At Deception Valley Lodge, in the heart of the Kalahari, the chest-high grass
is a dazzling green. The terminalia trees are heavy with seed pods that glow
deep burgundy in the sun. Among the trees stands a group of hartebeest,
sleek and fat in their foxy coats, and massed flocks of quealeas —
seed-eating finches with blood-red masks — erupt with a sudden rush of wings
as the sun goes in and the rain belts down. Not your average desert, then.
In Botswana, the Kalahari is covered in a thin pelt of grass and scrub. In
places, shepherd trees and umbrella acacias cast welcome pools of shade. But
scorching temperatures and a total absence of permanent water define this as
one of the harshest spots on earth.
Then the rains come. They arrive at the turn of the year, when thunderheads
build in the afternoon heat and storms roam the immense horizons, ushering
in a miraculous season of renewal. And this year, they’ve arrived with even
more force than usual.
Jacobus Slabbert, my safari guide at Deception Valley, had driven from Port
Elizabeth, 800 miles away in South Africa. “It’s raining everywhere,” he
says, “but nowhere is as green as this.”
Jacobus is the son of the lodge’s Afrikaner owner, Gerard Slabbert, a retired
pharmacist who fell in love with the desert and bought a 15,000-hectare
chunk of bush adjoining the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a wilderness the
size of New Mexico. The lodge opened six years ago and has eight twin-bedded
thatched cottages, with — a novelty for the Central Kalahari — a swimming
pool.
Every night, I hear lions roaring, but they are hard to see in the long grass.
Instead, we look for herds of greater kudu — “The grey ghosts of the African
bush,” as Jacobus calls them — and go spotlighting at night to find
porcupines and eagle owls.
The next day, Jacobus wants to take me to Deception Pan, in the heart of the
reserve. It’s a two-hour drive, and we set off early, skirting the
veterinary fence built to stop wildlife spreading bovine TB among Botswana’s
beef herds. Goshawks glare at us from the fence posts, and we drive for
miles through clouds of butterflies.
At last we cross a sandy ridge, and there lies the pan,a shallow valley in
which isolated acacia groves stand out like islands in a sea of grass.
Wherever we look, there are herds of animals — oryx and springbok — and
flocks of wintering European storks.
We picnic under a shady tree — kudu kebabs and beers from the cool box — and I
remember the last time I was here. But that was in July, and the dust bowl I
saw then bears no relation to the ephemeral paradise of Deception Pan in the
rains.
Back at the lodge, Jacobus has arranged another outing. This time, we are on
foot, accompanied by Chota and Xhase, two Naru Bushmen who have swapped
their everyday working clothes and turn up in nothing but kudu-skin
loincloths to lead us on a morning walk.
Their transformation is extraordinary. Around the lodge, they were shy and
diffident; now, with bows and spears slung over bare shoulders, they are
confident and at ease as they demonstrate their bush skills.
Eagerly, they translate the calligraphy of animal tracks left in the sand and
explain how the Kalahari is at once a natural pharmacy and a food-for-free
larder, if you know where to look. They demonstrate how to trap guinea fowl,
and go through the mime of luring a warthog from its lair. They make a fire,
using nothing but two rubbing sticks and a handful of tinder, and dig for
tubers, which provide water in the dry season.
This could so easily be cheesy, a tired charade played out for tourists.
Instead, it turns out to be totally absorbing, an illuminating glimpse of a
way of life that has almost vanished, demonstrated with such pride and
dignity, I’m moved close to tears.
I WANT to stay longer, but it’s time to meet Dave Dugmore, who drives me to
Meno a Kwena (Crocodile Tooth), his camp on the Boteti River, three hours
away by road.
The Boteti was a vital water source for the animals of the Makgadikgadi Pans
National Park, but it hasn’t flowed for years. Now they have to rely on Meno
a Kwena’s man-made water hole, which attracts upwards of 5,000 zebras every
day in the dry season.
“There’s no need for game drives,” says Dugmore. “You just grab a beer and
watch it happen right in front of you.” But now, in the rainy season, the
animals have dispersed, leaving only a couple of elephants in view.
With its faded green tents and bucket showers, Menoa Kwena must be the only
genuine no-frills bush camp left in Botswana, where upmarket safari-chic
lodges are the norm. The swimming pool is full of tadpoles, but that didn’t
stop princes William and Harry from having a good time here.
My tent stands inside a stone-walled compound with wooden poles across the
doorway. “It’s important to put them back once you’re inside,” says Dugmore
casually. “Keeps the lions out.”
Apparently, the lions are used to nosing around the nearby village in the hope
of finding a cow for supper, and I soon understand what Dugmore means. I’m
just about to fall asleep when a lion begins to roar. It sounds as if it is
just outside, but when I look around next morning, its footprints are 30
yards away.
Meno a Kwena is the springboard for day trips to Nxai Pan National Park, where
herds of zebras munch their way across endless vistas of emerald grass.
Springbok, too, but no sight of the cheetahs that prey on them. In the
afternoon, we move on to Baines’ Baobabs, a sacred grove of ancient trees
marooned among the flooded pans. In this vast, flat land, their swollen
trunks are visible for miles, an enigmatic landmark that draws the eye; and,
except for a few tyre tracks, nothing has changed since Thomas Baines, a
contemporary of Livingstone, painted this scene in 1862.
AND SO to Jack’s Camp, my last port of call on this green desert safari, and
one that should be on everyone’s list of the 10 best places to stay in
Africa — not just for its stunning location, in a palm grove on the edge of
the Makgadikgadi Pans, but for its style and sheer romanticism.
The camp was founded in the 1960s by Jack Bousfield, a former hunter, and is
now run by Ralph, his son. Impossibly good-looking, with shoulder-length
hair and a thousand-mile stare, Ralph is an articulate conservationist whose
knowledge of the Kalahari and its wildlife is second to none. Visiting
Jack’s Camp in the rainy season is more like being in the Okavango Delta
during the floods. The surrounding grasslands are alive with bullfrogs, and
half the tracks are underwater, as we slosh towards Ntwetwe Pan in Ralph’s
Land Cruiser.
Once, 20,000 years ago, there was a giant lake here, twice the size of Lake
Victoria. Then it dried up, leaving the mosaic of soda pans that makes up
the present-day Makgadikgadi. In the dry season, you can head out on quad
bikes across the blinding emptiness of the pans, where the silence is
absolute. In the rains, however, they are accessible only to the flamingos
that arrive by the thousand to gorge on brine shrimps.
Elsewhere in Africa, visitors come to see lions and elephants; at Jack’s Camp,
the stars are a family of meerkats, adorable animals no bigger than
squirrels. Researchers have been studying this group for years, during which
time they have become completely people-friendly, and this is the only place
I know where you can get so close to them.
Not far from where the meerkats live stands another famous Kalahari landmark.
Chapman’s Baobab, named after James Chapman, the Victorian explorer who came
here in the 1850s, is a living colossus, as old as Stonehenge. Lanner
falcons nest in its seven spires and Chapman’s initials are still there —
together with the scars left by stone-age hunters who stripped its bark to
make rope for traps.
On my last day, we pack a picnic lunch and set off in search of the
Makgadikgadi zebra migration. We drive deep into the national park, into the
patchwork of flooded pans and treeless plains that lies beyond the palm
groves. The first animals we see are a herd of oryx. With their cantering
stride and horses’ tails, they look like a squadron of lancers on a mission
as they splash across the pans, shattering the mirror images of blue sky and
cumulus clouds.
And suddenly, there are the zebras, all the way to the horizon. We drive for
two hours and there is no end to them. In all, there must be at least
20,000, and nobody but ourselves to enjoy the spectacle.
Too soon, the light turns to gold. It’s time to go, and as we drive back to
camp, I remember something Ralph mentioned the day before on our way to
Ntwetwe Pan. “One day soon,” he had said, gazing into the boundless distance
of the Makgadikgadi, “the world’s greatest luxury will be space. Out here,
there is still room to breathe, to be yourself and count the stars.”
Brian Jackman travelled as a guest of Expert Africa
Travel brief: in Botswana, the green season runs from December
to April. Expert Africa (020 8232 9777, www.expertafrica.com)
has a 10-night safari at this time of year (three nights at Deception Valley
Lodge, two nights at Meno a Kwena and three nights at Jack’s Camp)
from £3,245pp, based on two sharing and including British Airways
flights from Heathrow to Johannesburg, onward flights to Maun with Air
Botswana, all local transfers, park fees, laundry and safari activities.
Or try Okavango Tours & Safaris (020 8343 3283, www.okavango.com),
or Aardvark Safaris (01980 849160, www.aardvarksafaris.com).
