The Land of Great Thirst (Kalahari)

Our final camping destination was in the remote and isolated Kalahari. Meaning "great thirst" in the local language, we made sure to stock up on water, and then headed out into the vast expanse that takes up most of Botswana.

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve is the second largest wildlife reserve in the world, and along its southern border is a (relatively) small parcel of tribal land called Khutse. There are no fences between the two reserves, so it's basically one giant park, where the animals are free to roam, hunt, migrate, and hide from our cameras.

We had been advised that this is a very remote part of the world, but even we were surprised when we signed into the park, and learned that we were the first vehicle to enter that gate for 2 days! We'd booked 3 nights of camping adjacent to Khutse Pan, and we trundled along the sand road to our designation site, about 15km into the park.

Each of the 10 primitive camping sites near Khutse Pan had drop toilets, buckets showers, and a tree for shade. Unfortunately, marauding elephants had knocked most of the trees over, so our designated site turned out to be quite exposed, and half-filled by debris. Thankfully, one advantage of an empty park is the flexibility to go where you want, so we reassigned ourselves to the intact site #9, instead of our allocated site #1.

The next morning we reached out to the contractor who ran our campground and asked if we could stay in site #9 for our remaining nights. As (bad) luck would have it, the next "first car for 2 days" had booked exactly that site, so we relocated for our final night to the mostly-still-shady site #5. Clearly, these new arrivals had done their homework (or visited before). Until the trees grow back, or shelters are installed, I can't imagine camping at Khutse in Summer!

After 3 relaxing days, we got the distinct feeling that animals in this park were a lot less accustomed to cars than in parks like Chobe. The game viewing wasn't magnificent, but we did have some nice sightings of the reclusive Gemsbok (Oryx).

Sadly, this was our final camping stop, but it was almost Mel's birthday, and I had arranged one final destination that I hoped would be quite special.Read more