Maun Again – Post Kalahari

I am sitting in a boma lounge at our camp with a group of unemployed Spanish, Portuguese, French, South African, American and Australian bush pilots in Maun, Botswana discussing the consequences of the global glut of inexperienced bush pilots. They seem to have enough money to afford to drink a lot of beer and lose at poker but can only afford $3/night for their accommodation. They’ve taken Ben under their collective wing, are trying to explain the theory of flight and instrument landings to him while exposing him to all sorts of colourful language.

Earlier in the week we left the fantastic Molema Camp on the Limpopo River in the Tuli Block to spend a day at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary, home to the last remaining 32 rhinos in Botswana. The rhinos are being poached to the point of extinction to satisfy South Korean demand for a miracle cancer cure manufactured from their horns. The rhino sanctuary was fantastic, if a little like an oversized, heavily-fortified zoo.

After a day of communing with the rhinos, Fiona agreed that we should stay in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve – one of my “top 5 things to do before I die” and the only remaining one that doesn’t involve twins in French maid outfits. So we drove the three hours to the track that leads to the entrance arriving at about 6:30 pm, and leaving us about an hour to travel the 40 kms to the reserve gate before the reserve closed. We drove the first 100m of the track and once the hood dived under water beat a hasty retreat back to the main road. We searched around for three hours trying to find a place to stay overnight in the torrential rain but there was nowhere suitable. The driving was horrific: heavy rains, pitch darkness and “COWS!!”, “GOATS!!”  and “DONKEYS!!” all over the road. The camp in the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park about 100 kms away that appeared to be our best bet was cut off from the main road by a 100m wide flood river. We eventually concluded that sleeping in the car was our safest bet and bedded down at the entrance to the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park at Xhumaga in our ridiculously cramped Land Cruiser for the night. Joy. It was just like an overnight flight sleep – only add malarial mosquitoes, 30c heat and grumpy children and subtract toilets and good-looking stewardesses. The last glimmer of glamour of our trip was extinguished that night.

The next morning we woke early (actually we never really slept) and headed back to the Kalahari entrance to try our luck again. It had rained torrentially and thundered all night… We weren’t aware that Botswana typically gets 160mm of rain in all of January and 180mm had fallen on the Kalahari in the prior two days alone (the torrential storms and reports that big parts of Botswana and seven out of nine provinces in South Africa had declared disaster areas might have been a clue) so things were going to be very wet. We made it about 2 kms along the track, trying to avoid the enormous puddle/lakes by skirting offroad around them before we bogged down in deep mud  – and got very stuck. It took us two hours to dig, push and pray ourselves out of the swamp we had driven into and head back to the main road with our tails between our legs, evidently defeated. As I started to pump up our tires in preparation for the highway drive to Maun a South African couple, Schalk and Venetia, arrived at the entrance and convinced us that we should go into the Kalahari together – if one of us got stuck, the other could rescue. So, with a little trepidation and against our better judgment, we agreed to give it another try. Rather ominously, two game rangers emerged from the bush having walked 10 kms after getting stuck themselves, but they encouraged us: “just stick to the tracks – you’ll be fine”.

The next five hours of driving the 80 kms to our camp were totally crazy. The normally deep sand tracks into the Kalahari and in the Kalahari itself had turned into rivers and in some places the water was more than four feet deep. Waves were regularly washing over the hood and up the windshield. The snorkel probably saved us from frying the engine. Thank goodness for Schalk and Venetia who sort of adopted us. There is no way we’d have ventured into the Kalahari in those conditions on our own with 3 kids in tow, and we only had pasta and rice to eat, and 45 litres (drinking, cooking and washing) of water to sustain us while in the Kalahari – so Schalk and Venetia’s generosity of meat, water, cheese and vegetables was enormously appreciated. The water and diesel were the biggest concerns… we had just about enough water for drinking and cooking for three days but showering was out of the question – and we had roughly enough diesel to allow us to drive around within the park for 8 hours and then get us back out to the nearest petrol station 140 kms away. Thanks to their generosity, we actually managed a shower in the four days we were there and ventured beyond carbohydrates in our diet.

The Kalahari itself was amazing. Enormous and very remote and made even more remote by the unbelievable amounts of effort required to drive in an out of the reserve. We were one of four vehicles in the entire reserve not including the two game ranger vehicles. The camps are open to all the wildlife so each night we tried to sleep over the roars of approaching lions. Thankfully they only came within 100m at one stage but never directly into our camp. The entire experience was fantastic and about as “wild Africa” as one can find.

We’re now in Maun, Botswana again having the car repaired, lubed and washed after an abusive week in the Kalahari. We’ve shown the locals our pictures of the Kalahari and they’re equally amazed… apparently we just happened upon a freak couple of days – an El Nino-induced, once in 30 years event. We’re thinking that we’ll drive up to Chobe again on Tuesday before we head into Zambia – but we have no firm plans yet. The boys are loving the trip. They’ve adjusted to camping life admirably and, aside from the hourly fratricide attempts, they are getting along. Any notions we had that this trip would bring the family closer together have been exposed as delusions now.

We’ve been doing this for 36 days and are still having a brilliant time. The zaniness that would have been hilarious at the beginning of the trip (hitchhikers in the back of explosive trucks, donkey carts with “Ferrari” hand-painted on the rear, Botswanan cowboys riding donkeys, signs to “taxation trees”) passes largely unnoticed. We continue to meet some fantastic people (like Schalk and Venetia) on our way. Adjusting to 9-to-5 life back in Canada is going to be difficult. I’m starting to think that maybe we should buy a lodge somewhere in southern Africa… nice discounts for friends and family!