Expeditions / Trips Makgadikgadi Pans Diary / Updates Makgadikgadi Pans: Day 4
Thursday, 19 August 2010 00:00 Last Updated on Monday, 23 August 2010 16:39
Distance Walked: 35km
In the morning I walked through massive grass fields as the bush disappeared and turned into the Ntwetwe pan. I met some villagers on horses and we chatted for a while. All the people in Botswana are really friendly. They asked me why I was walking around and if someone was paying me to do it. I told them it was only for fun and no one was paying me. They were clearly confused with this but I was asked the same question yesterday by the guy that had to open a gate for me in the vet fence. He was also confused that no one was paying me. The two villagers on horses told confirmed that I would see no dangerous animals on the pan and I can relax. I knew I could trust them because they lived on the other side of Ntwetwe pan closer to the national park.
Once on Ntwetwe pan I was happy to find that the pan surface was very smooth and hard and I made some good distance. Then the pan gradually became wetter and stickier until I saw this massive black shade in front of me. I know that the pan there was going to be very wet but I didn’t want to change my course because I was far from the side of the pan and if I turned to the center of the pan it might be a long distance before the pan became dry again and heading toward the side of the pan meant that I would have to go very close to the side before it became any drier. I was making such good progress and was annoyed with the situation that I decided to just walk straight through this sticky business and that nothing was going to make me change my route.
I quickly changed my mind after about 50 meters into the dark grey muck when I was almost ankle deep in clay and slush. I was breathing very hard and knew that there was no way of walking straight any more. I was going to have to change my route. It took me a long some time just to turn my trailer around and get back onto normal ground again. I decided on walking back to the edge of the pan then head north again. When it was almost time to set up camp I smelt something stank of dead fish. Then in front of me appeared a lake. I was on the edge of a lake and if I carried on straight I might have ended up walking straight into it. I set up camp on the edge of the lake and watched the sun set which was very beautiful.
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