Botswana and Victoria Falls

If you are an adventure and nature lover then Botswana is the right place for you

Botswana is world renowned for its unique combination of breathtaking wilderness and wetland areas with the dry and rugged Kalahari to the permanent waterways of the Okavango Delta. The Okavango River flows down from Angola into the Kalahari Desert, where it creates the world’s largest inland delta. Trapped between deep fault lines and dammed by rising land to the east, the Okavango Delta is an oasis in the desert, a paradise of islands and lagoons, papyrus swamps and reed beds. Botswana has a diversity of wildlife, fauna and flora and boasts the largest population of Elephants in the world.

Okavango Delta
The Okavango Delta is the world’s largest inland delta, boasting a labyrinth of lakes, lagoons and hidden water channels, expanding over an area of 17,000km. The delta milieu is home to a wealth of rare wildlife such as elephant, crocodile, buffalo, wild dogs, buck, wattled crane, and other more common mammals and wildlife.

The best time for game viewing is from May to October when the vegetation is dried out and the animal life is concentrated along the flooded areas. From November to April is best for birding and vegetation during the rainy season when the migrant bird populations are returning and the flora is flourishing.

Safari activities by water are the primary specialty and a must do activity is a ride in the mokoro. The mokoro is a dug-out canoe made from a large straight tree that moves silently thought the shallow water by using a long pole by the guide through the narrow channels or cutting across the long grasses. Game drive is taken in 4X4 safari vehicles during the day and night. Walking safaris are also catered for which is the most exciting means of viewing the game.

Central Kalahari Game Reserve
In the middle of Botswana lies the heard or the Kalahari, a flat sea of sand in a dry world with
The 52,800 square kilometers Central Kalahari Game Reserve, which was set up in 1961, is the second largest game reserve in the world. Situated right in the centre of Botswana, this reserve is characterized by vast open plains, saltpans and ancient riverbeds. Varying from sand dunes with many species of trees and shrubs in the north, to flat bushveld in the central area, the reserve is more heavily wooded in the south, with mophane forests to the south and east. Rainfall is sparse and sporadic and can vary from 170 to 700 millimeters per year.

After the summer rains arrive, from Deception Valley to Piper Pans, the vast plains burst with sweet grasses and it becomes one of the prime game-viewing areas in Botswana. Not many people seem to be aware of this and visitors are few. The clear blue sky fills with gigantic clouds and the stage is set for an amazing transformation. Into the scene enters thousands of gemsbok, springbok and wildebeest, with plentiful lion, cheetah and jackal in attendance. This gathering of animals in the Kalahari Desert game reserve is a sight to behold and can be compared with the Serengeti/Masai Mara migrations of Tanzania and Kenya.

Out in the bush, the ceaseless daytime call of the black korhaan is replaced at night by the continuous loud cough of the male barking gecko, and under the cover of darkness scorpions emerge. Those with thick tails and small pincers are the most dangerous, while the ones with small tails and big pincers give a painful but harmless sting. Game viewing in the Kalahari desert game reserve is best between December and April, when the animals congregate in the pans and valleys which include giraffe, brown hyena, warthog, wild dog, cheetah, leopard, lion, blue wildebeest, eland, gemsbok, kudu, red hartebeest and springbok, is best between December and April, when the animals tend to congregate in the pans and valleys.

Makgadikgadi National Park
Over 150 years ago, when the first weary travelers passed through this land on their long journey northwards, they spoke of vast herds as far as the eye could see, of beautiful palm islands and a sea of land they could not comprehend. The amazing truth is that very little has changed! The enormous plains of the Makgadikgadi will instill on you a true understanding of what silence is all about.  The whispering grass, the call of a bird or the roar of a lion in the dead of night are the sounds of our home.  The silence is almost physical. The Makgadikgadi Game Reserve section of the National Park is a 3900 sq km tract of pans, grasslands and beautiful savanna country. Wildlife is plentiful but since the reserve is unfenced, animals may wander in and out at will, and you won't see the artificially high numbers found at Chobe. During the winter dry season, animals concentrate around the Boteti River, but between February and April, huge herds of Zebra and Wildebeest migrate north to Nxai Pan and beyond, only returning to Boteti when the rains diminish around early May.

The range of antelope includes Impala, Gemsbok, Hartebeest and Kudu, but they only appear in large numbers during the immigrations during May and June. Lion, Hyena and Cheetah are also present and when there's water, the Boteti River supports a healthy Hippo population. You'll also see a stunning array of birds, but as there are no reliable water sources, Elephant and Buffalo wander in only during extremely wet seasons.

In September, herds of Wildebeest, Zebra and other antelope move into the thirsty grasslands west of the pans to await the first rains. Although the water is short-lived, wildlife gravitates towards depressions that retain stores of water after the surface moisture has evaporated.

Around December, the deluge of rain begins. The fringing grasses turn green and the herds arrive to partake of the bounty. Flamingos, pelicans, ducks, geese and other water birds flock to the mouth of the Nata River to build shoreline nests and feed on algae and tiny crustaceans that have lain dormant in the salty earth during the dry months

Botswana's great Sua and Ntwetwe Pans collectively comprise the 12,000 sq km Makgadikgadi Pans. The grassy Makgadikgadi Pans National Park includes only a portion of Ntwetwe Pan. These landscapes are like no other on earth; especially in the sizzling heat of late winter, the stark pans take on a disorienting and ethereal austerity. Heat mirages destroy all sense of space or direction, imaginary lakes shimmer and disappear, ostriches fly, and stones turn to mountains and float in mid-air. These are just tricks that the heat waves cause our eyes to imagine.

Nxai Pan National Park
The Nxai pans, integrated into the national park since 1993, were once part of the great lake that covered central Botswana. Now largely covered by grassland and sprinkled with clusters of trees, the Nxai Pan National Park offers spectacular game-viewing in the rainy season (November - March). Huge herds of zebra, wildebeest, springbok and gemsbok attract many predators - lion, cheetah and both brown and spotted hyena. There are large numbers of bat-eared fox, which preys on rodents and reptiles.
'Baines' Baobabs' are at the southern edge of the park.

Chobe National Park
Chobe National Park is in the north of Botswana and encompasses 11 700 square kilometers of pristine wilderness. The park contains a variety of habitats: the grassy woodland of Nogatsaa and Tchinga; the Savuti or Mababa Depression, in the southwest of the park; the Linyanti - and the popular 15 km of riverbank east of Kasane, which many people think is Chobe.
The optimal time for visiting the riverfront region is during the dry season, from June to October, when the river's perennial waters and fertile flood plains draw animals north from the dry interior. The area is famed for its huge concentration (35,000) of elephants, which gather by the river in their hundreds in the dry season. There are enormous herds of buffalo; and tsessebe, roan and sable antelope, eland, the endangered red lechwe, the rare puku, giraffe and kudu. These animals attract predators and large lion prides are a common sight. Birding is excellent

Moremi Game Reserve
The Moremi Game Reserve covers much of the eastern side of the Delta, and combines permanent water, with drier areas – making for some startling, and unexpected contrasts. In the Moremi you can experience excellent savannah game viewing by 4x4, as well as bird-watching on the lagoons. There are also thickly wooded areas, which are home to the shy, and rare, Leopard. To the north-east lies the Chobe National Park which borders directly on to the Moremi Game Reserve.
Although just under 5 000 square kilometers in extent, it is a surprisingly diverse Reserve, combining mopane woodland and acacia forests, floodplains and lagoons. Only about 30% of the Reserve is mainland, with the bulk being within the Okavango Delta itself.
The Moremi Game Reserve, although not one of the largest Parks, never fails to impress even the most experienced of travelers. Home to nearly 500 species of bird (from water birds to forest dwellers), and a vast array of other species of wildlife, including buffalo, giraffe, lion, leopard, cheetah, hyena, jackal, impala, and red lechwe. Wild dog, are regularly sighted, and have been the subject of a project run in the area since 1989 – thus these animals are often seen wearing collars placed on them by the researchers. It is claimed that the Moremi area contains upwards of thirty percent of all living wild dog.
The Reserve offers the opportunity to explore not only in 4x4's but on foot and by mokoro - a dug-out canoe, hewn from either ebony or sausage-tree, and poled by your personal Guide. Although, today most of the mekoro (plural of mokoro), are made from fiber glass, thus helping to preserve the magnificent, and old, trees of the delta.
Game viewing is at its peak from July to October, when seasonal pans dry up and the wildlife concentrates on the permanent water. From October until the start of the rains in late November or early December, the weather can be extremely hot.

Victoria Falls
David Livingstone, who was a man not known for poetic turns of phrase, said of this most iconic of southern Africa features, that so lovely was it that angels must have paused in their flight. He named it Victoria Falls after the ruling British monarch, upon whom angles seldom gazed, while the local people named the falls Mosi-oa-Tunya…or the smoke that Thunders
Victoria Falls has an impressive list of credentials; the widest curtain of falling water on earth, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of only seven natural wonders on the planet. Often, when there's so much hype about a place, you prepare yourself for a slight let down. This is definitely not the case with Victoria Falls.

There is no doubt that this is one of the world’s most breathtaking natural features, a mile wide, 360ft spectacle of the great Zambezi River plunging into the Batoka Gorge, which is in fact a series of 7 switchback gorges that within itself is a major geological feature. The falls are situated on the mid-Zambezi River, in a region gifted with great natural beauty and bounty. The falls enjoys some of the best preserved and most easily accessible game viewing facilities on the continent, as well as a wide spectrum of hospitality and general tourist facilities to make this arguably one of the best known and most visited destinations in Africa