Nxai Pan - Baines Baobabs (or not)

At Nxai Pan National Park we had booked to stay in one of the three limited camp sites near Baines Baobabs. Booking camp sites in Botswana is a bit of a mission because they are almost all privatised, but to different companies. To book a site you need to decide which camp ground you want to stay at, then find out which company runs it, then find the contact details for that company, then begin the usually long-winded process of enquiring, booking, and paying. Baines Baobabs was run by a company called Xomae.

We had been warned that Baines would be beautiful and tranquil, but wouldn't have many animals. We didn't think that would matter, because it was only about 25km to Nxai Pan in the north, so we hoped that we'd be able to "just duck up quickly" for a game drive each morning and evening. The state of the track quickly dashed those naive dreams. It would take at least an hour each way, and we'd need to allow additional time just in case something went wrong.

To have any hope of seeing animals during these two days, we'd need to be staying up at the Pan itself. Fortunately, the camp ground at Nxai Pan itself (South Camp) also happened to be run by Xomae. But it was peak season, so we didn't get our hopes up. Xomae had two "offices" in the Park; one at the main gate, and another one up at the Pan. A summarised version of our interaction went something like this:
1) we asked the staff member at the main gate if there were any spare sites at South Camp,
2) she said that we'd need to ask at the other office,
3) we drive >1hr to the other office,
4) we asked the staff member at the other office if there were any spare sites,
5) she said she didn't know, and that she'd need to ask the lady at the first office,
6) she rang the lady at the first office, who advised that Site #6 was free and that we could have that,
7) we tried not to laugh at the African bureaucracy.

We were in!

South Camp was a bit more cramped than we were used to, but it wasn't exactly a caravan park. It had nice shade, BBQs, and clean ablutions. It also had resident jackals (thanks to ignorant tourists feeding them), and the occasional elephant that stopped by to drink the water from the bathroom plumbing. However, we weren't at South Camp to sit around. We set out to see what the game driving was like... and we weren't disappointed. Refer next blog entry.Read more