Stephen Gray : Unspoilt places
Of the half-a-dozen reserves under the new parks board of North West province, Botsalano Game Reserve is the least known. Friends of mine in neighbouring Mafikeng had never heard of it. After a week of repeat-dialling I raised an answer from Andries Motlhoiwa, its senior game scout. Rusty Hustler, the chief conservation officer, I eventually tracked down at the local defence force. No pamphlets, and the map I at last located does not correspond to what is on the ground.
Yet do not be diverted. Botsalano does exist and it is worth every effort to find. Just 25km north of Mmabatho, at the Ramatlabama border post in Botswana, do not fail to turn right down 8km of tar towards Jagersfontein, then left down dirt for another 7km to the gate.
Bring your own life-supports, because this is now viewing the wilds as they used to be. In a word primitive. And there you will spot game of the plains in staggering abundance. The checklist features white rhino, giraffe, black wildebeest, kudu all of which are easy to locate on the burnt turf. Because its savannah overlaps with the Kalahari red-sand system, herds of eland and gemsbok flourish superbly, impala and springbok mix. Red hartebeest and the smaller buck are plentiful all camera- shy.
Not to mention the Cape vultures that glide over from the slaughterhouse at Lobatse. They were toning up on a rhino carcass, killed in honest combat with a territorial rival. Considering that each rhino loss scores them closer to extinction, this was a big disaster. When I say vultures I mean 1 000 of them. Rough stuff; raw.
The name Botsalano in Setswana means friendship. Previously it was a cattle ranch, donated 15 years ago to the old Bophuthatswana Parks Board by the then state president, Lucas Mangope the same chief now sitting on trial for corruption in his own magistrates court.
On his legacy local primary kids were now following spoor, collecting dung samples, awestruck in the hide over a waterhole as Egyptian geese opened their white chevrons, lifting into formation.
This is an enticing way to recruit the young into the anti-poaching lobby.
At the tented camp overlooking the main dam I felt an interloper. Having a mere CitiGolf instead of a 4×4, I have not yet learned to operate a water-cooler. I can just run to a Stewart Grainger game hat. Accompanied walks through the yellow- blooming acres of acacia are the way to fit in best.
As yet the staff have hardly become accustomed to day-trippers. Cordially, they fell over themselves to fill me in on nature lore: the size of their crater of folded lava (just under 6 000ha), and at 2 400-million years, twice as old as Pilanesberg; their varieties of canary; handfuls of ironstone, quartz, beetles, ants. As a gruesome treat I was shown that rhinos head being boiled down in a 44- gallon drum.
Phone beforehand, as on days when the big trophy-hunters fly in from America, Germany or the Gulf States, Botsalano is closed to all squeamish greenies.
But then, I learnt about a new brand of tourism. It is marketed as green hunting. You shoot the endangered monster with a mere dart, and get yourself videoed with its dopey, pronged mug in your lap.
Get to Botsalano before its remoteness is lost, when all you will see is other visitors in search of that vanishing African experience. September was tourism month in North West province. The stillness will not last for ever.
– For more information contact (0140) 86- 2433