Trip to Planet Baobab
Brian and I celebrated the four-day President’s Day holiday weekend by traveling north to Planet Baobab with a group of 10 other PCVs. A trip we have been planning and looking forward too since before mid-service training. Planet Baobab is a lodge about 100 kilometers past Nata on the Nata-Maun road where the big allure is doing an overnight rip out onto the Ntwetwe Pan. Ntwetwe Pan together with the Sowa (Sua) and Nxai Pans make up the Makgadikgadi Pans.
Now most of you have probably never heard of a “pan.” But, if I called them the Ntwetwe or Makgaikgadi Salt Flats I’m sure that our friends and family from Utah would know what I am talking about because of the Bonneville Salt Flats. The Makgadikgadi Pans are the largest saltpan complex in the world covering 12,000 sq kilometers. Similar to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, the Makgadikgadi Pans are the remnants of a “super lake” that dried up about 10,000 years ago. The remains create the flattest, most desolate on earth you can imagine. During the rainy season the pans fill up with water but it evaporates very quickly once the rains stop coming. There is absolutely nothing for miles and miles and you can literally see the curvature of the earth.
As I mentioned there were 10 other PCVs on the trip, so altogether we made up exactly half of the people left in our training group (24). It was the perfect size group. What was especially fun about the group was that a few people who haven’t normally come out on big group trips made it so it was really fun to see them. We camped at Planet Baobab Saturday night, did the overnight trip on the pans Sunday night, camped again at the lodge on Monday and then left Tuesday morning.
The overnight trip was obviously the highlight of the weekend. The pans were really amazing. Our guide also took us to see Chapman’s Baobab. It’s 25 km around and between 3,000-5,000 years old. In between the pans and Chapman’s Baobab we saw several huge herds of zebras, ostriches and stopped to see the Meerkat that the camp is habituating to be around humans.
Pictures from top left going clockwise: First is a view of the sunset on the pans. Watching the sunset, then moonrise and sunrise were a highlight of the overnight trip. The next picture to the right is the Planet Baobab sign on the main road, across the street is a huge statue of an aardvark (that’s me next to it on the next picture to the right.) The aardvark obviously makes a great marker, all you have to do is tell whoever is driving to stop at the huge statue of that funny animal and everyone knows where you’re talking about. The picture on the far top right is some of the other PCVs on our trip (Jen Overley, Jeff Blagg, Suzie Hipp, Scott Nguy and Nicole Hudson) during the trip out onto the pans.
The next big picture down is Chapman’s Baobab. Obviously this picture was taken from a distance so as to fit it all in on the screen. The three picture cluster on the bottom right are of a Meerkat, ostriches and a zebra herd. The middle picture on the bottom is our whole group at Chapman’s Baobab. Then to the left of that is Brian and I out on the pans. Notice in the background the absolute nothingness. We used the funny turbans wrapped on our heads to protect our mouth from the dust, which was plentiful.
The picture on the middle left is Ashlee, Brian and Scott cooking Chili Russians (spicy hotdogs) over the fire at camp. Brian and Scott are big fans of the Chili Russians when we go camping, eating two or three at a time, sometimes with melted cheese and sometimes even for breakfast. Everyone else thinks they’re gross. Then finally the picture in the middle is Brian asleep out on the pans. The camp gave us these great bed rolls in a big canvas bag. Inside was a small mattress, two pillows, sheets, a wool blanket and a duvet. If you were still cold you could even zip up the canvas bag over yourself to warm up even more.
With Planet Baobab checked off our list we have plenty of traveling we still want to do. There’s the trip to Namibia, which we will probably do in October. Then Swaziland and Mozambique together just after the New Year. Inside Botswana we still want to hit Khutse Game Reserve, Khama Rhino Sanctuary, maybe go to the Delta one more time, Tsodilo Hills, and maybe even the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.
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