Makgadikgadi Pans, Botswana

"It was such a noble country, and so wide, stretching for mile upon mile to brown horizons at the very edge of Africa", thought Precious Ramotswe sitting at her desk at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Gaborone...  from Alexander McCall Smith's 'The Full Cupboard of Life'

We entered Botswana (from SA) on the far eastern corner, close to Zimbabwe, on a very hot and dry day.  The lack of aircon in Indlovu left us sweating wondering why we had left it until October, known to be the hottest month, to arrive in Botswana (Africa time has obviously taken hold of us).
The heat quickly introduced us to the Batswana way of life; when the sun starts to get high in the sky, the best (and sometimes only) thing to do is to find a tree and to sit in the shade until the worst of the heat passes. Driving long stretches of flat, straight highway it sometimes took us a while to find a tree that wasn't already occupied by cows, donkeys, goats or a Motswana also waiting out the heat.
We headed north east towards the Okavango Delta and promised to get back to Gaborone, where Andre has lived and worked, another time. After a night in the bush, disrupted only by cow bells, we reached Francistown the second largest city in Botswana (pop'n ~115 000).  Francistown is somewhat of an oasis in the middle of the desert, built around the first gold rush in southern Africa, the city is now a modern industrial hub and for us a good chance to grab a coffee, some summer bedding and a map before heading back into the bush!

Only thanks to our new map did we know when we were approaching the beginning of the Makgadikgadi Pans (one of the largest salt pans in the world), yet we knew nothing of how to access the pans or if the blue squiggly lines on our map meant that there'd be water in the pans (no guidebook here). As luck, fate or dirty hair would have it, we were tempted by a big advertisement of "hot showers" at Nata Bird Sanctuary and ended up exactly where we needed to be. We were the only campers at this community run campsite, so for 35 Pula (4 AUD or 38 ZAR) we had the shower block to ourselves, a quiet star-filled night and for an extra few Pula, access to drive through one of the larger of the pans from sunrise to sunset.

Spectacular! Of course there was no water, the rains haven't arrived yet, and hence it was a little too early for much birdwatching (tens of thousands of flamingos congregate here in season) but driving across Sowa Pan was another experience all together.