No Stopping for Lions by Joanne Glynn Page B

with herds of tired guests with grace and charm. The cleaning ladies here are even more affable than we’ve come to expect. Elaborate headscarves, smooth mahogany faces, gossip, laughter and ah-ah-ahs. One sings as they make slow progress, and they stop often to catch their breath or to emphasise a point. Here they come, with their mops and coloured buckets in their hands, ready with a smile and a handful of our favourite teabags. I have to admire the pace at which they move around the lodge — if we walked that slowly we’d fall over.
    On the roads around Nata we see cowboys herding their cattle on horses. It all seems so romantic and old-fashioned; their horsemanship is wonderful to watch and the horses themselves are trotting along like prizewinners at the Royal Easter Show. The cattle are in good nick too although they look to be a rangy breed. The beef industry is the third-largest income earner for Botswana and its importance is evident in the network of veterinary fences that crisscrosses the country. The fences are intended to control the spread of cattle diseases, but their placement is becoming increasingly contentious and wildlife experts maintain that the fences prevent the free flow of game. They say that the fencing infrastructure is the main cause of the decline in the country’s wildlife, another big income earner, but the beef lobby seems to have the ear of the government and we read in the paper that new fences being erected across a currently cattle-free northern sector will cut off vital wildlife corridors. We hope this doesn’t happen in the next couple of weeks.
    The group of seven huge trees known as Baines’ Baobabs are in the Nxai Pan National Park abutting the main highway between Nata and Maun, and visitors to them are supposed to pay a park entrance fee. But the park gates are further in along the access track, way beyond the turn-off to the baobabs, so, like everyone else, we don’t pay and veer off the track to head straight for the baobabs. We’ve been told that rangers have been known to hide out, ready to nab transgressors, so we agree on an excuse should we be caught red-handed.
    The track changes from sand to salt and by the time we see the oasis of tall trees we’re driving across a salty crust that cracks and snaps under the weight of the Troopy. It becomes glaringly white and images shift and shimmer on the horizon, but the cluster of baobabs is obvious in this otherwise treeless landscape. Once there, we begin to wish that there was a ranger lurking about because a group of overlanders are happily carving messages and initials in hearts on the trunks of these majestic trees, right by signs banning precisely that.
    We call in at the infamous Club Baobab to check it out. On the edge of the Nxai saltpan and shaded only by some baobabs, it offers a variety of accommodation ranging from shabby-chic safari to funny little grass Bushmen’s huts containing little more than a couple of cots. The restrooms have bowlfuls of free condoms and there’s a funky bar playing groovy music. It’s fun and upbeat but has copped a lot of bad press recently for charging for the use of a glass when people order a drink. That might explain why the place is nearly empty but management is sticking to its guns. Maybe it wants to discourage the overlander crowd and encourage a more salubrious, free-spending clientele. Like us. But we decide that it’s not our cup of tea and push on, leaving the music blaring into the quiet of the desert.
    Lying on the other side of the road to Nxai Pan is the huge Makgadikgadi Pan, also a national park and home to a great wetlands bird sanctuary. It’s bordered to the north-west by the Boteti River and we’ve heard that game congregates here in winter. This time we do pay park fees and the ranger at the gate tells us of a cunning trick the lions have come up with. There is a village on the other side of the river and a