The Great Outdoors

One of the things that I’ve enjoyed most about being in Maun has been the amount of time I’ve been able to spend outdoors. And not just outdoors anywhere, but in some of the most beautiful, wildlife-rich, well-preserved areas of wilderness left on this world. Granted, most of my experiences of those areas are quick in-and-out ones, with the rest of it being from the air above, but it’s still an amazing privilege. The exception to this is my stays at Jack’s Camp. Since we do a lot of flights for Jack’s Camp, it often makes sense to stay overnight when the schedule is busy rather than having an empty evening leg to Maun and another one back in the morning. So I’ve spent, on average, at least one night a week there over the last two months. Jack’s Camp is in the center of the country on the edge of the Makgadigkadi Salt Pans, which are the massive remains of what was once a huge inland lake (it’s hard to believe that such a dry area once contained so much water). This area is part of a larger area known as the Kalahari, which, while not a desert by all definitions of desert, is a very arid area and has all the appearance of a desert. The nearest village is a two-hour drive on rough 4x4 roads, and after that you’ve got to drive another few hours on tar roads to get to a village with anything other than very basic supplies. I’ve very much enjoyed my stays at Jack’s for the opportunity to get outdoors and spend some time in the bush. Some of the highlights:

• Massive herds of zebra, congregating around some of the few remaining water holes
• Seeing a habituated meerkat colony up close
• Amazing night skies that you can hardly find anywhere in the states anymore
• Encounters with the diminutive gennet cats that run through the camp at night
• Reading through some of the guide training materials and satisfying my dork biology self
• Going for a morning run around the pan at the edge of camp
• The evening sun that brings out beautiful, vibrant colors in the grasslands around the camp
• Experiencing two nights in the guest side of camp (normally a $1,000/night experience, scot-free)
  

Even my experience in the village of Maun is much more out-of-doors than my life in Gaborone was. A two-minute walk from my front door brings me to the banks of the river that flows through Maun (well, right now it’s doing a lot more sitting than flowing, but it’s soon going to be swelled by the flood waters arriving in their annual cycle from the rains that fell earlier in the year in Angola). I’ve been trying to go for a short run most mornings, and it’s wonderful to be able to do that on a path along the river rather than on the city streets of Gabs.