Jacks Camp

While on a trapping expedition in the Makgadikgadi Pans during the 60s, Jack Bousfield stumbled upon a site that so captured his imagination that he set up camp under an acacia tree with the unshakeable expectation that others would feel the same. The choice of such a striking locale owed much to his original taste for the savage beauty of a forgotten Africa, where he lived until his tragic death in an aircraft accident in 1992.

As homage to the vision of his father, his son, Ralph, with his partner Catherine established Jack's Camp which was refurbished at the beginning of 2003, using a traditional East African 1940s safari style.

The camp's hub, a romantic canvas pavilion of low spires and finials, with a fluttering valance beneath its eaves, could have come straight from a mediaeval jousting tourney, were it not a deciduous green. Three poles support the main chamber where everyone meets for lavish and elegant meals at a long communal dining table.

Ten green roomy and stylish canvas tents with en-suite bathrooms and indoor and outdoor showers (for those who want to feel the Kalahari breeze on their skin) have been fashioned in classical style and are set into a palm grove creating an oasis of civilisation in what can be the harshest of stark environments. Persian rugs underfoot and cool cotton sheets form a striking contrast with the rugged wilderness viewed from the comfort of one's own veranda

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 man.

Venturing far into the centre of the Makgadikgadi, on 4-wheel-drive 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.

A safari to Jack's Camp is also a complete desert experience, focusing on species unique to the area such as aardvark, gemsbok and springbok. It is the only place where guests are virtually guaranteed to see the rare and elusive brown hyaena and are able to walk through the Kalahari with a gang of habituated, yet wild meerkats (suricates)!

During the wet season the landscape transforms. Clouds of flamingo and other migratory birds descend from the heavens to decorate the watery grasslands. Herds of zebra and wildebeest materialise, drawn by the lush grass, and for several months, the desert is teeming with game and predators.