Master forgers of ages gone by couldn't have done better. After stripping off the bark he starts to fashion the knob end, taking smaller and smaller bits off. He asks me how it feels and as if by magic it fits my hand perfectly. The bushmen say a stick chooses you rather than you the stick. This one had chosen me for sure. We are all so absorbed in the intricate way John and Honeyboy transform a knobbly stick into something of beauty that we don't notice the time slip away. The sun begins to set and we are so relaxed that no one wants to head out on a walk, we are happy sitting talking and learning.[/img]ImageImage

Tonight is our last night on watch, what might have seemed like a chore at first has become the best part of the day. Standing under the stars on your own watching for movement and eyes whilst the world slowly rotates...pure bliss. All too soon and my watch is over. A few more hours and it will be time to leave.
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The last morning is about packing up and removing all trace that we have been there. A large pit is dug for the left over coals, the camera trap is removed and all the equipment is transported back to the base of the dune. One final act is required before we leave. We are asked to pick up some dried dune bush and start to sweep away our footprints from the top of the dune. This is more of a symbolic act of returning nature back to how it was before we arrived, echoing the bushman philosophy of treading lightly.
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Back over the dunes and we come to the first dune we walked up. This is where we say our goodbye to the true Kalahari desert, and offer thanks for everything that she has taught us over the past 4 days. To us the trip has lasted for ages, but to the bushmen it has seemed like a few hours. You can see that they belong here as the custodians of a great and wonderful place. On reviewing the camera trap videos with Oom Toopie, Oom John and Honeyboy we are surprised when the Kalahari has one last present for us. It hasn't captured a picture of the animal but its shaddow bobbing past....an aardvark! This footage drives the lessons of the bushmen home, its not about what you see but knowing it is there, and you can see evidence of its passing.


Kgalagadi Leopard Identification Guide
http://www.ast.uct.ac.za/~schurch/leopards/

Please use the report form or download the spreadsheet to report leopard sightings to me.
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