Safari Day 6 – Salt Pans

Up again at 5:30 and we left the to start on the penultimate leg of our journey. Our first stop was at Nxai Pan which was a bit of a drive on the main road. The vast expanse of the pan was impressive. We all got out to wander around and our chef took the car on ahead. We crossed a large expanse of nothingness and headed for an sandy island ahead full of trees. These trees called Baobabs which are large trees, but mainly formed of a fibre rather than a wood like structure. Here we put the table cloth on the front of the car and had our lunch.

We then drove onto the next pan, Ntwetwe. This was different because it was a salt pan. We stopped to take a look. The ground was more crunchy than the last pan that was more sand like. You could also see the salt crystals. Our guide showed us a lion footprint in the sand.  A bit further on, we pulled up onto a sand island and this is where our campsite was going to be for the night.

All the tents and toilet went up quickly (we’ve got good at it now) and we sat down for a chill out before dinner. It was so weird a being sat on an island surrounded by nothing. We were told that we might even be lucky enough to see animals crossing, but they often only do this at night when it’s cooler and even then don’t hang about.

The sun went down and the moon came out and it was another picturesque landscape. We climbed up on top of the tuck to get some sunset photos and some good panoramic shots. The scenery was somewhere between a sea and the surface of the moon. It shone so brightly in the moonlight that we didn’t need our torches.

After a dinner of barbecued beef, butternut squash, corn on the cob and traditional maize meal, followed by chocolate brownies, we got an early night because we wanted to get up early to see the stars once the moon had gone down.