The Karoo National Park is very, very dry at the moment. Difficult to see how the park can sustain animals like lion, buffalo and rhino, but there are all three here. We did spot a herd of buffalo, but no sign of the lions or rhino. What we did see were ostriches, eland, kudu, springbok, klipspringer, duiker and grey rhebok, vervet monkeys and baboons. Plus a whole lot of tortoises, and many, many birds, including the little chap who decided to build a nest at the filler of the diesel tank.
We met a friendly German couple in the picnic site, and we were swopping stories of what we’d seen. They told us that they’d spotted a few Steenbras. Nige didn’t have the heart to correct them. [For our foreign friends, a Steenbras is a fish; a Steenbok is a bokkie.]
Today we felt the Karoo heat properly for the first time. Immensely hot and dry. We spent the afternoon huddled in the shade, as did the resident tortoises.
We popped into nearby Beaufort West this morning for some shopping, and we saw a whole host of different wildlife there… but that’s another story.
