Botswana, September 07: Close encounters of the baboon kind

by Matt

This was Hot Rock’s first visit to Botswana and we were unsure what climbing opportunities we would find. Fortunately, while at a climbing competition in South Africa we met the entire Botswanan climbing community - the Kalahari Mountaineering Club! Carl, his family and friends kindly invited us to stay with them in their newly opened guesthouse in Gabarone and offered a tour of the premiere climbing areas of Botswana....The next morning the Hot Rock team eagerly gathered outside what was certainly the largest shopping mall in the entire country; we were ready and psyched! Carl led us through the rubbish dumps, we fought off various prickly trees and after many epic adventures we emerged at the foot of the crags, which were at least 10 minutes away from the shopping centre.

An initial examination of the climbs suggested that the substance covering every square inch of rock not only looked and smelled like Baboon faeces but was indeed Baboon shit and piss. The saturation levels were so impressive that we were led to conclude that the Botswanian baboon population wished the local crags to remain undefiled by outsiders. While some Hot Rockers retreated to the Mall to consider their next moves others bravely ploughed on and were rewarded with some beautiful trad cracks and some savagely undergraded sport routes. The two days in Gabarone rewarded us with some character crunching crack climbing, sights of baboons scrapping to the death and a truly epic thunderstorm that hopefully put paid to the baboons cunning plan to keep foreign climbers away from their crags.

During all the excitement we had been trying to arrange some new routing at some kloofs in the east of the country, unfortunately this fell through and after a group vote we decided to head off to Namibia and the delights of Spitzkoppe a little earlier than planned. Before this we had to cross a large portion of the Kalahari desert during which we stopped at a bushmen camp, discovered by George after some nifty research of the Lonely Planet.

The Kalahari desert proved to be truly, epically, totally and utterly deserted. There was all the scrub that one could wish for but everything else was definitely in very short supply-we had been fooled by our Botswanan friends; there were no mountains at all! On arrival at D`Kar Bushman camp we were treated to our first sand driving experience with Henry, who passed the test with flying colours. At the camp some of us went on a Bush walk which showed us that there is more than just horrible spiky bushes in the desert, there are also horrible spikey bushes that have potatoes concealed in their routes. During the walk there were several attempts to goad the notorious baboon spider from their various burrows but this was sadly unsuccessful; though our guide did assure us that we would regret it if one of these bad-tempered creatures did emerge....

Our final experience at the camp was watching a traditional bushmen dance round the fire, this was quite hypnotic under the vast expanse of the Kalahari night watching the dancers shuffle and pound their way round and round the fire, accompanied by singing and rattling. Some Hot Rockers bravely participated towards the end but sadly they were all shown up for rhythm and timing by the overweight, middle aged French lady who also took part! The next day we left Botswana having survived our various encounters with the Baboon kind.