Botswana Accommodation
Botswana Lodges & Camps
Well known as one of the great safari destinations in Africa, Botswana offers some of the most beautiful, luxurious, and active safari experiences in Africa. The unique geography of the country has created some of the world's most special wilderness areas, and exploring the Chobe River, Okavango Delta, Kalahari, Makgadikgadi Salt Pans rewards you with memories for a lifetime. Easily accessible from Johannesburg, and simply combined with Victoria Falls, Botswana needs to be on your safari list if you are planning a visit to Southern Africa.
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Central Kalahari National Park
Originally created to be a sanctuary for the San people inhabiting the Kalahari, the Central Kalahari is one of the largest, yet most remote, game reserves around. Although growing in popularity now, the Central Kalahari is a park which is largely skipped by visitors to Botswana. This means you can experience the park in privacy, taking advantage of the excellent and unique wildlife sightings, without seeing many other people at all on the vast plains and ancient river beds which make up the landscape. Gemsbok (oryx) and springbok dominate the wildlife, while lions, honey badgers, cheetahs and zebra are also often found.
Chobe National Park
Accessed easily via a 1.5 hour flight from Johannesburg, or a 1 hour drive from Victoria Falls, Chobe National Park is the most visited park on a Boswana safari itinerary. With an enormous elephant population, as well as magnificent birdlife and a huge array of herbivores and aquatic animals, it is often hard to believe that Chobe National Park is for real. The game viewing starts from the moment you land at Kasane Airport, or drive across the border from Zambia or Zimbabwe, with warthogs foraging in the streets, buffalo being habitual visitors to the town, and hippos lazing around in the river.
Kwando, Linyanti and Selinda
Just when you thought that lodges could not get any more remote or wild in Botswana! In the far north of the country, bordering Namibia, you will find the Selinda Spillway, the Linyanti River and Marsh, and the Kwando River. The Spillway is the waterway which connects the Okavango Delta with the Kwando and Linyanti Rivers, which then flow on to become the Chobe River. The wilderness areas supported by these waters have been divided into private concessions, on which are scattered very few, very luxurious, lodges.
Makgadikgadi Salt Pans & Nxai Pan National Park
The Makgadikgadi Salt Pans in the centre of Botswana are the remnants of the largest lake in Africa, which dried up thousands of years ago. The shimmering white, deadly landscape adds to Botswana's adventurous reputation, with only the bravest of early explorers having the courage to try and cross the seemingly endless wasteland. We are fortunate nowadays to explore these pans from the comfort of a 4x4, and the luxury of lodges with swimming pools and shaded tents. However, even with these amenities, the Makgadikgadi Pans evoke a sense of adventure in travellers.
Maun
Botswana's tourism capital lies on the southern fringes of the Okavango Delta, and still, despite recent modernisations, carries the feeling of a dusty, frontier town. For many tourists, Maun is the point of entry into the Delta, and often into Botswana, with direct flights from both Johannesburg and Gaborone.
Okavango Delta
The very word "Okavango" evokes a sense of adventure and exploration, and this is exactly what the Okavango Delta is about. Often called the Okavango Swamps, this intricate maze of waterways and sandy islands is an explorer's dream, and the destination should be on the wishlist of anyone looking for a unique travel experience. The geology of the Delta is fascinating, with its creation being attributed to tectonic plate action from thousands of years ago causing the Kavango River to flow from Angola into the Kalahari Desert as opposed to the Atlantic Ocean.
Savuti
Situated about mid-way between the Chobe River and the Okavango Delta, Savuti is a harsh, arid landscape, which until recently, was only watered by the annual rains. These rains were the lifeblood of the Savute Marsh, which would then play host to huge herds of zebra, as they migrate from the north. However, after about 30 years of dryness, the Savuti Channel has started to flow again, changing the dynamics of the area, and providing year round water access to the resident animals. Stretching from the waterways of the Linyanti all the way to Savute Marsh, the winding waterways of the channel have pumped life into the western section of Chobe National Park for many thousands of generations. But this fickle and unpredictable channel has a fascinating history of flooding and drying up independently of good rainy seasons and flood levels elsewhere - a mystery that has intrigued geologists and other researchers for many years. When David Livingstone discovered the Savute Channel in 1851 it was flowing. Thirty years later the channel had disappeared and the Savute Marsh had dried out, remaining this way for almost 80 years. It flowed again in the late 1950s, continuing until the early 1980s when it again receded, gaining the channel its reputation as 'the river which flows in both directions.' In 2009, after another extended hiatus, the channel began flowing again and by January 2010 had spilled into the Savute Marsh for the first time in three decades. Savute has long been spoken of in awe by safari enthusiasts due to its wild reputation, and fierce concentration of predators.
Tuli Game Reserve
Spectacular landscapes, rich and varied wildlife, and a host of historical, cultural and natural history attractions define this unique and very striking corner of northeastern Botswana. Most naturally occurring wildlife species are present, including elephant, kudu, zebra, impala, duiker, wildebeest, waterbuck, steenbok, and warthog. Large herds of eland - often not seen elsewhere in Botswana - are present, and these are indeed an incredible sight.