Camp Kalahari

4 of the Meru-style canvas tents are furnished with comfortable four-poster double beds, and 6 feature two twin beds, all of which are adorned with soft, breathable linen sheets and plush pillows. The cosy rooms are decorated with homely rugs and simple furnishings such as a writing desk and chest of drawers, meaning you can feel at home while surrounded by a unique and stunning landscape.

The front of the tent opens out onto your private verandah, where you can relax in a deck chair, watching the passing herds of elephants and zebra. The tent’s roll-up windows provide guests with 270-degree views and give the room a light and open atmosphere. Each tent features an en-suite bathroom with hot and cold running water, a flush loo and a refreshing shower.

Camp Kalahari has 2 family tents, which both consist of 2 bedrooms, joined by a shared bathroom. The master bedroom features a large king-size bed with soft and breathable linen sheets, and the second bedroom consists of two single beds and an indoor seating area.

As with the other Meru-style tents, the rooms feature pleasant rugs and simple furnishings, so guests can feel comfortable and at home. Both bedrooms look out onto individual verandahs where you can gaze upon the stunning wildlife and landscape and look out for peeping meerkats and passing herds. The family tents also include roll-up windows that provide 270-degree safari views and give the room a light and open atmosphere.

The tents’ en-suite bathrooms contain refreshing showers with hot and cold running water, a basin, and a flush loo.

Guests can enjoy three meals a day, all freshly prepared by the camp’s chefs. Enjoy a light breakfast before venturing out for exciting morning safari activities, and lunch will be served on your return. Guests can look forward to a delicious three-course meal in the evenings which typically features a soup to start, and concludes with a tasty dessert.

The thatched dining area offers guests a chance to interact with one another and share fun stories from the day’s activities. After dinner, you can sit around the campfire with a refreshing drink from Camp Kalahari’s bar, and watch the sun dip into a burning orange sky.

Embark on an exciting game drive and travel across the Kalahari Desert in a 4×4 safari vehicle. Drive alongside parades of elephant and massive herds of zebra as you explore the Makgadikgadi Pans. The private reserve is home to thousands of animals that can be viewed in their natural habitat without any fences or barriers cutting you off from the amazing sights and dramatic hunts. Look out for brown hyena and bat-eared foxes and learn about the extraordinary creatures that live on the pans and savannah from a professional guide.

Walk amongst the habituated meerkats that have made their homes around Camp Kalahari and watch these fun and quirky creatures as they scurry around on the hunt for scorpions and other tasty morsels. These friendly meerkats are used to human presence, and may even use you as a lookout point for keeping a watch for predators. Walks take place from sunrise and guests will be accompanied by one of the camp’s guides.

Follow in the footsteps of the Zu/’hoasi Bushmen – literally – on a guided walk with traditional Bushmen families. Learn about Bushman heritage and culture, as well as how the Zu/’hoasi Bushmen survive in the wilderness with their expert knowledge of the wildlife and landscape.

Explore the untamed landscape of the Kalahari Desert like the classic explorers did on horseback. Enjoy the wind in your hair as you rush across the dramatic plains on the back of a gentle and well-trained horse, and weave among herds of wildebeest without the disruptive sound of an engine.

Speed across the Makgadikgadi Pans on a morning quad bike ride and get a sense of the true size of this immense landscape. Once the huge Makgadikgadi Lake, the salt pans are all that remain. The ground is unable to grow any vegetation, creating a large empty space where guests can lose themselves in the peaceful and quiet atmosphere. This is a seasonal activity and is only available during the dry season.

Visit Chapman’s Baobab, a colossal baobab tree that was discovered by the explorer James Chapman in 1852. Guests can climb over its branches and get a sense of the tree’s mighty size. The ancient tree is one of the three largest and oldest trees in Africa. Sadly, it now lies sprawled across the plains after the tree’s trunk split and it came crashing to the ground in 2016.

Venture out across the open plains on a relaxing 2-hour horse ride trip with the camp’s expert guide, and explore the stunning desert landscape and Makgadikgadi Pans at your own pace. This activity is suitable for guest above the age of 8, and must be booked additionally.

‘Camp Kalahari is a Natural Selection camp. Natural Selection supports the vision of the Botswana Community and Conservation Initiative (BCCI), which provides regional conservation and support for rural communities to develop sustainable land-use practices that promote conservation-based economic opportunities, facilitate landscape-scale wildlife movements, and provide for climate change resilience’.

‘Natural Selection has also partnered with Coaching Conservation ‘to provide local people with the critical information they need to stay safe and healthy during the pandemic.’

‘Over the last three years, 1.5% of every guest’s stay in [Natural Selection’s] camps has gone towards community and conservation projects. Combined with the direct contributions that [Natural Selection’s] camps make to local community outreach, this amounts to nearly 1 million USD of committed funds.’

Natural Selections has been working with the local Khwai Village in order to identify needs within the community and create solutions. Natural Selections have launched a number of projects to do this, such as the Feed A Child programme which provides schoolchildren with a healthy vitamin-rich meal at the start of the school day, setting up a pre-school in Khwai Village and providing an income for the teachers, supporting the village elders and disabled members of the community, and providing homes with electricity using solar power.

Natural Selections’ initiatives not only help the local communities but inspires the local villagers to see ecotourism in a positive light, helping to prevent human and animal conflict.

The increase in the number of elephants in the Okavango Delta in recent years is a cause for celebration. However, for villagers along the Delta’s panhandle and outskirts, the sudden boost in elephant numbers means that their land is more likely to be trampled and humans may be at risk of fatal encounters.

Natural Selection has recognised that transportation for local communities is a need, and they worked with EcoExist and the Okavango Community Trust to launch the ‘Elephant Express’ in January 2020. The ‘Elephant Express’ service transports children to schools safely, as well as helping patients get to clinics without the fear of crossing paths with a gigantic elephant.

Natural Selection ensures that 1.5% of your expedition fees goes to wildlife conservation. They also work with the local communities, governments and conservation organisations in order to help protect conservation areas, and sustain them. The camps that are built are subtle and blend in with the environment and the habitats that already exist there, causing minimal disruption to the surrounding wildlife.

Natural Selection started the Etosha Heights Rhino Protection program which is an anti-poaching group that monitor Rhinos, and ensure that poachers are unable to illegally hunt these endangered creatures.
‘We take rhino conservation extremely seriously, and the Etosha Heights team work tirelessly to safeguard the future of these bushveld unicorns and ensure that many more generations can enjoy watching them.

Within the reserve, we have an anti-poaching camp and team that are dedicated to protecting the rhinos and preventing any illegal hunting from happening along the boundaries of the reserve. Our rangers are on the ground 24 hours a day and have completed an intensive training programme to ensure that they’re the best of the best. Combined with new state of the art anti-poaching surveillance technology, this team is a force to be reckoned with.’