Kgaswane Mountain Park

This post is a bit later than usual for our weekend excursions. It’s been a busy week so I haven’t had as much time to write. We are heading to Johannessburg tomorrow for a couple of nights, so I at least wanted to post something. As such, this will be a “quick recap”.

We headed down into South Africa to Kgaswane Mountain Park. It is just outside Rustenburg which is the first city of any size in South Africa when traveling from Gaborone. We had great company for the trip as a colleague from work, Matt, and his wife Kathleen joined us. We were also very fortunate to have another colleague lend us a car for the weekend which made transportation very easy.

Kgaswane is a bit different than some of the other parks we went to as there are no predators in the park (aside from maybe leopards, but as I mentioned last week, they usually stay away from humans anyways.) This meant that hiking was possible and it was nice to be able to get some physical activity in. The main hike we did was a 5.5 km trail with ups and downs through the mountains. You will see the varied and scenic terrain in the photos. I actually woke up the following morning and “ran” the trail. (I say “ran” since it consisted of power-hiking the ups, moving gingerly on the downs, and jogging the flats.)

As the sun was setting, we did a short “game drive” on the paved road in the park. There is a breeding group of sable antelope that we spotted in the distance just before we lost daylight. The lighting was spectacular!

In the evening, we setup camp and then used the braai (the word for barbecue in Africa) to cook up a feast of steaks, chicken kabobs, potatoes and veggies. Of course, there were also marshmallows around the campfire. There are no pictures of this feast since it was quite dark by the time we got around to eating.

We packed up camp the next morning and headed back to Gaborone. Thanks Matt and Kathleen for a fun weekend and to Jon and Liz for the use of their car!

Pictures can be seen here.