Arnoud Quanjer Wildlife Photography

 When you go to the CKGR you must be completely self supporting as there are no shops in the CKGR. This means that you have to bring your own food and water. When I went to the CKGR I budgetted for 2,5 liters of drinking water per person per day plus 2,5 liters per person per day for washing and cooking. I also took beer, wine and cooldrinks with me besides the water supply. The water I bought was in 5 liter blue see through plastic containers, it seemed to be the most practical way to transport the water. I went to the CKGR for eight days and took water with me for twelve days just to make sure that I didn't run out of water if something unplanned happened. For food I took mostly rice, pasta and canned food as I couldn't keep meat cool. I had a 40l fridge in my 4x4 but running it through the night is not recommended. The fridge runs off a separate battery but there have been cases where a fridge has drained its battery and the cars main battery (although that shouldn't happen). I wasn't prepared to take that risk in the CKGR though so I decided not to bring fresh meat. 

Fuel

There are no petrol stations in the CKGR. If you enter the CKGR through Matswere gate then you can fill up your tank at the Shell garage in Rakops. This little town is located at the turnoff from the tar road to the CKGR. This Shell garage operates a hand operated fuelpump and usually has leaded and unleaded petrol. If there is no fuel in Rakops then you can head 70 kilometers South  to the town of Mopipi where there are two fuelstations. The road between Rakops and Mopipi used to be bad but has been resurfaced and improved and is now a proper road. When you are in the CKGR the fuel consumptions depends on the state of the roads. If you have to drive through thick sand then you'll get around 3 kilometers to the liter. When we were in the CKGR the roads were in excellent shape, we hardly ever had to engage 4x4, and our fuel consumption was 5,5 kilometers to the liter. Make sure that you carefully plan your trip and workout your kilometers before you go to the CKGR. If you get stuck without fuel in the middle of the CKGR then chances are that nobody will find you, I guess I don't have to explain the concequences. Our 4x4 (Nissan 3.3l V6) had a 140l fuel tank and we carried three additional 20l jerry cans. We drove 1000 kilometers through the CKGR which was 200 more than we though we'd do. The road conditions were much better than we we though which gave us better fuel economy and that meant that we could drive the extra 200km.