Kalahari Desert, Botswana: Swept Up In The Romance Of Jack’s Camp
Brian and I are cruising to the border in a luxury van with our friends, Will, Marcellin, Charles, and Leigh. I have branded our merry band of travelers “The Santa Fe Six.” Together, we enter the country of Botswana. My emotions rick-o-shea from boundless excitement at the prospect of finally seeing my friend Ralph Bousfield’s Jack’s Camp to sadness over the inevitable ending of our adventure. This is the last wild place we will visit, and I’m already missing the animals.
There’s an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease in Botswana, and we are told that we won’t eat any meat at Jack’s Camp. To cross the border from Zambia to Botswana, we must step in an acid bath to ensure that we’re not carrying the disease into the country. I ask our transportation guide if humans can contract “foot-in-mouth” disease, and everyone laughs. “I’ve had that before, more times than I can count,” I say.
Jack’s Camp is legendary. It’s listed in the book 1,000 Places To See Before You Die. When the olive-green tents and extraordinarily tall palm trees come into view, we immediately understand the fanfare-it’s literally an oasis in the middle of the desert. After meeting the staff and receiving cool towels and refreshments, we are escorted into the main tent and its sumptuous living room. Immediately, we are transported back in time to the 1940s.
The scene is English colonial mixed with Bohemian chic.
We remove our shoes so we can walk on the exotic Persian and North African antique rugs that cover the hardwood floors. The tent’s walls envelop us in deep rose-color muslin. Sipping on champaign in-between bites of crustless sandwiches, we sink into the down-stuffed sofas covered in silk fabric adorned with peacocks. Our engaging guide points to the glass cabinets surrounding us filled with fossils, old bones, curious animals preserved in jars of formaldehyde, artifacts, ancient tribal tools and spears, books, and more. He promises a tour of the “museum” archieves while we are visiting.
As I step into our private tent, Hemingway must be about (or at least his ghost). The set design and staging are fascinating and flawless. Our tent is adorned with gorgeous fabrics and patterns reminiscent of a Moroccan casbah. There’s an overstuffed sofa, mahogany tea tables, and silver trays. Three enormous rooms are decorated in the same opulent, old-world style as the main tent. It’s terribly romantic. There’s a fainting couch in the bathroom, a king-size mahogany bed draped in mosquito netting in the bedroom and a daybed and champaign chilling the fridge in the living room. Outside, there’s an expansive deck that wraps around the tent. Porch swing beds, a plunge pool, and an outdoor shower add to the fantasy.
Brian and I head out to our private veranda to swing on the beds as the sun sets. We notice animals conjugating at the watering hole directly in front of us. Hundreds of Zebra and Wildebeest are literally running toward the hole to drink in the last bit of the day. Looking through our binoculars, we feel like we’re watching one of those nature movies about the Great Migration. We are surprised and mesmerized by this wild site, having not expected many animals (other than meerkats) to be in the Kalahari.
We meet back up with our group in the nomadic Persian tea tent, where high tea takes place daily. In the middle of the room is a low round table covered in cakes, pastries, sandwiches, tin canisters of tea, and pots of hot water. Excitedly, I tell our guide about our animal siting. He gives me a big grin and tells me they put in the watering holes to draw the animals to the property and sustain them. I ask him, “Do you say, “Zea-bra or Zee-bra?” He points outside to another watering hole and says, “These are Zee-bra. They have black and white stripes.” The Zea-bra have white and black stripes,” he says with a wink. “Seriously, did you know that the Zebra’s black stripes absorb heat, and the white stripes reflect the sun? It’s a fascinating animal.”
On our game drive, we encounter the beautiful big-eyed Spring Buck and otherworldly Ostrich.
Later, we join the camp’s other guests for sundowners by a roaring fire. After swapping stories about the day’s events, we meander into the mess tent, where we are seated at a vintage 36-seat dining table that served as an officer’s mess table in the 1820s. On the walls are framed Peter Beard pictures and black-and-white images of Ralph’s family. The room and its staff make us feel like honored guests and family members all at once.
Jacks Camp is the most beautiful, stylish, lavish place I’ve ever stayed. Here we are at a bush camp in the middle of the Kalahari, the cradle of mankind, and every design detail down to the soap dishes is curated and considered. So when I hear “Coo-Coo, good morning sweet lady, I have your coffee,” coming from a beautiful woman holding a tray of coffee and gluten-free biscuits, I feel like I’m dreaming.
We are off to see the meerkats, who are adorable and much smaller than the Lion King depiction. They are very social and love to climb onto high places, at times human shoulders or even heads, to see if predators are nearby. We have a great time watching them, and they also seem to like hanging out with us. As we pose with them for pictures, the sky gets brighter, and that feeling of the heat slowly rising makes the experience even more magical.
On the second day, young adventurers arrive at Jack’s Camp.
Chris and Taylor from New York are on their honeymoon, and Anton, Stephon, Veronica, and Max are work colleagues from England on a bonding retreat. All of us feel alive and full of wonder as we fly over the salt pans on quad bikes in East African headdresses. We stop at a campfire for cocktails and drink gin and tonics on a massive salt pan under a full moon.
They call it “The Great Nothing,” and the peace of the place is infectious. It’s also a bit chilly without plants and animals, so the staff places blankets over our laps and small canisters ablaze with little fires under our seats to keep us warm. They’ve also set up a tent that will serve as the bathroom for the evening. Inside is a 1940’s wooden water closet. Next to it is a bucket filled with sand from the salt pan and a shovel. “What’s this for?” asks Leigh. “You scope it on top of your pee,” I say. There’s a pause, and then she asks, “What am I, a cat?” We almost fall down laughing.
The days and nights at Jack’s Camp are not to be believed. We enjoy firm massages on our veranda in full view of the animals at the watering hole and gather in the bar at night to play pool while Christmas beetles fall from the tent’s ceiling. Brian and I have a romantic dinner for two in the Persian tea tent. When something brushes against Brian’s leg under the table, we assume it is a large spotted kitty cat. That is until Tanya, our server informs us that it’s a Jarret, a wild animal. “Don’t pet or feed it,” she says sternly.
I had studied the Bushman in middle school, and here the lessons have come to life. As we walk with the tribespeople, they share their once nomadic cultural skills with the visitors of Jack’s Camp. We discover that the Scorpion has eight eyes and legs, and my friend Will (a Scorpio) bravely takes it in his hand and examines its mysterious beauty. We also learn how to start a fire using Zebra dung and rubbing two sticks together.
What I’ve learned is that “The Great Nothing” is everything. I met the owner of Jack’s Camp, the namesake’s son, at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. Thirty years later, I am living inside his dream and making my own dreams come true. It is here that I can experience every aspect of myself: an animal lover, adventurer, food explorer, and travel writer. My entire being comes together in this place, and I can hardly wait to travel back here again.
