Makgadikgadi · Botswana
Jack's Camp
A 1940s-style expedition camp on the edge of the Makgadikgadi salt pans
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Jack's Camp faces the Makgadikgadi, a vast salt pan system that was once a lake larger than Switzerland. The camp descends from the expedition base of Jack Bousfield and was rebuilt in its original 1940s idiom: tall green canvas tents, Persian rugs, campaign furniture, brass and a museum tent of natural history specimens.
There are ten tents, each with an indoor and outdoor shower and a plunge pool, arranged around a palm grove that is the only shade for miles. The scale of the emptiness beyond is the point.
Activities are unlike those anywhere else in Botswana. Guests quad bike out onto the pan crust and sleep under the stars, walk with a habituated meerkat colony, and track with Zu/'hoasi Bushmen guides who explain desert plants and hunting technique. In the green season, zebra and wildebeest migrate onto the grasslands in large numbers.
At a glance
What to expect
- Private plunge pools
- Quad biking on the salt pans
- Meerkat habituation walks
- Bushman-guided desert walks
- Natural history museum tent
- Sleep-outs on the pan
- Spa treatments
- All meals and drinks
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