Un-Deceived

Our Route to Deception Valley, more or less...

Our journey to the Southern Africa Bush began in earnest on the morning of May 20th.  Our route took us north west across the South African border, into Botswana and then across the Kalahari Desert.  You may be familiar with the residents of this part of the world from the movie The Gods Must be Crazy. The Bushmen used to be a nomadic people, which is no longer the case  due mostly to the fact that Botswana is one of the richest countries in the world.  It has diamonds...lots of them.  These riches enabled the government to provide the Bushmen with permanent homes, medical care, and education.

The Central Kalahari is a vast and amazing place.  The sand in this desert is ultra-fine, generating a dust that is unbelievable.  It gets in everything, making it a challenge to keep clothes, hair, cameras, anything really, clean.  The desert itself is scattered with thousands of pans, which create impressive, and dangerous mirages, as they are easily mistaken for lakes.  The lodge that we were ultimately headed for was near a large pan called Deception.  You can probably guess why it has its name.

Salt pan - Kalahari, Botswana

Gabarone approach, "None-Shall-Pass Area" to the right

Before we could land in Deception though, we needed to clear immigration and customs into Botswana, which we did at the Sir Seretse Khama International Airport, making sure to avoid the restricted areas, which I suspect might have been the President's residence.

Tarmac, Gabarone International Airport

Glenn and Carl gave us specific instructions, that whenever we landed in an airport with a fuel bowzer (the small aircraft equivalent of a gas station) we fuel up before doing ANYTHING else.  So, we headed for the bowzer and awaited instruction.

What a Bowzer!

Don't use slang when trying to pay in a foreign country!

The fueling man was very nice and helpful. Although, he was not used to our slang and nearly fell to his knees when, after putting $300 of fuel in our plane, Catherine asked him if she could give him "plastic" in payment. Realizing our mistake, we carefully explained that we meant to pay by credit card, kindly helped him to breathe a bit, and signed the slip.  After gaining back his breath he then instructed us where to go for immigration into Botswana (which required some paperwork to document bringing in an airplane) and where to go to pay the landing fees.  He pointed us toward the terminal building and said walk over there and into the building.  We had no escort, and apparently, we didn't need one.  It's hard to imagine that we would be allowed to meander across any airport tarmac in the western world like this, but we weren't in Kansas now, were we?   So, we made our way down the tarmac, past the jet, through immigration and customs, across the arrivals hall into the departure area, and through security (again setting off most of the security sensors....damn swiss army knife...with nothing but a blink from the security folks...YAY for being a private flight!).  Remarkably, once we explained  that our pilot was a woman, (and provided the appropriate proof by way of a license) we had absolutely no issues with managing all of this. We were, however, required to file a flight plan, something that Glenn failed to tell us during the de-briefing. This resulted in  a bit of a false start as we did we were taxi-ing down the runway without said plan when we received a request from the tower for our flight plan number.  Upon learning that we didn't have one she (most of the air traffic controllers in Africa turned out to be women...who knew?!) instructed us to turn around and get ourselves a formal plan, which we did.  I learned that all flight plans, no matter where in the world they are filed are done so on exactly the same time zone - Greenwich Mean Time, or Zulu time.  Catherine's watch is permanently set to that time, which occaissionally caused confusion about what time it really was. But after a while that didn't matter so much and we were always good for our flight plans and control tower reports, which really did and should take priority.

The benefit of this unplanned 45 minute dealy was that we learned how to say thank you in Swana - Ke Ala Boqa.  This alone was worth the backtracking.

The Gabarone airport experience was good learning, and preparation.  It turned out to be  fairly typical of most of our future airport experiences. On average, by the time we were done with fueling and the various paperwork requirements, we could count on spending about two hours from wheels down to wheels up in every airport we visited. I guess it was no different than being on a commercial flight, just a lot more fun, and no one had to sit in the middle seat!

Back underway, with only a minor delay, we headed north across the central Kalahari toward Deception Valley.

Gabarone Flight Operations - note the clock is on Zulu time.

After about 30 minutes of flying we finally realized how "out there" we were.  The pictures don't do the vast space justice.  There is quite literally nothing but bush, some livestock and ranches and a lot of dust for miles.  There was the occasional airstrip, but without apparent civilization anywhere nearby, making it not particularly appealing to consider landing.  That said, we were prepared with emergency food and water, so we would have been fine, should it come to that.

Where, exactly, does one go, once you land here????

Our GPS was also not the best.  The maps were not great and the cigarette lighter power source was not very reliable.  We had paper charts though and the GPS gave us lat/long, so we knew where we were, more or less, which we confirmed using physical landmarks.  Still, it did feel like a guessing game.  There really weren't that many landmarks to give us that warm happy feeling that we were on the right track.  That is, until we reached the Deception Pan, which looks a lot like a large airfield from the air, but from Glenn's instruction we knew that it was the last major landmark in the Kalahari before the lodge's actual airfield.

Deception Pan

 The folks at the lodge told us later that the pan actually has been confused for their airstrip.   Deception Valley Lodge is on the northern edge of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and until recently they there were only able to communicate with  the outside world using a radio, which operated only once per day.  They were expecting a group of British tourists from Maun (a large town north of the lodge), where they  a charter plane.  Apparently the pilot either did not have a lot of experience with the Kalahari or he didn't have a lot of smarts.  Either way, he used his GPS in an incorrect manner, dialing in Deception.  The GPS, doing its job, guided him to the Deception Pan and he landed there, leaving his clients standing, in the middle of a game reserve.  The lodge proprietors were only about 15 minutes north by plane, and were waiting for their customers at their airstrip.  They watched the plane fly south, and then a few minutes later, back north, but it never landed.  And, without the means to communicate, there was nothing they could do to find out what happened and where their customers were. It wasn't until much later that they learned their clients spent the night in the bush.  Fortunately, a South African family found them and helped them camp over an uncomfortable and cold night.  The pilot realized his mistake the next day, and went back to retrieve a very unhappy lot.  At that point the Brits had about enough of Africa and flew straight home, never visiting the lodge.  That was a pity for them, as Deception Valley Lodge was one of my very favorite stops on the trip.

Fifteen minutes later, exactly on schedule we saw the lodge airstrip, which was marked so that there was no confusion.  Happily, all of the remote strips we landed in, used this convention.  No confusion, if you use your noggin!

Glenn instructed us not to land on this strip unless the lodge's car was visible and not to get out of the plane until cleared to do so by the guide.  This was lion country and he didn't want us in the food chain.

We followed that instruction, landed safely and Gerad, the proprietor, was there to greet us and helped us in securing the plane, which required tying it down, tent fashion, using ropes and tent stakes.

Once we got sorted and into the land rover, we realized that we were in a very special place.  Below is the view from the lodge common area, looking out onto the property.  Nope, definitely not Kansas!

From the deck at Deception Valley Lodge