Botswana
“If the closeness of the animals and the daily encounters don’t move you, the landscape and wild experience will.” – fellow traveler describing Botswana
“Nowhere in Africa have I felt such a closeness to the wild dramas that are Botswana’s daily stock. I love listening to lions roar just beyond the circle of my campfire light. I love the contrast of desert and delta, the endless horizons of the salt pans, the sense of a delta world in motion that is never the same from one year to the next, and the sense that here in Botswana, the world of wilderness, wildlife and wild places survives intact.” – Anthony Ham, writer
High Cost, Low Impact
Botswana is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, safari experience on earth. Botswana’s high-cost, low-impact tourism offering ensures an exclusive and unique experience for all guests.
Low impact means low tourist density. The restrictions on allowed beds per area are quite strict compared to other countries. This means that a camp can only host a certain number of guests and only operates on a small-scale vehicle operation in order to minimize the human impact on nature. This automatically leads to a lower number of tourists in Botswana and makes the experience of the guests much more exclusive.
Famously, nearly all of Botswana’s wildlife areas are located in the north of the country. The Okavango Delta is were most focus on their choice of Botswana holidays, but the other best-known areas are the Linyanti and Chobe areas. If one likes big cats, the Moremi Game Reserve (within the Okavango), is the must go to place. These are classic viewing areas home to phenomenal concentrations of Big Game, as well as some of Africa’s finest camps. Large herds of elephants can be seen in both these areas.
Botswana itself is almost all desert. As a result, the Makgadikgadi Salt-Pans and Central Kalahari Game Reserve offer a unique desert safari environment. These arid, dry areas are less visited but form a startling contrast to the ‘typical’ safari areas further north.
A large part of Botswana’s main safari regions is divided into private reserves. The result is high prices yet a level of privacy and exclusivity that accounts for the country’s high ranking on visitors’ lists.
Wildlife
Botswana has a healthy wildlife population. Most big safari animals are easily seen with the exception of rhinos, which have recently been reintroduced. The northern parks have permanent water sources and host greater concentrations of wildlife than the dry parks in the south.
The Okavango Delta and Moremi contain one of the largest populations of the highly endangered African wild dog. Wild dog packs roam over large territories and spotting them is ‘hit or miss’ except when they are denning. Sitatunga, red lechwe and puku can be found in the Okavango Delta, Moremi and Chobe’s riverfront area. These remarkable, rare antelopes, adapted to a semi-aquatic habitat, spend a lot of time in shallow water. With the amount of prey readily available, the Okavango is home to a large number of predators namely the big cats. Large prides of lion roam the Delta and fiercely protect their territories. On any given game drive, one can witness 5-15 lions either looking for prey or already feeding on them.
In general and especially for the northern parks, wildlife viewing is best during the Dry season (May to October). Vegetation is less and animals concentrate around waterholes and rivers, making them easier to spot. The Okavango Delta floods from June to October, providing the opportunity to watch and experience a different wildlife interaction in this unique ecosystem.
The drier parks in the Kalahari area offer better wildlife viewing during the Wet season (November to April), when fresh grasses attract wildlife from the Northern parks. During the rains, large herds of zebra migrate to Makgadikgadi and Nxai pans.