Waves crash against cliffs while hippos and crocodiles are dotted up and down the lush shoreline. If I'd been alive 9 000 years ago, this is the scene that might have met me at Mosu, at the southern end of today's bone-dry Makgadikgadi Pans. Back then, a gigantic lake – three times the size of Lake Victoria, six times bigger than Lesotho! – would have stretched towards the north, where today only dust devils race across the void.
Most tourists use the lodges in and around the town of Nata to stop overnight en route to Botswana's more famous wildlife attractions in the north, like Chobe National Park. But Nata, at the northern edge of Sowa Pan (the name for the eastern half of the Makgadikgadi Pans, also spelled Sua sometimes) is your gateway to a unique wilderness of its own.
A good introduction to Makgadikgadi is a visit to the Nata Bird Sanctuary. In late summer, if regional rains have been good, Sowa Pan will have water and will lure flocks of flamingos, pelicans and other waterbirds. At other times of the year, you'll probably see springbok, ostrich and blue wildebeest in the grassland on the edge of the pans.
If you take time to explore other places around the pans, you'll also see traditional villages, escarpments, palm forests, freshwater springs, weird vegetation and ancient ruins from a bygone age…
KUBU
An island in a sea of salt
Located 45 km north-east of the village of Mmatshumo, Kubu Island (only reachable by 4x4) anchors the south-west corner of Sowa Pan, where it keeps watch over a shimmering sea of salt.
