Lekhubu Island - One week before Namibia

It never ceases to amaze me, but my adventurous husband decided for us to jump in the bush car for a visit to Lekhubu Island on April 3, exactly one week before our trek to Namibia.  Wonderful! What a day, Botswana certainly has opened his appetite for great things.  Just a bit about Lekhubu Island, it is approximately 310km from Francistown, it is said to be very “spiritual” and this “island” was formed many years ago, it is in the Sowa Pans, which borders on the Makghadighadi Pans, not too far from Nata.

So off we go in the bush car waking up at 5:45am to leave at the latest 6:30am, we did it, packing the bush car for one night at Nata Lodge.  We drove to Nata, and then depended on the GPS for navigation after that, big mistake, big, big mistake.  The GPS took us whizzing past a sign that said Kubu Island (we both saw the sign, not too big), and then the GPS took us on a dirt road and that was it, all we got out of it was “recalculate”, nothing more, where have we heard that before, here we go again, Lennox gets flustered, Kate is cool (smile).  We turn around (wasting ½ hour or more), drive back to the sign that we both saw that said Kubu Island and turn left, we had shut off the GPS, but turn it on again just to be used as a compass, because my husband knew Lekhubu island should be due south and approximately 95km off the main highway.  Ok then, we trust our own instincts (smile again).  Lennox had read all instructions from home on the shell road map for Botswana how to get to Lekhubu Island and punched in all the coordinates on the GPS, well the instructions said that 11.5km we should see a group of Boabab trees, and then another 17.6 we see a pump house with a domed roof and then another 46 km a village called Thabatshukubu.  Well I must tell you that after the first 15-20km and we did not see the Boababs we realized that we had to depend on ourselves and our navigational skills, calculating our mileage, and hopefully we will see some sign that said Kubu Island pointing us in the right direction.  Kate is navigator (smile again).  We eventually see another sign about 30 km down the road; whew we were heading in the right direction.  We drove right pass someone’s cattle kraal, stopped to ask directions and he said, just continue on and we will see another sign.  We saw a sign that said Makghadighadi Adventure Camp, there was remnants of another sign, but nothing that said Lekhubu or Kubu, we trusted our compass and the distance we travelled.  We see another sign, and then the village, then we drive through Tswagong Veterinary fence.  We realize we are almost at Lekhubu island whoooo, we did, with Kate’s superb navigational skills, calculating the 95km from the main road, we have driven on strictly, dirt, sand, rocks, flat, bushveld roads for the past 4 hours.  By the way, we had enough water, even camping gas, camping light, food, diesel just in case, hubby thought of everything!!!  There was a camp site with a long drop by the “island”.  No water facilities anywhere, in any direction, bring your own water, a must.

 Lekhubu island, is not what we expect an island to be, but maybe it could have been, as these pans (nxai, makghadighadi and sowa pans) around Botswana, which are thousands of square kilometers were many, many years ago vast lakes.  The pan that we are now in is the Sowa Pans, a vast area, flat, white sand, no trees, for miles around (except on this “island”).  This island is formed by granite rocks, massive boababs trees  (mowana), African star chestnut trees (mokakata), acacia, and other trees we cannot identify.  Some view it as spiritual, and that the Basarwa (san) people believed that their ancestors were there, and that in the beginning God lived below the walls, and they still believe that today, but I think it gives a feeling of just being eerie because it is so isolated.  The Basarwa still visit the site to ask God for rain, and make offerings.  This island is 1km long and maybe just as wide and about 20meters high, just arising out of this huge salt pan.  You look for miles and there is nothing but flat, calcrete pans, lots of breeze whipping up the sand into dust devils. 

We drive around this island, as far as we can go, turn back.  We feel like driving off into the pans, but the books we read tells us that the vehicle may just sink (sounds like quicksand to me), so we are adventurous, but not that bad!!!  Starting this morning from 6:30am it took us 2 hours to drive to Nata and 4 hours to drive to Lekhubu Island (adding the slight diversion).  Was it worth it?  I think it was, it is well worth going there, the vastness of this pan, then this island arising out of nowhere. 

We stay at Nata Lodge, just because it is another 180km back to Francistown and we have to do our final preparations for Namibia.

Blessings from the Francis in Francistown

PS:  www.kubuisland.com/  bring plenty of extra water for people along the way and sweets for the children