The Best of Botswana Safaris
Posted on Thursday, March 17th, 2011
Botswana is another hugely popular safari destination. And with good reason – it’s diverse, exciting, and immense. Botswana has some of the best known regions in Africa, like Chobe National Park and the Okavango Delta, and it’s an absolutely excellent choice for a luxury safari.
Where should you go for the best in Botswana safaris? The two places I mentioned in the above paragraph are great places to start and can do their part of display the gorgeously diverse regions of Africa.
Chobe National Park is not actually the largest of the parks in Botswana, but it’s still large and varied, with much to see and explore. It’s home mainly to enormous herds of elephants, so if you’re really craving getting up close and personal with some of the big gray beasts, Botswana is a perfect choice for you. The Chobe is a good place for safaris in dry season especially because the land really does dry out. This concentrates the animals around the rivers for drinking and hunting, so most safari game drives will take you by the Chobe and Linyanti river systems. There are a huge variety of animals to see here – hippo, buffalo, zebra, giraffe, and even warthogs will be crowded around the waterhole, and with such a diversity of animals, you can really get some exciting meet-ups between species. Even lions will congregate around there, so you can imagine what you’ll see.
What about the Okavango Delta? This, the largest inland delta in the world, is one of the most lush and scenic regions in the whole of Africa. This is because every summer it floods and then slowly drains away, creating a huge diverse landscape that changes over the course of the year. It’s full of papyrus swamps, reed beds, and open grasslands, where you’ll find impala, tssessebe, lechwe, and even sitatunga. With all of these prey species come the predators, and if you’re lucky you’ll spot a lion or even a wild dog or cheetah hunting its next meal here. You’re even able to glide along in a canoe, spotting the animals in comfort.
You don’t have to sacrifice to see all these great sights, either. Botswana has some of the most luxurious camps and lodges available across the whole of Africa; as a result, it’s hosted many high profile personalities over the years. Botswana in particular takes care to minimise the environmental impact of tourism while still generating profit to put back into the local communities; they’ve done this by opting for low volume but high revenue tourism, choosing more luxurious lodges and raising park fees. While this isn’t exactly egalitarian, there are other parts of Botswana which are open to more casual travellers, and this is the main thrust of an overall effort to keep the environments pristine for years to come, rather than stressing the animals and landscape with mass tourism.
If you can afford the high end camps, then, Botswana is a dream of a safari experience. Botswana safaris can deliver on many fronts and are perfect for the luxury traveller.
