Botswana Safaris – Botswana is truly the last great Wilderness area in Africa with a number of eco-systems offering unparalled wildlife viewing. With Botswana’s policy of low impact tourism you will not be swamped by hordes of other tourists so your experience will be quite unique.
The Okavango Delta, one of the most incredible wilderness sanctuaries in Africa, is 15 000 square kilometres of water channels, lagoons and islands. Each year, floodwaters flow from the central African highlands over 1 000 km away into the Delta to create this wondrous wetland within a desert. It is home to large numbers of wildlife from common mammals and birdlife to those that are not often seen elsewhere, such as sitatunga, wild dog, and wattled crane.
The Linyanti Wildlife Reserve and Savute Channel, a remote and wild corner of Chobe National Park, stretches from the park’s northern boundaries to the Linyanti River. The area’s main feature is the mysterious Savute Channel, which flows and dries up seemingly unrelated to the rainfall.
The Selinda Reserve is a 320 000 acre (129 500 hectare) private wildlife sanctuary in northern Botswana. The famous Selinda Spillway, which links the Okavango Delta to the Linyanti and Kwando wetlands and rivers, meanders through the area.
Chobe National Park, in northern Botswana, has one of the largest concentrations of game in Africa. By size, it is the third largest park in the country, after the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and the Gemsbok National Park, and is the most biologically diverse. It is also Botswana’s first national park.
The Central Kalahari Game Reserve is a vast flat expanse of scrub-covered fossil dunes between ancient river valleys it has a fascinating spectrum of very different plants and animals. With the rains (Nov-April), the desert comes to life, with hordes of plains game followed by numbers of predators, producing some of the best summer wildlife viewing in Botswana.
The Tuli Block is a narrow fringe of land at Botswana’s eastern border wedged between Zimbabwe in the north and east and South Africa in the south. It consists mainly of privately owned game farms offering safari tourism. The eastern section up to and including Redshield has been declared a game reserve, known as the Northern Tuli Game Reserve.
Weather and Best Time to go on Botswana Safaris
The months between May and November, when large number of animals migrate towards the waterways of the Okavango Delta, is the best time to go.
November and December – the calving months – are an excellent time to witness nature’s own timetable of regeneration. The rainy season, from January to March, sees the migration of large numbers of game into the summer grazing areas, while the delta comes alive with sounds of hundreds of bird species.
In March and April thousands of zebras and other animals migrate towards the Savuti area of Chobe National Park.
Summers (particularly from December through to February) can become exceptionally hot, and rain may make some roads muddy and impassable.
During the rainy summer season, animals in many game areas disperse, while in the dry winter season they congregate around water sources, making for good game viewing. This does not mean, however, that game viewing is impossible during the summer season.
