Another long weekend meant another adventure in Botswana. This time, a four-day Easter break provided the ideal time to visit the Makgadikgadi Pans in northern Botswana. Along with my housemate, Thomas, I ventured into one of the lesser-travelled parts of Botswana taking advantage of recent rains and all that brings to this dry, barren land. Makgadikgadi, meaning ‘very salty’ in the language of the local San tribes, refers to a collection of salt pans that stretch over a range of 41,000 hectares. Around the same size of Switzerland or Denmark, the area comprises the massive Sua Pan and Ntwetwe Pan as well as the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park, bordered by the Boteti River in the west and Nxai Pan National Park to the north.
The Boteti River flows from the Okavango Delta, and with water comes life. Each year, Africa’s second largest migration of zebra and wildebeest travel from the Boteti into the Makgadikgadi, arriving just as the rains begin in December. Unfortunately this year, the zebra arrived in late December only to find the rains had not yet started, but in fact were two months late. And so the 25,000-odd zebra made the 300km journey back to the Boteti. Fortunately though, the zebra returned in mid-March just as the rains had finally begun and also in time for our arrival, with the wildebeest lagging a couple of weeks behind (and leaving many a lonesome, lustful wildebeest bull in waiting with the arriving zebra).
Zebra are one of the more common grazers in South Africa. They rarely warrant much attention from those on safari, although it’s hard not to be impressed to see them in such numbers. There were foals galore, with plenty of pregnant females ready to give birth with little notice. This is the Plains Zebra (known also as Burchill’s or Common zebra), found throughout southern and East Africa. They are distinct for the brown colouration between the black and white, that is a third colour that is barely recognised when one asks the question, ‘what colour is the zebra’. Interestingly, the stripes are unique to each animal in the same way as a human fingerprint. Although like a fingerprint, lining hundreds next to each other can hardly help this young explorer distinguish one from another.
We were staying at Camp Kalahari, which is located on a private concession approximately two hours into the pans from the nearest town of Gweta. The Camp was great – it maintains a traditional feel that is not too far from what one could expect in the late 1800s as British explorers, led by Livingstone, travelled these parts including the Missionaries’ Road that to this day, continue to run through the concession. Even better, we were two of only three guests in the camp (with 15 staff), resulting in the most individualised service possible.
Although not dense in other large mammals, there were many black-backed jackals and evidence (footprints and skin pulled back from the carcass, to be precise) of brown hyena feeding on a zebra carcass (also the speculative thieves of three of that zebra’s limbs). It is also a bird-lovers delight, with an array of local, regional migratory and European migratory birds. There was an impressive number of vultures too, of the White-backed, Cape and Lappet-faced variety – all of which were also embracing the recently expired zebra.
It is the landscape though that makes the region so special. When visiting the neighbouring Nxai Pan in late-June 2015, the grass was already dead yellow-brown, overlaying the expanse of white, dusty sand. Now, for just a small window in the year, the grass reaches peak growth at almost knee height, rich in grass seeds for the migrating finches. The pans fill with water, reflecting the images of both the zebras and the palm trees that are forever on the horizon, representing a unique backdrop for what is fundamentally part of the Kalahari Desert for 9 months of the year. I have tried to capture this uniqueness in some of these photos, although it really captures only a small part of this beautiful environment.
