Botswana luxury San Camp | Botswana luxury Makgadikgadi Camp

San Camp offers the Earth, stripped naked. And, such restraint holds its own charms.

Six pale khaki canvas tents twinned with a dramatic location, combine to create an oasis of civilisation in what can be the harshest of stark environments. The result: One of the most romantic camps in Africa!

And this place could not be more different from everywhere. The camp is the Stewart Granger Memorial Collection of 1940s safari tents, with no running water nor electricity but with comfortable beds, cotton sheets, paraffin lamps, wonderful food and personal service. Bathrooms are en-suite with bucket showers and flushing loos.

Jack's Camp and San Camp are unique in that they are the only permanent camps to offer a chance to explore and understand the Kalahari. Our concession adjoins the Makgadikgadi National Park with its endless vistas of rolling golden grasslands. Desert palms line the horizon. Through the tent flaps, the Makgadikgadi Pans run over the horizon like the mother of all Norfolk beaches.

A relic of one of the world's largest super-lakes, the Makgadikgadi dried up thousands of years ago as a result of the continued shifting of the earth's crust. When the lake was formed, some five to seven million years ago, its shores were the setting for the mysterious transition from ape to human.

Venturing far into the centre of the Makgadikgadi, on 4wd quad bikes, we are able to explore remote archaeological sites, periodically discovering never-before-documented fossil beds of extinct giant zebra and hippo. The fact that you can travel across the pans at great speed and still arrive nowhere only underlines the pan's immensity. There is nothing out here. Absolutely nothing. No outcrops, no features, no grass, no trees, no sound but the crunch of your boots in the crust.

The Kalahari desert is its own universe. It is the only place where guests are virtually guaranteed to see the rare and elusive brown hyaena and be able to walk through the Kalahari with a gang of habituated but, wild meerkats (suricates)!

The guides at San and its satellite, Jack's Camp, are an erudite breed. Often graduate students who combine research with guiding, they team up with a small group of Zu/'hoasi Bushmen to guide our guests on morning walks and game drives. Offering a window into the past, the Bushmen teach us how they have survived in this harshest of environments, using ancient knowledge of plants, animal behaviour and survival skills.

Game Viewing:
Dry season: Meerkats, Yellow Mongoose, Ground Squirrel, Brown Hyaena, Aardwolf, African Wildcat, Caracal, Spring Hare, Porcupine, Steenbok, Kudu, Jackal, Honey Badger, Genet, very occasional Lion.

Wet seaon game viewing:- Zebra, Wildebeast, very occasional Cheetah and all of the above, however, seen a lot less often due to the high grass.

Dry seaon Birding:- Large number of vultures (whitebacked and lappetfaced), Bateleurs, Eagles (Tawny, Martial, Black-breasted Snake), Lanner and Red-footed Falcons, Gaber and Pale Chanting Goshhawks, Francolin (Redbilled and Orange River), Ostrich, Secartarybird, Guineafowl, Black and Red-crested Korhaan, Kori Bustard, Crowned Plover, Doulble-banded Courser, Spotted Dikop, all species of Sandgrouse, Giant Eagle and Pearlspotted Owls, Lilac-breasted and Purple Rollers, large numbers of Hornbill species and a huge number of LBJs, Larks, Cisticolas and Pipits.

Wet Season Birding:- All of the above plus a massive number of migrant waders, Sandpipers, Ruffs, Greenshank, Stilts, Pratincoles, Wattled Crane, Storks, Egrets, Flamingos (Lesser and Greater), Spoonbill, Terns, Teals, Ibis, Montagu's and Palid Harriers, Brown Snake, Steppe and Wahlberg's Eagles, Lesser and Rock Kestrel, Red-footed Falcon, Swallows, Swifts and Martins.

The Makgadikgadi pans consist of two major basins, relics of a massive lake and swampland that existed over much of northern Botswana between about 2 million and 40,000 years ago. On the edge of the western basin, also known as the Ntetwe Pan are Jack's and San camps.

Jack's is situated on an isolated island filled with tall fan palms and commiphora trees. Named for the legendary Jack Bousefield, who was a pioneer of these remote wastes, Jack's Camp remains one of the most intriguing and mysterious places in the Kalahari or Kgalagadi. Owned and designed by Ralph Bousefield and Catherine Raphaely, Jack's and nearby San Camp offer guests access to a completely unique area.

During the summer months (November to April) the focus is on the thousands of zebra which have migrated from the Boteti River and Makgadikgadi Pans National Park immediately to the west. During these same months, the pans fill with water and attract numerous species of birds from flamingos to wattled cranes and pelicans. During the dry, or winter months, the migrations move westwards to the water available in the Boteti River but many desert-adapted creatures remain resident.

This is the domain of the brown hyaena, a shy and elusive creature, as well as suricates, aardvarks and small bustard species. Ralph Bousefield and his guides have made many important finds in the field of palaeontology, with stone implements and other evidence of Stone Age dwellers.

This is an extremely fragile environment filled with fascination and interest. The management and guides have an approach of maximum care for the environment, and this is a destination for the true lover of remote experiences.

Botswana Luxury Safari at San camp.