NATA BIRD SANCTUARY - JOURNAL

We are now super pros at setting up camp. We had set up camp under a young Baobab, only about 500 years young.

Showered and headed off to the pans.

• Lesser Flamingo
• African Spoonbill
• Blackwinged Stilt
• Blacksmith Plover
• Pied Crow
• Pied Wagtail
• Redbilled Teal

The soil round the pans is amazing, hard and cracked with crystallized salt in places. Slippery clay-type and wet nearer the edges of some of the areas. Hard, stony glass, polished and embedded in the sand (actually cemented).

Picked up a Maribou feather. Saw tracks of Cerval or Genet Cat.

The campsite has a picnic table, braai (barbeque) stand and fire pit. A fire is a great place to sit around and recount the experiences of the day. There are also hot showers and a washing up area. Home away from home.

It is being out here that one realises how little one really needs to be happy, yeah back home the material things are great, but this is when material things become irrelevant. They permit us, though, to share in God’s splendour.

SOWA PAN - WATER-FILLED PAN, OR OCEAN?

Drove to a hide over-looking Sowa Pan that seemed to go on forever, it really appeared to be an ocean.

• Giant Heron
• Grey Heron
• Pelican, Eastern White and Pinkbacked
• Common Sandpiper
• Grey Herron
• Lesser Flamingo
• Redknobbed Coot

The stairs to the hide are home to several Striped Skink a type of Lizard – one catching an Emperor Moth larger than himself – little lard belly.

Surrounding the pan are these beautiful glassy stones with hard compacted stone and spiky grass.

Headed back to camp for dinner and an early night.

Sowa Pan is on the North Eastern side of the Makgadigadi Pans and is 140km long and +-45km wide.

• Spoonbill
• Goliath Heron
• Grey Heron
• Black Khoran
• Black Goshawk
• Great Eastern White Pelican
• Pinkbacked Pelican
• White Breasted Great Cormorant
• Lesser Blackbacked Gull
• Redbilled Teal
• Pied Avocet

Our campsite is called “Sediba se Tona”, the meaning of which I have yet to discover.   

Went into Nata, our favourite expression here became, “there is nothing in Nata”. Stopped at Nata Lodge for dinner (we have subsequently found out this lodge has recently burnt down), just hope the bush babies are fine.

They fed off fruit platters, tiny with the largest eyes, really nervous and serious jumpers. The tragedy here is that in juxtaposition, the lodge was flooded a year or two prior.


RED VELD RAT

Woke early to pack up, only to find a Red Veld Rat, under the floor lining of the tent. His little foot was hurt, he made it to his home under the camp table, we left some food and water to see him through his healing process – I hope he made it!

On the road to Francistown +- 170km from Nata.


TROPIC OF CAPRICORN

Crossed the Tropic of Capricorn just after Dinokwe at 13h33 stopped at the “skew tree” and picked up 1.25 pula lying alongside the road – “May Good Fortune Smile on us”.

ON THE WAY HOME

Departed Botswana – our “soul country” – via Tlokweng Gate.

Arrived at Lichtenburg – a little hub of activity in the middle of almost no where. We had expected to find a place to sleep pretty easily. Ha! Ha! Four places and 1hr later, we found a pretty little B&B that had been missed by the travelling sales people.

Had a great dinner in one of the local restaurants then back to the B&B. Slept like a log!

We drove home via Bethlehem, a town in the Orange Free State, arriving to a rowdy welcome from my own four 4-legged ‘children’!

THE TRAVEL BUG HAD NOT BITTEN, BUT MAULED US!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!