Land of Great Thirst

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We headed straight for the Kalahari Desert, which in Botswana largely consists of Makghadighadi Pans, Nxai Pans, and the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. NOTE: The word Kalahari is a San term meaning “land of great thirst.” The rainy season is brief, and frequently doesn’t come at all for several years due to drought.

Our first camp was at Kumaga. We had to take a ferry, which looked a lot like those ramps people use to drive ATVs into the bed of their pickup trucks. We had to drive into the water to get on, and then it hit bottom halfway across and we had to drive off into the river and on to the other side. The ferry man was very helpful though J. Kumaga is a beautiful sight near the Boteti River. In dry seasons, animals come in huge numbers to drink. Before we set up camp, we were greeted with another torrential tropical rainstorm. I made dinner under our tiny canopy with water running up the sleeves of my Goretex jacket. It reminded me a bit of hiking in the Long Range Mountains in Gros Morne Park.

Things dried out a bit the next day and we took a drive through some amazing savannah. Not many animals, though we saw some red hartebeest, which we haven’t come across much, and quite a few steenbok (only slightly larger than the Damara dik dik). There are no hyenas here, and it was interesting to see so many skeletons lying around. Normally, all the bones of animals are eaten by hyenas, which scavenge the leftovers from natural deaths and the kills of other predators. They even eat what the vultures leave behind.

We moved on to our unserviced site at Baine’s Baobabs. The Kudiakam Pan, which was dry and bright white last year when we visited, was now a lake. These pans are clay, and get very slippery and muddy when wet, even if it’s very shallow. Vehicles can sink down and be stuck for days. We had to drive around the edge where the pan meets the sand. We made it, but we couldn’t have passed with much more moisture. B enjoyed the adventure driving, even though he pretended to find it stressful. We sleep under 2 incredible baobab trees. And it poured the whole time. Poured as in the way it does only in tropical places. So, we left a night early and moved on to Nxai Pan, where we were hoping to catch the second largest zebra migration in Africa. (This was a bit sad for me, because hanging out in this huge expanse under the ancient baobabs was the thing I was most looking forward to on this trip. We were also hoping to spot meerkats in Makghadighadi.) The tracks here were extremely muddy, rutted, and slippery, and there was no sign of wildlife. Oh, and it was still pouring rain. We didn’t stay at all and instead headed back to Maun, where I received the excellent news that my dear friend N had gone home from hospital.

When we got to Maun, someone told us that there had been 130mm rain in 2 days. That’s one-third their annual rainfall. We apparently have impeccable timing.