After exiting the gate there is a short stretch of tarmac and then a left into Nxai Pan.  The road into Nxai Pan main park area is not good.  It’s widened to three tracks wide in most places, with people looking for fresh sand that isn’t heavily corrugated, but this has failed to find any improvement.  So for most of the 30+ kilometers in to the park we suffered along the corrugations, though not too bad I suppose in the end.

The watering hole just before the gate was full of elephant, so we had a great introduction to Nxai Pan watching a group of bulls playing in the watering hole.  

After checking in at the gate we saw there is a small but well stocked “tuck shop” at the gate selling beer, snacks and a few other sundries, impressive for such a small store.  We were running short on beer, as we’d showed up before the bottle shops were open in Rakops, so we picked up two very expensive six packs.  The do have a corner on the market I suppose.

We started by checking out our campsite, No. 2, at South Camp. It was perfectly fine, but again we realized how spoiled we were in the CKGR with wide open spaces all alone, whereas this campground we were still in semi-close proximity to our neighbors.  

The ablutions (note: toilet/showers/restrooms are referred to as ablutions, at least at camp sites anyway) were the same as at Khumaga, probably because they are run by the same 3rd party, but with one significant difference.  It seems elephant are a problem here, because the ablution block is fortified like a P.O.W. camp.  It has a chain link fence, electrified, surrounded, on both sides of the fence by a more than two meters wide swath of rebar spikes in concrete, so that elephants can’t step close to the fence.  There was a narrow path, maybe eight inches wide, for people to walk between the spikes to the gate.  Don’t trip!  

Things is a good reminder of an important issue with elephants and wild game in general.  We are prone to romanticizing them, and though they do deserve all of our appreciation and more, I think we should all also appreciate the difficulty that lies in living near these great animals and the clash when they collide with humans.

When you see what it takes to protect something as simple as an ablution block, think of what it takes to protect a farm, or your home.  Also around the park were numerous useless cement block signs because they were knocked over.  I wonder how often the park staff righted those blocks before giving up?  

When checking into the park we saw a compensation sheet for locals, compensation for livestock lost to lion kills, for pula/hectare of crops lost to elephant damage.  Seeing this and the fortifications around some areas certainly gives us a moment of pause to consider the confrontation between wild animals and man.  I don’t know what the solutions are, and with Botswana having a relatively low population density I imagine it is less of a problem here than in some other places.  

I did read about a project where farmers had bee hives spaced around the perimeter of their fields.  Apparently elephants hate bees (a funny image) and would avoid those crops, and the farmers would also end up with honey to use or sell.  Of course there is a scalability problem, and perhaps the elephants would eventually overcome their fear, but I thought it was an interesting idea.

Nxai Pan was beautiful, similar the smaller pans in the CKGR, but larger.  We heard lions that night in South Camp, but no sightings of cats that night or the morning after.  We didn’t see a lot of other people here, maybe 6 other vehicles that were camped in South Camp and a couple safari company vehicles.  

The roads in Nxai Pan were decent in places, but it must have been very wet earlier in the season as you could see a lot of deeply rutted sections in the road.  In many of the places people had driven along side these for a clear path, widening the road.  Then those must have become rutted and they would drive again wider still, resulting in a maze of rutted tracks 50’ wide.  I wonder at the ecological impact of this and if there is a better way?  It’s also curious that we didn’t see this elsewhere in our admittedly limited explorations, so why here?  I did notice that the safari operators use very large old international trucks instead of the standard land cruiser or land rover vehicles, perhaps those heavier vehicles are part of the problem? 

When we provisioned in Gabaronne we had assumed that we would be able to re-provision between the CKGR and the Makgadikdadi.  We had stretched our stores longer than we thought, and so had not made much effort to shop before coming here.  

Now provisions were running low and so dinner was getting weird.  Then Jenny said “What if we had broccoli and I made french fries?”  I responded with a long silence, as I took a moment to appreciate Jenny.  I love broccoli.  I love French fries, and it has never occurred to me that we could make them on their own.  She took this silence as disapproval, and started to change tack, but I quickly assured her that would be fantastic.  So we had broccoli and French fries for dinner and heard the call of lions again, and again appreciated our situation.  

Baine’s Baobabs

After a night at South Camp we had reserved a night at Baine’s Baobabs site No. 1.  This is something like 30km south east, along side a salt pan.  At the gate they told us that camp No. 1 was inaccessible and that we were being reassigned to No. 2.  

After the turnoff towards Baine’s from the main road the terrain changes quickly and widens out in to broad savannah.  We saw elephants, orxy, impala and zebra, but not in much density, presumably due to minimal water.  

There are two approach roads to Baine’s, and at they gate they had told us which one to take, but in the slew of instructions provided we forgot that one, and foolishly didn’t write it down.  We took the southern road, but after we arrived at the pan we sort of started to think that we were supposed to take the northern road.  Our route took us across the pan in a few stretches, and this is very soon after the wet season so the pan surface is mostly not drivable.  

This is not a pan like those encountered in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.  Those are meadows, fertile with grass for grazing animals.  This is a salt pan.  At the edges there was a dry crust, and but we walked out into the middle and it quickly becomes muddy, and you can see where a few people had tried to drive off the track and started immediately to dig deep ruts with their tires.  

We weighed driving back and taking the northern road, but what we had traveled so far hadn’t been in great condition and I didn’t really want to drive it again.  It did appear that others had driven here, and we planned to stick to their tracks and proceed cautiously.  So we crept along and proceeded with no problems.  

In a few sections that looked concerning I put it in low range and was ready to either gun it to maintain momentum or back out quickly.  Jenny walked a few sections and used a steel rod (from our tent rain fly) to probe the surface.  

In the end we made in with no problems, and perhaps we were being overly cautious, but getting stuck and waiting for rescue in the pans seemed like it would be awful.  

Baine’s Baobabs is really impressive. Sometimes referred to as a Tree Island, as clumps of baobabs occur elsewhere, or clumps of trees along an open pan.  Here four very mighty trees and several smaller ones, standing along the edge of the salt pan.  The contrast is so stark and impressive it is hard to describe.  For me a baobab tree always evokes a sensation of respect, wisdom, patience, but these were massive, the largest I have seen, and their mightiness and their grandeur was overwhelming.  We sat and took in their presence.  Thinking about how long they have stood here and being able to share a few moments of their perhaps 1,000 years in this spot was a great privilege.  

Looking in the pan near the trees you could see a few elephant tracks in the mud of the pan.  They had struck out into the pan, but then when the mud became too deep you could see they took a wide arc and circled back.  I wonder why they go into the pan?  Are they attracted to the salt, or where they headed to the island across the pan and had to turn back?  

After taking in the trees for a while we decided to check out our campsite.  It’s about a 20 minute drive along the edge of the pan to get to camp No. 2, and 10 more minutes to No. 3.

Campsite No. 2 is fantastic.  At first I had been slightly disappointed that we were camping “so far” from the Baine’s Baobabs.  But this site is situated between two large baobabs, with a long drop toilet and bucket shower stall (BYO water) about 50 meters off to the side.  This was another fantastic solitary campsite, no one around anywhere and we were really appreciating it.    

There wasn’t much evidence of wildlife in the area, so we spent a slow afternoon in camp making lunch and hanging around camp enjoying the trees and the setting.  We returned to Baine’s Baobabs in the afternoon to hang around for sunset.  A couple vehicles and a safari group came and went, but much to our surprise no one stayed longer than 30 minutes and we had the trees all to ourselves most of the time.  

After sunset we returned to camp and enjoyed pasta and roasted vegetables for dinner.  There had been some cloud cover, but with perfect timing the clouds cleared at sunset and we had a wonderful view of the milky way and the stars and we again marveled at how fortunate we are to be here in this place.