Ocean in the Desert

The Makgadikadi Pans are the largest salt pans in the world, located in the Kalahari Desert near the centre of Botswana. For Seretse Khama Day, I ventured out to the Pans for my first time and headed to Kubu (Hippo) Island which had a reputation for being a magical place.

Kubu Island is situated on the western side of Sua Pan, the eastern partition of the Makgadikadi,3-3.5 hours from the main road into the bush. Typically, its only accessible to

serious 4x4 vehicles which are advised to travel in a party in case one gets stuck in sand or mud. It’s always advised to carry a GPS. After a long, bumpy, dusty, ride through the bush to what looked like the middle of nowhere (which was confirmed to be the middle of nowhere), we ended up at Kubu Island – a granite island, in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

We stayed the night on kubu island which has no amenities. In the middle of Botswana winter, the Kalahari Desert gets bitterly cold. Kubu Island is about 1km long and contains mostly rock

formations of different colors of granite, black, green, and red. It overlooks the flat Makgadikadi Pans, which from Kubu, stretch as far as the eye can see like a vast ocean of salt. What’s amazing, are thousand year old baobabs inhabit Kubu and grow directly out of the rock. Most of the tracks seen are from quad bikes and people doing donuts in their cars. But, while walking around the salt flats, I came across some leopard tracks going out into the distance. During some seasons, the pans have water, which also attract all sorts of wildlife that one would think should never be in such a plantless and lifeless place. The further I walked into the pan, the squishier the ground became, uncovering that there was still some moisture left in the clay.

The next day, after the 3 hour drive out of kubu, we headed to the Nata Sanctuary, located on the north east side of Sua Pan which was still covered in water. After driving through flat plains of tall grass with some wild ostriches, the land opens up to the salt flats which look like a beach opening up into a large ocean. The area looks like a vast ocean, but in reality, its quite the opposite – its vast desert, which happens to have retained rain water.

What water stretches beyond the horizon and is dotted with small white dots. The pans on the

eastern side, are a seasonal home for thousands of wild flamingos who come to fish. The wild flamingos are much cooler than those you see at the zoo – white with bright pink legs, pink and black stripes on the inside of their wings and on their beaks. I decided that the flamingos at the

zoo stand on one leg out of boredom because the wild flamingos constantly fished and actually do a dance with their legs in a circle around their heads. At no point, where they actually standing still on one leg. The colonies of flamingo stretched out to the horizon and completely covered the pans.

The pans are a very cool weekend getaway trip, though not so easy to access, as one would wish. Despite the long bumpy ride however, kubu island lived up to the expectation.