Makgadikgadi Pans National Park
Makgadikgadi Pans National Park together with the adjoining Nxai Pans National Park are the only true pan ecologies in Botswana found outside the Kalahari Desert. They were once part of the single massive lake which covered central Botswana and which today has shrunken into the Okavango Delta. The name can mean “driest of the dry” or “big nothing” in San dialects and at certain times of the year that is exactly what it looks like. But now, shortly after the long rainy season, it is still verdant and with abundant game.
While these dominant pans share much ecology with pans found anywhere in southern Africa they differ in having more and larger natural water holes. These are occasionally augmented when the ancient Boteti and Nata rivers run. This is why Livingstone stopped here and even today the remnants of numerous ad hoc boreholes dug during the early years of exploration can be found.
The more continuous source of some water creates woodlands peripheral to the pans which tend to dominate grassland ecologies more than in the Kalahari. The woodlands draw elephants in the wet season, and elephants are rarely found in the Kalahari. In the wet season the pans become one of the best areas in all of Botswana for big game viewing: a large fraction of Botswana's zebras and gemsbok migrate here to calve. But as much as three-quarters of the pans' wildlife leaves in the dry season.
The resident big game population that stays year-round is composed mostly of predators and browsers like giraffes and kudu, although many of the springbok also remain after the rains end in April/May. This leads to terrific tension during the dry season.
The landscape of the pans has drawn famous painters for years ever since Livingstone described it as one of the most beautiful places he would stop on his journeys from The Cape. The 19th century painter, Thomas Baines's most famous painting, "Baines' Baobabs" is of a scene at the edge of the pan which remains largely the same as when he painted it in 1861.
