Arrival at the Marakele National Park

We are in South Africaand this morning we left from the Pilanesberg National Park,originally we should have gone directly to the Marakele National Parkbut, since our Dr. Livingstone's refrigerator was broken, we had to make a change of plans and go to Rustenberg at the Outdoor Warehouse to buy a new refrigerator.

Rustenberg is about an hour from the Pilanesberg National Park Gate and, after solving the refrigerator problem and having lunch, we traveled for another 2 hours to reach the Marakele National Park.

We arrive at the entrance of the Marakele National Park and we do not even have time to park that a ranger comes towards us to register our car and invites us to enter the reception where there are two other rangers; we check in, they give us the receipt and the map of the park and then we move on.

First we go to the Bontle Camp Site, our campsite, and we choose a place where we can spend the next two days; we place a few things and then we immediately go for a ride in the park.

The Marakele National Park is divided into two parts: the Western part, where the rhinos are found, and the Eastern part, where instead the Big 5 are found, or so the ranger told us at the gate.

We try to orient ourselves with the map they gave us at the entrance and the Tracks4Africa app but there is something that is not right: the map of the park is made in a way that does not correspond in any way to the map of Tracks4Africa and, what it is more absurd, it is that the roads do not correspond to any of the two maps, very well!

We take take a tour of a couple of hours and go to the lookout hut that overlooks a puddle; we are there a bit to see if any animals arrive and in the meantime we enjoy the view.

Then we go back to the gate and the campsite, the direction is clear to us but the streets are a bit of an enigma, but why don't they make a scale map that corresponds to reality as Sanparks does in other parks?

At 5:00pm we arrive at the campsite, it's a little earlier than the previous nights and so we take the extra time we have to fix a few things including the new fridge.

What a relaxation! This campsite is very nice and new and the pitches are very spacious; moreover there are a lot of animals that go around the campground, there are the warthogs, an ostrich that continues to go around, it looks like the guardian, there are also different birds like the hornbills and the starlings, while we don't see monkeys like instead they had told us at the gate, better this way.

We enjoy the sunset with the sun going down among the trees of the forest and we take some pictures while we have an aperitif with panache; how wonderful, we are here in total silence, disconnected from the internet, the sky is colored with the warm colors of an African sunset ... what more do we want?

While Silvan prepares the wood to light the fire and then cook, I make him a hyperlapse; it's too funny!

Tonight our menu includes grilled cheese salami, they are very good!

How much we like to travel like this, a few years ago we would never have said that we would have enjoyed camping by cooking ourselves and living practically in a car, but now it has become our favorite way of traveling.

After dinner we stay a bit outside enjoying the peace of this place and looking at the stars but at some point it starts to get really cold and then we enter the warmth of our Dr. Livingstone.

Good night!