Ill be recapping the weekend of July 1st-July 3rd where we traveled to the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans to camp at Lekhubu Island and honestly, its going to be impossible to bring justice to what we saw. I’m not trying to be corny by saying that. It’s actually hard to describe the sights because they were incomparable to any place else on this Earth. Here’s what the Lonely Planet Guide to Botswana and Namibia had to say about this place:
“The Sowa, Nxai, and Ntwetwe Pans collectively comprise the 12,000-sq-km Makgadikgadi Pans. During the sizzling heat of late winter, the stark pans take on a disorienting and ethereal austerity. Heat mirages destroy the senses as imaginary lakes shimmer and disappear, ostriches take flight, and stones turn to mountains and float in mid-air.”
Ethereal austerity??? Flying ostriches and floating mountains??? :/
And this is what the book had to say about traveling on the pans:
“Prospective drivers should keep in mind that salt pans can have a mesmerizing effect, and even create a sense of unfettered freedom. Once you drive out onto the salt, remember that direction, connection, reason and common sense appear to dissolve. Although you may be tempted to speed off with wild abandon into the white and empty distance, exercise caution and restrain yourself. You should be aware of where you are at all times by using a map and compass (GPS units are not foolproof)"
The book basically said that this place was a major mind trip. And it really was. Here is how things played out:
After weeks upon weeks of desperately searching for a car (calling FOR SALE ads and seeing if people would give us their car for the weekend. Crazy cheap university students…), Thomas’ host Mots allowed us to take one of his cars. It was Sir Seretse Khama Day on Friday July 1st and so while you Canadians were enjoying your long weekend, we were too. It was decided that for meals, guys were going to cook lunch and dinner on Friday and girls would cover all the meals on the next day but this spiraled into a major competition of the sexes. We bought approximately 500-pula worth of food for the long weekend and headed off towards the mining town of Orapa. Thomas was driving on the left for the first time and I was the only one who had driven on the left side before so I got automatic Shotgun. I was uber-tense early on, but Tom adjusted really fast and we reached the village of Matshumo in just over 2 hours covering a distance of 220 km.
At the Gaing-O Community Trust office (Kubu Island is a community based project), we were told that our Toyota Windom (the Japanese made equivalent of a Lexus ES) was wayyyy too low to make it onto the salt pans…bummer. We were told we had to first pay up so that the 1 beaten up office truck could go to the closest gas station 2 hours away and get gas for our trip. 3 hours later at 5:45PM with the sun setting, after our patience had worn super thin, our truck arrived and we were off (again in the back of a pickup truck). The first 30 minutes of our experience were spent trying to stay as far away from the sides of the truck as the driver had no care in the world that he was driving through ultra dense thorn bushes with unprotected passengers sitting in the back. The “road” was nothing more than a rock/sand path often taken by 4WDs and here we were in our pickup cruising at 70kmph. It was absolutely terrifying knowing that we were surrounded by needle sharp thorns but for some reason we were all too giddy and just loving life.
As soon as we broke out of the dense bush, the salt pans started and everyone just sort of lost their “cool”. The sky blanketed us with sunset hues and all we could see ahead of us was flat pans. Coupled with the smell of salt and the emerging constellations, it was all a little overwhelming. During the next 40 km to Lekhubu Island, this part of the earth descended into darkness and we were left in awe by the streak of the Milky Way across the sky. Its kind of funny because this was a simple truck ride to our destination and we were left without words and we still hadn’t seen the pans (it was too dark).
This is what the Lonely Planet book described Kubu Island, “Along the southwestern edge of Sowa Pan is this ghostly, baobab-laden rock, which is entirely surrounded by a sea of salt.” Its nature is such that the average tourist doesn’t come here because the island has no wildlife sightings to offer apart a small brown hyena population that calls this place home. We were greeted to Lekhubu Island by a starlit gigantic baobab tree and were shown to our campsite (Camp Impala 11) where we set up camp, started our fire and got down to the business of dinner. Thomas and I served cheese bread, and grilled peri-peri chicken salad and it was probably better than anything I could put together in a fully functioning kitchen. We concluded our meal with banana boats, and marshmallows and hit the sack after some fireside chitchat.
On Saturday, we woke up at 7AM and headed straight to the island shores and then onto the lake where, 10,000 years ago, there was water. The pans are covered in a layer of salt and appear really dry but the soil under the salt is moist. We had some fun with sunrise photography after which the girls went back to the campsite to prepare breakfast and Thomas and I went exploring.
 |
| Our first real site of the salt pans at sunrise. That granite boulder became our go to place for much of the trip. |
 |
| Thomas "ascending" |
2 hours later, we returned to find that our breakfast of cinnamon buns had gone cold. We grabbed some water and headed out to explore the island.
 |
| Camp Impala 11 |
This is where it becomes really hard to describe. The salt pans stretched beyond the horizon where the heat mirages just blurred everything. We all decided to walk in different directions and I came to the point where I lost sight of everyone else and stumbled onto a field of tracks leading to one spot, possibly a watering hole in the summer.
 |
| Tracks leading to one place |
 |
| Brown Hyena tracks |
 |
| If you enlarge the picture, you'll see Iz and Thomas on the horizon. This stretched for miles around us |
After about 2 hours just out on the salt pans, we returned to the island and perched ourselves on the highest point and just admired our surroundings. We unknowingly also explored “the shrine” which is a cave type place that is spiritually important to the locals. San ancestors used to believe that their God lived under the rocks. The boundary wall of a settlement from the Great Zimbabwean empire was also explored. The island was last inhabited 500 years ago but before that, there had been San people here for 30,000 years and there are artefacts from the Stone and Iron Age though we weren’t able to spot any. The baobab trees were also quite the site. They are referred to as the “upside-down” trees, were the residence of the King lemur from Madagascar, and are just so unique.
 |
| A large baobab tree. The baobab fruit has an extremely hard shell but a powdery white inside that tastes sour. |
 |
| The huge baobab that greets all visitors upon arrival. This thing was so big that it was near impossible to get it all in the shot. |
We returned to the openness of the pans for the sunset though it didn’t compare to the sunset over Namibia, it was still pretty magical. The new moon also decided to make an appearance and that was pretty significant for me as a Muslim as it reminded me that in just a month, Ramadan would be starting.
 |
| My favourite picture |
We returned to the campsite where the girls literally blew the “cooking competition” out of the water. We were served with a delightful meal consisting of garlic bread, pasta with tomato basil sauce, steamed/grilled vegetables, and another vegetable dish with zucchinis, mushrooms, red peppers, and carrots all made on the spot with no previous preparation. The girls had won the competition hands down.
After dinner, we decided to wander out onto the pans and do some stargazing. We had barely made it past the shore of the island when we decided that it would be too dangerous for us to go any further. After about 40 minutes, and after a round of laughter, we heard growling sounds coming from the darkness and everyone jumped up and headed back from the island. Having seen hyena tracks earlier on in the day, and there being a lack of other large predators, we concluded that we had been scared off the pans by brown hyenas. Makes for a better story too.
 |
| high ISO, low shutter speed. This picture still doesn't do justice to the stars we saw |
The next morning we woke at 5:45, saw the sunrise from atop some large granite boulders, and packed up. I don’t know how many of you used Word Art in Microsoft Word to try and make fancy headers and titles, but the “dawn” shades that were used as color filling were an exact depiction of what the sky looked like that morning... Driving back to Matshumo was just exciting as getting there and by 1PM we were back in Francistown.
Reading over this post makes me realize that unless you go to this place yourself, you wont comprehend how magical and unreal this place actually was. If you want a video of what the place is like, watch the Top Gear episode where they try and cross the Makgakgadi Pans and camp at Kubu Island.
We’re planning on going to Tuli Block this weekend to try and spot the elusive leopard, and bush babies. Will post on Tuesday. Stay tuned and take care.
No comments:
Post a Comment