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Jack's Camp
A 1940s fantasy pitched among palm trees on the edge of the largest salt pans on earth, with meerkats, Bushman guides and a tented swimming pool.
Jack's is one of the most distinctive places to stay in Africa, never mind Botswana. It began in the 1970s as a pioneering and genuinely rustic camp, and today recreates the style of a vintage 1940s safari camp: muslin-draped walls hung with old maps and photographs, Persian rugs, four-poster beds, an eccentric library and a small museum.
The setting is the Makgadikgadi, the largest salt pans in the world, and for somewhere that looks so inhospitable it holds a surprising amount. Aardvark, gemsbok, springbok, Kalahari lion, brown hyena, and the meerkats, which are habituated enough that you can sit among them.
Walks go out with San Bushman trackers, and they are the reason many people come. Not a cultural performance but a working demonstration of how people and this landscape depend on each other. The camp can also arrange a trip to Chapman's Baobab, once the oldest tree in Africa, though it fell in 2016.
The seasons here work the opposite way round to most of Botswana. In the wet season, December to March or April, tens of thousands of zebra and wildebeest are drawn onto the pans as the rains bring fresh grazing, and the predators follow. Flamingos and other migratory birds arrive too. If you want drama, come in the green season.
The tents are large canvas structures among soaring palms, each with an en suite bathroom with indoor and outdoor showers and a covered veranda over the wilderness. The communal areas are lavishly done, meals are served at a long table where the guides and managers eat with the guests, and there is a covered swimming pool that stays cool through the day.
Ten large canvas tents among the palms, an eclectic mix of antique furnishings, four-poster beds, muslin walls and exotic rugs. En suite with indoor and outdoor showers, and a private covered veranda.
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