Kubu Island

Kubu is a low granite island about a kilometre long on the southwestern edge of Sowa Pan, its rock studded with baobabs of great age and ringed by a beach of fossil water-worn pebbles from when the pans were a vast lake. Stone tools and a low stone wall of uncertain age and purpose are on the island, and the community holds it as a sacred site. Standing on white salt that runs flat to the horizon in every direction is the experience people come for.

What's there

• The baobabs - very old trees growing straight out of the granite.
• The fossil beach - water-worn pebbles marking the shore of a vanished lake.
• The stone wall - low walling on the island, of unresolved date and purpose.
• The pan - white salt running flat to the horizon in all directions.

When to go

May to October is the dry season and the only time the pan surface is safe to drive on. From December to April the pans flood and become impassable. Full moon nights on the salt are the reason many people time their visit.

What to expect

Driving onto wet pan surface bogs vehicles to the axles and recovery is a long way off; the crust lies over mud. Facilities are a long-drop and nothing else. The site is sacred to the community and climbing the baobabs or removing anything is not acceptable.

Nearby

Nata bird sanctuary is northeast, and the Makgadikgadi pans run west.

Key facts