Meerkats, Salt Pans and San Bushmen – Jack’s Camp

Days 29 – 32   17^th – 20^th October

Jack’s Camp is in the middle of nowhere, in the semi-arid desert of the Makgadikgadi Pans in the Kalahari Desert.  The website describes it perfectly as ‘The savage beauty of a forgotten Africa’ and ‘One of the only places in the world where the silence is so complete you can hear the blood circulating through your ears.’  It is situated on the edge of a salt pan that just goes on and on as far as the eye can see, and further still. 

The camp is unique, with large tents lined with deep coloured draperies, antiques galore and lit only by paraffin lamps – no wifi or phone signal here!  The dining area and library tent is actually one of Botswana’s acknowledged museums with wonderful old paintings, skulls and memorabilia of a bygone age. 

The beds are high four-posters with steps to assist you to get one them and the floors are covered in Persian rugs.  Thankfully though, the tents do have a wonderful ‘throne room’ as opposed to a china chamberpot below the bed!

It was extremely hot during the day – in the 40’s – but thankfully cooled off at night.  The atmosphere is dry,dry and the moisture is sucked out of one’s body – I don’t think we have ever drunk so much water and delicious homemade lemonade!   And there – in the middle of the desert – is one of the coldest swimming pools I have ever been in!  Talk about being able to chill to the very core!  Jeremy just about managed feet, ankles and wrists, but Sherry took the plunge several times…

We have had 3 wonderful nights in this amazing place, straight out of ‘Arabian Nights’.  We chose it originally because it offered an opportunity to fulfil an important item on Sherry’s bucket list – to intermingle with wild meerkats – and it did not disappoint, but it was so much more.

Game drives provided enchanting sights of large herds of wildebeest and zebra drinking at the waterhole in a landscape that was stark and powerful and quite overwhelming.  We saw a couple of huge bull elephants, two lionesses with a cub, sweet little steenboks and we had two fabulous viewings of brown hyena, which we had never seen before – stunning animal!

We spent a morning and an afternoon with the wild meerkats – what a truly wonderful experience, just sitting watching them and their dear little 3-week-old babies running around, digging up insects and occasionally climbing up onto our shoulders and heads, being the highest point close to hand and therefore a useful lookout!

On our second evening we walked into the bush to meet with the San bushpeople.  If any of you have seen the movie ‘The Gods must be crazy’, you will know who the San are.  These were not actors set up as a tourist attraction, they were genuine San.  With the aid of one of their tribe who spoke some English, they described the way they lived before hunting was banned in Botswana, showing us their bows and arrows, including the poisoned ones and telling how they hunted, and how the skins make the clothes they wear.

They dug up a bulbous root or tuber and showed how they shaved the flesh and then squeezed it, allowing the juice to flow down their thumb and into their mouth.  Then they demonstrated they way to make a fire with a stick and they sat in a circle and played a game amidst much hilarity (and completely oblivious of us) which seemed to be similar to ‘rock, paper, scissors’.

Then an old man called Cobra, a San from a different tribe and much taller, dug up a scorpion to show us, holding it in his hand with its sting firmly clasped, and then putting it in his mouth and sucking it to clean its eyes so we could see them!

It was a brief but truly memorable glimpse into the lives of these simple, friendly people sadly now being disrupted by the noise and chaos we call civilization.

Nights were silent apart from the rustle of palms around our tent (and one very noisy porcupine) and as there was no light pollution, the stars were incredible.  We had views of both Large and Small Magellanic clouds – the Large Magellanic Cloud is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way at a distance of 163,000 light years, whilst the Small Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy near the Milky Way, 7000 light years away and contains several hundred million stars with a total mass of approximately 7 billion times the mass of the Sun.

On our final evening we wrapped kikois around our heads in Arab fashion and drove quad bikes across the endless salt pan until the orange ball of a sun dipped below the horizon, and we arrived at a table in the middle of nowhere for sundowners followed by a delicious bush dinner.  We were totally unaware of any of this, just expecting a fun quad ride, and the big secret that followed blew our minds.  Alone in the vastness under a canopy of stars the size of light bulbs in total silence was an extraordinary, mystical, unforgettable experience.

Next – the Chobe River