Planet Baobab sits beside Gweta on the northern fringe of the Makgadikgadi, in a grove of seventeen giant baobabs. It is about 40 km from the edge of the pan, and its game drives run out onto Ntwetwe Pan. It is also the least conventional property in this catalogue — painted huts, a pop-art bar, and an aardvark sculpture at the turn-off.
Quick facts
- Area
- Makgadikgadi and Nata
- Property type
- Safari Lodge
- Setting
- Baobab grove beside Gweta on the northern Makgadikgadi fringe
- Nearest park or reserve
- Makgadikgadi Pans National Park
Huts and camping
Eighteen thatched huts — eight Bakalanga twin, seven Baobab twin and three Bakalanga family — all air-conditioned. Six camping pitches with shared ablutions and three overland camping sites run alongside.
Facilities at Planet Baobab
A swimming pool the property bills as the largest in the Kalahari, a bar and à la carte restaurant, a tea garden, Wi-Fi and charging points. Activities include habituated meerkat encounters, pan game drives, baobab bush walks, village visits, seasonal quad biking, and the zebra migration between about November and May.
Location and access
Two-wheel-drive accessible off the A3 — turn at the giant aardvark sculpture, about 200 km east of Maun and 100 km west of Nata. Fly-in to Gweta with a road transfer is also possible.
The meerkats are the thing people come for
Habituated meerkats are a Makgadikgadi speciality and they are genuinely worth the detour: colonies accustomed to people, which will stand on a boot for a better view of the horizon. Planet Baobab offers them at a price a long way below the pans’ luxury camps.
That is the property’s real position. The Makgadikgadi’s famous camps — Jack’s, San, Camp Kalahari — are expensive and fly-in. This is the drive-in, mid-market way to do the same landscape. Our Makgadikgadi guide covers what the pans hold in each season.
Seventeen baobabs and a lot of paint
The design is deliberate and divisive: bright colours, oil-drum furniture, a bar built around a beer-bottle chandelier. Some travellers find it a refreshing break from the safari-neutral palette of every other camp in Botswana; others find it too much. It is worth knowing which you are before booking.
The baobabs themselves are not a gimmick. Seventeen mature trees in one grove is unusual, and they are the reason the site was chosen.
Who it suits
- Self-drivers on the A3, since it is 2WD accessible and roughly halfway between Maun and Nata.
- Travellers who want the meerkats and the pans without a fly-in camp’s budget.
- Families, for the family huts, the pool and activities that are not all game drives.
It suits you less if you want a quiet, neutral, conventional safari lodge, or if you want to be on the pan itself.
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