Flying Adventure: Southern Africa – Day 13 (FBSV – FBMN – FBTauPan):
We are flying to a different region of Botswana today. Over the Okavango Delta to Tau Pan in the Central Kalahari. It will be our last two days on safari and strolling around the remote African bush.
Linyanti to Tau Pan
The day starts with an early morning game drive from Linyanti down to Savuti, where our aircraft is parked.
As we are getting to the airstrip, we are relieved to see that our aircraft is still in tact and no hyena or other rubber loving animal has been chewing up our tires. Proper procedure when parking on an unfenced bushstrip, is to place some thorny branches around the tires. Despite his clear awareness of this procedure, it slipped his mind when parking and tying down the aircraft two days earlier. He attributes this to that cold St. Louis, Chris the bushguide, was holding in his hand on arrival. It does by no means vindicate the omission, but is an obvious explanation.
After take-off from Savuti we fly over the fascinating Okavango Delta. The Okavango River starts about 1600 km further up in Angola and has no outlet into the sea. Instead it empties into the Kalahari desert and creates this maze of waterways and swamp, called the Okavango Delta. It is a really fascinating and impressive landscape, and most certainly one of the most spectacular natural phenomena in Southern Africa.
Most part of the delta is only accessible by air. Hence it is a busy airspace with lot’s of bushplanes flying around and broadcasting on the radio. We land for a technical stop at Maun airport before flying down into the Kalahari. Maun is probably one of the busiest, if not the busiest bush flying airport. There is lot’s of traffic coming in and out, and bushplanes are lined up across the aprons. We’re in good company up here.
From Maun we fly southwards into the Central Kalahari. It’s the complete opposite of the Okavango Delta, not only that it is dry, the radio also goes completely silent. There is no airtraffic out here, nor on the ground for that matter, as there aren’t any roads besides a few sandy tracks.
We land at the Tau Pan airstrip, where our guide and tracker are already waiting for us. Our camp for the next two nights, is just a 15 min drive away. We are staying at the Kwando Tau Pan Camp, which is situated on an ancient sand dune overlooking Tau (Lion in the local language) Pan. The views over the Kalahari are stunning and the camp’s setup is fabulous.
We are well in time, settle in and relax before heading out on a sundowner game drive.
Central Kalahari National Park
The Kalahari is actually not a desert in the true sense. It is a semi-arid Savannah. There are no waterways, but grass and shrub grow nevertheless.
The area is abundant with Gemsbok (or Oryx) and other species which can live in this harsh environment. They get their water from the grass they eat and dew formation on plant leaves in the mornings. He has not studied the actual moisture content per 100 g of grass, but ponders, that you would have to lick and eat a hell of a lot of leaves and grass to get 1 liter of water into the system. Might be a pretty busy day, and you may end up perspiring more moisture in the process of finding water than you can reasonably possibly find. Doesn’t sound sustainable, but then, a gemsbok probably doesn’t need 1 liter of water per day to survive. Otherwise we’d probably not meet them here.
Day 14 is also set aside to explore the Central Kalahari. The highlight is certainly the Cheetah lying in the shade with his freshly hunted impala meat. Just a pity we didn’t see the actual hunt.
In the evening of our last day a massive weather front with heavy winds and rains is passing over the area. It is this weather front, which will prevent us from getting back to Pretoria tomorrow. But for now, we don’t know that yet and take it easy.
