What with all the excitement of the Rally car race and Lion etc, I clean forgot to mention, we have decided to extend our stay! We had a booking for Molopo lodge, just outside the park for our last night, but the very kind lady at reception called them for us, and they moved our booking one night, and lovely reception lady, Annetjie, managed to extend our stay in the Kgalagadi! Mom whipped out her credit card, so I am in the red with her, but when I asked if she had time to stay longer, her answer was “I am on pension, and on holiday, I have nothing but time!” So, yes, yaaaaaaaa, we are staying another night! Which would help a lot with the elusive cheetah hunt we have going. Thank you Annetjie, Mom, and really, thank you Molopo lodge!

The morning started with an ice layer on Bullet’s front window that was so thick, I was expecting a Polar Bear to come popping out in the middle! And the defogger only works when the car is in motion, so with head hanging out the side window, we try and drive down to reception to pick up our sign out paper (which reminded of the time at Belfast when the mist was so think that my Mom had to drive with her head out the window to see the white line in the middle of the road in order to stay on the road, and smacked her forehead against the driver of an oncoming car’s forehead who was doing the same), and then we had to drive around the parking area for about 20 minutes to get the defogger to do its work, and the other people thought we lost our collective minds, but wisely left us to our circling. You know that cold, when you lick the back of an old Frigidaire, and its so cold that your tongue gets stuck to it, and they have to call the fire brigade to come and blow torch your tongue off the back of the fridge, and then you have no feeling on the front of your tongue for the rest of your life? Well, this is how cold it is here in the mornings. If somebody should lick my nose now, their tongue would get stuck.

Today, we decided that Bullet’s impeccable off road driving should be tested again, and took the 4×4 road. But knowing the terrain now, we took it slowly and saw, guess… yes, TRACKS! Large flat ones, which spells Lion to !kxai. And then they disappear. No worries, says Mom, we did see that lovely dog in the weavers nest yesterday, so no need to feel less than all the other cheetah spotters in the park. But on we go. And this is where the total communication breakdown starts. We make the picnic spot in good time, nearly take out a braai stand in order to park Bullet as close to the table as possible to block the wind (again, hurricane strength), and have a fat chat about Snake eagles, and Tawny eagles and the very well spotted immature Bateleur in the tree just before the picnic spot.

After lunch we’re off again, and stumble over a Bat Eared Fox! Yaaaaaa!!! Love them! And right behind fox one, are four more! And this is where I start suspecting that Mom’s right ear might not be as clear as it used to be. As I say, “four more”, and she says, “look, Bat Eared Fox”. Eventually she sees number two to five, and we go into stealth mode. Big ears, sharp hearing I tell my Mom. (The foxes now, not my Mom. She has normal size ears) But they hear the first click of the shutter, and off they go and we stumble upon another little surprise, a side road, which we think leads to the West side of the park, and much better than the road we would have taken. We spot a wooden enclosure and Mom asks what that is (rather a good feeling when your Mom thinks you know all the answers) and I reply that I think it is a research station.

In the middle of our conversation, I spot a Black Backed Jackal to the right with something large in his mouth. So I point at it, and tell my mom “Hy het ‘n VANGS” ( translated – he has caught something and it’s in his mouth). My mom points at the same Jackal and says “Fox!”. I again repeat, “Hy het ‘n vangs!”, and again my mom points, and says louder “FOX!” So, at this point I am thinking, her hearing has now completely gone (possibly the dust from yesterday’s rally), and I abandon the whole discussion and start taking photos. Now the thing hanging from the jackals mouth looks like a raven (crow). Mom asks what’s in his mouth, so I get the idea that she has now noticed that he has a “vangs” (catch) and we speculate about the raven. Mom has been keeping record of all sightings in a little black book (which she has been filling in from the back to the front, so not only is she !kxai, but is now also known as Chaui Chong, Mandarin writing person), and she starts writing down “Jackal with raven in mouth”.

I look through the view finder of my camera and see absolutely no feathers. It looks suspiciously like hair. But this is not possible, where would the jackal pick up hair. And he is chewing on the end of it, like it has some meat on it. “Oh, wait, HAIR!” which I say out load. Mom gives me a look, and in her mind, she ponders the possibility, and scratches out the raven bit in the book, and then discards the whole notion, as if it was a persons hair, then the Jackal must be chewing on the scalp of the person. And how would the jackal get hold of the person to begin with. Meanwhile, in my head I have now gone from Hair, to WIG! Which again, I say out load. Mom completely discards this idea in her head, while I ponder the possibility that somebody had to wash their wig this morning, and how does one dry a wig? And that the jackal most probably stole the wig from the washing line. I turn around and tell my mom, “seriously, that is a wig!”. That is when she completely accepted that I had lost my mind! And no, it was not a wig, or a persons head, it was in fact the tail of a Gemsbok! Which should have been my first thought, field guide that I am.

But the whole “vangs” discussion only comes out a little later, when Mom starts laughing, and says, she thought when I said VANGS, I meant the research station has “ONTvangs” (which means cell phone reception) and the more I am saying “Vangs”, the more she is trying to point out the jackal! But with the bat eared foxes we had just seen, the whole jackal word escaped her and she really just wanted me to get off the whole cell phone reception thing, and see the Jackal with a catch in his mouth; while I was just trying to get mom to actually see that the jackal had a catch in his mouth!

The 35km road back took about 2 hours, as every 5 minutes, we would start with a small giggle, and say “VANGS”, and then Bullet would start sniggering, and everything would come to a halt. I am still wiping tears from my eyes as I am writing. Mom has not lost her hearing, I have not lost my mind, and nobody is driving around the Kalahari without their wig.

Onwards with the day, and nothing spectacular to report, just a lot more jackals which starts the whole giggling thing again. Eventually, on our way back to camp, we spot about thirteen jackals. Now obviously I have lost some but of my mind, as I think Oh look, a great big family of jackals. And only then do I start thinking, they are all darting in and out from behind a rather non descript looking bush, and yes, behind the bush lays a very fresh carcass! Of course, with a little mini war between the jackals going on as well. As one gets a piece, then the one next to him starts fighting for the piece, and then two more get in on the action, and this all happens behind the bush, so all we see is a lot of tugging and pulling. And then one comes running out, and promptly falls flat on his back and starts rubbing himself against every available bush or rock. Most probably bit through the gall bladder, as he had something NASTY going on in his mouth that he was trying to get rid of! In all this excitement, one little jackal runs off with a piece of meat the size of Texas in his mouth. Which he keeps on dropping, as it was truly just a bit too big for his little mouth to handle. But proudly, he disappears across the road, to a large hungry family.

But then the thought arose, what caught that carcass to begin with? Blood was still dropping from the Texan steak the jackal had so it must have been very fresh. And as we were driving, discussing this whole phenomenon, I spot two cheetah heads peeking out from behind some grass about 1 km away from the catch. Recalling the whole “Vangs” miscommunication, I did not want to go through that little discussion again, and nearly smacked Mom out of the car! I was shouting “Cheetah!” Mom got that one on the first mention, and is still nursing the very blue mark on her arm where I whacked her in my excitement! But we saw cheetah! Very far off, and very dark! The only reason why I could take some kind of semblance of photo proof was that their stomachs where so big from the catch, that it looked like they swallowed Texas themselves!

I am very proud to say that the very first car that came in our direction, I gave very pointed, exact directions to: “1.1km from the 20km mark sign board, on the right hand side, under a silver tree, two cheetahs, and 2.2 km from there, behind a small bush with a lot of Bullet tyre tracks doing U-turns, would be the catch.”. And yes, he did find it! I did not even have to show off my photographic evidence!

Tomorrow, is bonus day!

To catch up on previous days of Tosca’s Epic Adventure:

Day 1: Tosca’s Kalaroo Sequel, Roadblocks and Police Raids

Day 2: Tosca’s Kalaroo Sequel, The Good and The Bad!

Day 3: Tosca’s Kalaroo Sequel, Nobody Talks About Fight Club!

Day 4: Tosca’s Kalaroo Sequel, The Kalahari Rally

Day 5: Tosca’s Kalaroo Sequel, The Lions Foot