The perfect campsite

The perfect campsite

We are in Uganda, country number 9, and staying at the Haven, a lodge near the source of the White Nile. It's raining for the first time on this trip, but this place is so fabulous, so comfortable that it could stand as the epitome of the perfect camp site. So here are the ingredients, which I have determined to be necessary for a great camp site after exhaustive research in 9 African countries, encountering the best and the worst that the tourist industry can come up with:

First the basics, the foundation if you will. There should be a lawn, green and fresh, covering the tent pitches, and we should be able to drive our car onto it as we have a roof tent and it's really annoying to have to look at the grass rather than be on it. The pitch should be nice and big, so that we can spread out with our other tent, our table and chairs and general kitchen acroutements (sp?). It helps if the ground is flat so we don't have to navigate back and forth for ages to find a good spot to park the car. It's nice to have a little border to separate us from the other campers, but not too high so we can't meet new friends. This lawn should be dotted with shade giving trees, just big enough to fit the car and the tent under, but without gooey fruit that drop on the tent and make a mess, or worse, without being a monkey sleeping tree as they tend to pee from a great height during the night. If the camp site looks out over an amazing valley, or a lake with gently lapping waves, or a similar view of great stunningness, that is an extra bonus. If we can see fish eagles hunting or elephants crossing the dried up riverbed or hippos grunting the day away, our life is complete.

Next come the facilities, and this is where many camp sites do badly. Toilets, to get the gross item out of the way first, don't have to be flushing, long drops are fine as long as the smell is under control, they are clean and airy and there is toilet paper. I have to praise Mushroom Farm (Malawi) here, where not only is the long drop nice smelling, but the product is composted and used on the organic vegetable garden. Showers don't need to be hot, although I would not have wanted cold showers in South Africa or Namibia in mid-winter. And most places could manage hot water if they took the Haven as an example, where the owner has installed solar panels for water heating, and even though we are in the rainy season now, there is always enough sun to have lovely hot showers. The thing that is essential with a shower, and often taken for granted, though, is water pressure. You can have as much water as you like, if it dribbles out of the shower head you are not going to get clean. And we have had many a shower lacking sufficient pressure, from Sesriem in Namibia to Aruba in the Maasai Mara. Personally I find good water pressure trumps fresh water, as I was happy to have a slightly salty shower (at Makadi Beach in Tanzania) or one that is a bit rusty (Green View Lodge, Mbeya), but when I am standing naked in the shower and turn the water on I like to see more than just a trickle. The shower room should be a decent size to facilitate getting dressed, although it doesn't have to be a private cubicle for the pitch (as we had in Swakopmund and El Toro, Botswana). It's nice but unnecessary. More important is that there is a good lock on the door and a bit of privacy. There should be no dusty corners where dead flies congregate, nor grubby edges making it impossible to put down my soap, and while on the subject of putting things down, a few hooks, a ledge and a bench outside to keep my clothes dry and my towel in reach are surprisingly often afterthoughts. Also, if there is a tap, it's good to be able to open it, and if the shower head doesn't fall on my head that also helps my cleaning enjoyment. German run camp sites like the Haven are remarkably consistent in providing good quality showers. Maybe it's our history of heavy engineering?

Next come the non-essential niceties. That includes water taps dotted round the tent sites, a sink for washing up, a washing line, and - for us most important - a power supply so we can sit and tap away at our laptops to our heart's content. Tables and benches, sometimes under cover, have been a specially useful addition, so we don't have to get our own tables and chairs out. Where there is a bar or restaurant there is often a nice view to sit and compute or capture footage while drinking a cold Savanna, and the bar staff is usually happy to provide us with electricity in exchange for us running up a bar tab.

Last but not least on our travels we have found security to be most important. It's a sad fact that we have had thefts from our car in two places, and both were not Nairobi car parks, which we have been warned about at great length, but camp sites. A fence and a security guy who walks around at night are pretty standard, although that didn't help on those two occasions. Just being in the centre of the site rather than at the edges seems to make a difference, or just makes us feel safer. Security from wild animals also becomes an issue, as we have had jackals chewing straps off our bags, elephants charging Stuart into the toilet, baboon attacks on our food and nocturnal visits from village dogs.

My top list of camp sites so far, in no particular order:

Mahangu Lodge, Namibia

Guma Lagoon, Botswana

The Haven, Uganda

Jungle Junction, Kenya

Makadi Beach, Tanzania

Naukluft, Namibia

Track and Trail, Zambia

Mushroom Farm, Malawi

Fat Monkeys, Malawi

Abiqua, Namibia