San Camp

San Camp sits serenely in a reef of palm at the edge of the world. You can see the curve of the earth here. Turn 360 degrees and nothing crosses the eye but the bowl of the sky. It is the nothing-ness that attracts. This is God's own minimalism.

A safari to San Camp is a complete desert experience focusing on species unique to the area such as aardvark, gemsbuck and springbuck. San Camp offers the Earth, stripped naked and such restraint holds its own charms. 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 four-poster beds, mosquito net canopies, cambric sheets, bucket showers, paraffin lamps and butlers. Six pale khaki canvas tents twinned with a dramatic location, combine to create an oasis of civilization in what can be the harshest of stark environments.

San Camp is one of the only two permanent camps to offer a chance at exploring and understanding the Kalahari Desert, the other being Uncharted Africa Safari Co.'s Jack's Camp. The 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 man.

Venturing far into the centre of the Makgadikgadi on 4wd quad bikes, you 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 pans 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!

The Guides at San 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 Guests on morning walks and game drives. Offering a window into the past, the Bushmen will teach you how they have survived in this harshest of environments, using ancient knowledge of plants, animal behaviour and survival skills. The cunning tricks and survival struggles of the feisty inhabitants of the Makgadikgadi are not certainly without drama and here the emphasis is on observing the intricacies of a truly unique ecosystem to which Uncharted Africa Safari Co. has added a few stylish adaptations of its own. The ancient lake has run dry but, the imagination runs wild.