or our camping trip to the Nxai Pan....
After leaving Little Mokolodi, Claire and I headed north towards the town of Nata, which is the gateway to the salt pans of Botswana which are known throughout the world.
I learnt one thing during this day - Botswana is a BIG country; it's larger than France actually to get some kind of scale for European readers...we were also in Mo the landrover which limited our speed to around 100kmh.
The upshot is that it was getting towards dark when we arrived at Nata Lodge, where we had the idea of camping for the night. At this point, I started to feel rather guilty about not giving Claire a proper honeymoon (http://sitheclimber.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/seana-bhraighan-overnight-trip-with.html) so I decided to shell out on a night at the Lodge rather than camping...it also gave us more access to the showers etc at the Lodge.
The Lodge was actually pretty cheap given its luxury, and the food was really good as well. The only downside was that we couldn't get the fan to work so it was rather a warm night for us - and a productive one for the local mosquito's with lots of me to dine on...it seems that midges and mozzie's have the same liking to me - at least the clarityn kept the itching down and meant I had no major reaction.
Driving north, we arrived at the entrance gate to the Nxai Pan, Fiona having done the necessary paperwork for us and booked us a camping spot. The next 38km of the drive was quite tricky, Claire drove it, on a bed of shifting sand which made progress very slow and painful. One advantage of this is that it allowed me to try and come to terms with the scale of the pans - the picture is just one of the examples I took.
Arriving at the 'Office' as the signposts called it, we had a chat with the very helpful rangers and drove off to find our campsite. The road surface improved markedly and I was able to drive without any real hazards. They also provided us with a map and directions to the one waterhole that was full of water - pumped in - and some of the dry ones that we could go and explore for ourselves.
The campsite was really well maintained - an 'ablution block' was in the middle and we had a single pitch to ourselves. There was an ash bowl for the braii and plenty of space. Rather alarmingly, there was some old elephant dung on the little path from our campsite to the ablution block, and some that wandered around the top of the campsite itself - at least we knew where to pitch the tent!!
Having pitched the tent we went for a drive in the afternoon light....off to the waterhole where we saw the first picture...We saw the Ellies at the waterhole; they were huge. All jokes apart, one of the bulls would have been 5 1/2m high if he was an inch.....Having never seen any kind of game outside of a zoo it was fascinating to see the Ellies, as well as the Zebra, Springbok and the bird-life that is all over the pans.
Gawping over we went back to the camp and Claire cooked a lovely supper - although we might remember to prick the gem squash next time to stop them exploding when cooked! Having had lots of Mazoe (a lovely orange squash) and water we found that the gas cooker was awfully slow when it came to making tea (we found out later that sand had blocked one of the jets); then it was time for bed.
This is actually more complex than it sounds - as it was very likely that Hyena's and Jackals would be around the campsite (we had heard them howling already once it got dark); along with the possibility of other animals. So, the food was packed away into an old vaccine case that Claire had, as well as some into a cool box which was put into the van - the vaccine case (which needed both of us to move it) stayed outside. We had some amazing solar powered lights that Howard had leant us and we now put on, as well as putting chairs and things around the camp. The logic behind this came from Claire with her experience of such things - Hyena's (our most likely visitor) don't like noise; so when they bang into the chair etc they go away...nice idea.
Around 3am we were woken by a strange sound. Listening from inside the tent it seemed that the Ellies were walking through the campsite. Despite their enormous size, they are actually incredibly careful how and when they step - so the chance of them stepping on the tent was next to nil, especially as we'd pitched it out of the way of their path. However, we hadn't moved the vaccine case out of the way and now one of the Ellies was trying to work out what it was! Luckily for us - he decided to move it gently rather than pick it up and hurl it anywhere, including onto the tent..Claire was rather more concerned about this than me - probably due to my lack of experience of Ellies in the wild....
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