Jack’s Camp Botswana

After several decades of setting the standard in the Kalahari, we are delighted to announce that Jack’s Camp has undergone a full rebuild and refurbishment and will reopen in January 2021.

The brand-new Jack’s Camp pays homage to the property’s enduring and much-loved 1940s campaign style. The guest tents, seven twins and two doubles, are much larger and each is a whopping 270 square metres in size: 135 sq m inside, and 135 sq m outside.

The iconic interiors remain but with the addition of intricate textiles from all over the world, Natural History Museum cabinets, and an overhead bed cooling system. Ensuite bathrooms have both indoor and outdoor shower and outside, each veranda has a private plunge pool.

The new, larger mess tent is resplendent with the renowned Natural History Museum, library, antique pool table and a well-stocked drinks chest. The iconic nomadic Persian tea tent has been made larger and the shop has been renovated and restocked with new treasures.

WHY YOU’LL LOVE JACK’S CAMP:

• Jack’s is one of Africa’s most iconic camps and it will reopen in January 2021, refreshed and reinvigorated, yet still retaining the classic style we all know and love.
• Enjoy the ultimate in space and exclusivity; the camp is one of just three in a one million-acre private wildlife reserve.
• There’s a blockbuster of activities to be enjoyed including quad biking, bushman walks, classic desert game drives, meerkat visits and horse rides.
• The camp has one of the most comprehensive collections of ancient artefacts in Botswana, collected and curated by the Bousfield family over decades.
• Indulge in a lazy afternoon in your private plunge pool watching the world go by, G&T in hand.
• Keep your eyes peeled for the year-round desert wildlife: brown hyena, oryx, Kalahari lion and, after dark, aardvark, porcupine, honey badger and bat eared fox.

ACCOMMODATIONS
When Jack’s reopens in January 2021, it will continue to pay homage to the much-loved 1940s style of the existing camp.

The nine guest rooms are almost double the size of the existing tents and whilst the iconic green canvas and muslin-draped walls remain, each feature new textiles from around the world, Natural History Museum cabinets curated by Ralph Bousfield himself and an overhead bed cooling system to ward off the desert heat.

Outside, each veranda has a private plunge pool as well as several velvet-clad chairs overlooking the glittering landscape. The new mess tent still houses the renowned Natural History Museum, library, and antique pool table and the iconic, nomadic Persian tea tent remains, both just a little larger in size.

Framed Peter Beard pictures sit alongside original posters from French taxidermist Deyrolle, both complemented by Bousfield family photos. The swimming pool pavilion is still the only one of its kind in Africa.

• 9 tents: 7 twins, 2 doubles.
• Rooms are an enormous 270 sq metres: 135 sq metres indoors and 135 sq metres outdoors.
• Ensuite bathrooms with indoor & outdoor showers.
• Private plunge pools.
• Bed cooling systems.
• Swimming pool tent.
• Tea tent.
• Wifi available: No.
• Hairdryers: No.
• There is 24-hour electricity in the tents (100% solar-powered).
• Complimentary laundry service.

WHEN TO VISIT JACK’S CAMP
Jack’s Camp is a year-round destination, yet the two seasons couldn’t be more different. The dry season, from April to October, is the desert as you know it: a shimmering whiteness envelops the scorched landscape, like a mirage floating over the crusted salt, and you’ll spot nomadic herds in the distance, as if an illusion.

This is the time of year for whizzing across the pans on the back of a quad bike, sleeping under the stars, and enjoying the pans in their most iconic state. When the rains start to fall in November, the Makgadikgadi Pans are transformed. It’s a time of plenty (even in the desert), and the salt flats are turned into watery grasslands, almost unrecognisable from the previous months.

A layer of emerald-green grass stretches out in every direction, pink clouds of flamingo and flocks of migratory birds arrive to nest, and Africa’s second largest mammal migration of wildebeest and our black and white striped friends floods the plains.

The green season in the desert is one of Africa’s, great unpredictable spectacles, and a magical time to visit. Rain transforms everything, turning the pans into lush grasslands from November onwards. Animals are on the move and the desert becomes a green oasis teeming with life, notably thousands of zebra and blue wildebeest that feast on the sweet summer grasses.

The safari activities are similar in these months although you usually won’t travel as far; on many days you can see the wildlife direct from your veranda. This green season continues until mid-April and corresponds with the off season for tourism in Botswana, making it a slightly cheaper time to travel.

Seasonality

• Green season: 10th January to 31st March
• Shoulder season: 1st April to 31st May; 1st November – 19th December
• High season: 1st June to 30th June; 1st September to 31st October; 20th December – 9th January
• Peak season: 1st July – 31st August

ACTIVITIES

Year Round:

• Get up close and personal with our habituated meerkats.
• Discover the secrets of the pans with the Zu/’hoasi Bushmen on a fascinating bush walk.
• Take game drives and night drives in custom built 4x4s and spot the unique desert wildlife that inhabits the pans.
• Embark on an adventurous horseback safari (for all levels of riders; additional charge applies, but one two-hour safari is included if staying for three nights or longer). Multi-day riding safaris are also available for experienced riders – please contact us for more information.

Dry Season (16th April – 31st October)

• Take a radical sabbatical and quad bike across the salt-crusted pans.
• Lie out on the pans as the sun sets and watch the planetarium of stars unfold above you.

Green Season (1st November –15th April)

• Witness the second largest migration of zebra and wildebeest in Africa (and it’s also the last remaining one in Southern Africa).

LANDSCAPE
Jack’s Camp is located in Botswana’s Makgadikgadi Salt Pans, the remnants of an enormous super-lake that used to cover most of Southern Africa. Jack Bousfield himself described the area as the “savage beauty of a forgotten Africa”, and truly, the Makgadikgadi is like nowhere on earth.

It’s a landscape of space and remoteness, and the spectacular, otherworldly vistas, unique desert wildlife, and old-world glamour of Jack’s Camp all come together to create an experience that is unlike any other on the continent.

WILDLIFE
The desert is never a place of abundance. But we’ve spent many years here (not quite as many as Jack, but a good number!) and it still surprises us.

The Makgadikgadi is full of elusive species and desert-adapted animals and the perfect complement to Botswana’s traditionally game-rich areas, like the Khwai Private Reserve and the Okavango Delta. The brown hyena is a symbol of what’s to come in the Makgadikgadi. There are only 8000 of these special hunters left in the world, and there aren’t many other places you’ll encounter one.

Other carnivores that know how to eke out their survival here include aardwolves and bat-eared foxes, honey badgers and black-maned Kalahari lion. Then there’s aardvark, gemsbok, springbok and black-backed jackals to look out for on game drives, and perhaps even an elephant or two.

And last, but definitely not least, the meerkats. We’ve been busy pioneering a meerkat habituation project with some of the world’s pre-eminent researchers. The cheeky creatures are still very wild, but they do enjoy coming to say hello.

JACK’S CAMP STORY
In the 1960s, crocodile catcher and legendary hunter Jack Bousfield set out on a trapping expedition in the desolate Makgadikgadi Pans. He soon stumbled upon a site that so captured his imagination that he set up a camp in that very spot, with the unshakeable expectation that others would feel the same…

That was the first incarnation of Jack’s Camp, a simple, no frills affair in the heart of the desert, visited by guests as much to see Jack as the otherworldly area. Fast-forward a few years to Jack’s untimely death in 1992, and Ralph, Jack’s son, along with his partner Catherine, established the Uncharted Africa Safari Company in homage to his father’s vision.

Jack’s Camp was refurbished in the nostalgic 1940s style we know today, but kept as authentic and genuine as possible: no electricity, steaming water in gleaming copper jugs, and showers under the stars.

The portfolio expanded to include San Camp and Camp Kalahari, each one as quirky and eccentric as the next, and each guaranteeing every guest ‘Real Adventure in Unreal Style.’ Jack would be proud.

Rooms: 9

Price: from 851 EUR per night

Source: www.naturalselection.travel