North-East

Today we left camp Xakanaxa and flew to Maun then drove to Nata Lodge. Dennis our safari guide drove us to the small airstrip. We were very sorry to say goodbye to him. He was an exceptional guide who adapted to our Aussie humor with ease. In face all the staff at Xakanaxa were exceptional - I would rate it as some of the best service I have ever come across anywhere. Nothing was too much bother and they were exceptionally friendly and hospitable.
The flight took about 20 minutes in a different Cessna Caravan but with the same pilot. This reassured the nervous flyers amongst us as they figured he'd successfully got us through one flight already.
We landed at Maun and Stephan went and got the Toyota Commuter out of the car park and we resumed our journey in it. We hit the very pot holed road and headed off. Some pot holes are so big it means we needed to slow to a crawl. Stephan said he came across a pot hole so big one day there was a pig bathing in it. We also saw elephants beside the road and Flamingos on a lake. We also saw some magnificent specimens of Boabab trees. They can live thousands of years and the couple we saw were quite old. Our previous Lodge had a very good one with fruit hanging off it.
We arrived at Nata Lodge about 2pm.
Nata Lodge is on the Makgadikgadi Pans, which are the biggest collection of salt pans in the world, covering 37,000 square km's. We visited the Nata bird sanctuary, a short drive away, with Joy a guide from the Lodge. Poor Joy, he was unfortunately no Dennis and didn't get our (Kevin's) jokes. Nevertheless, he was knowledgeable enough. On our way into the sanctuary we saw an aardwolf. Joy got very excited about this with lots of "wows" - so I gather this sighting was unusual. An aardwolf looks very similar to a fox. We also saw plenty of wildebeests. The wildebeests like the area because they have no natural predators but they do have a problem with the concentration of salt in the water and when it become concentrated beyond a certain point they die. Kevin wondered what would be worse; death by lion or death by salt.
There were plenty of birds. One I recall was the Double Banded Courser. It was a cute little thing with with big round eyes (see pic). We also saw a hare and a hyena. We stopped at the edge of the Sua Pan which was full of water. It fills from the Nata River and generally only has water in it for a couple of years and then the water all evaporates and it is dry for a couple of years. It was 23km across and 40 km long and about a meter deep. It is the breeding ground for many flamingo but we didn't see any here as there was too much water at the moment.
The restaurant service at Nata has provided us with lots of entertainment. We have nicknamed one waitress in particular the 'soup nazi' a la Seinfeld. She militantly read out the menu and we had to signal when we were electing to have that dish. I chose ox tail stew and all I can say is the ox must have had a very thin wispy tail with not much meat on it. I could really only find bones and a bit of gravy and abandoned it after conducting an extensive search through it. When the soup nazi came by she interrogated me with a "didn't you like it?!" I was way too intimidated to say anything negative...I may not have made it out of there alive! Instead I offered a lame excuse about having already eaten enough. At breakfast this morning we had another soup nazi who berated Tony for getting a butter dish from another table - "No! This butter is dirty! I must get you a fresh one." They could really learn a few things from Camp Xakanaxa. Nevertheless, they amused us.Read more