2021 Summer Travel: Mobile Safari In the Okavango Delta
At the waterhole in Botswana’s Okavango Delta.
Once our teenage children were finally able to be Covid vaccinated and thus all four of us protected, we were excited to embark on the vacation we had to cancel in 2020…the trip of a lifetime, a mobile safari through Botswana’s Okavango Delta.
You may have seen a documentary about this magical river, or read a National Geographic piece about it: it originates in the highlands of Angola, creates a massive delta in Northern Botswana (so big that you can see it from space), then disappears in the Kalahari Desert. The river that never reaches the ocean…the river of dreams, as PBS’s “Nature” put it. Along its path it creates one of the richest and most dense wildlife reservoirs left on our planet.
Botswana is a small country of just over three million people wedged between Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. It gained independence from Britain in 1966 and has been peaceful and democratic since—politically one of the most stable countries in Africa. Even more impressive, almost one third of Botswana’s land is protected as game reserves and national parks (for comparison, the number for the United States is 3.5%).
While diamonds and mining for copper and other metals have become major drivers of GDP, tourism remains a critical source of revenue for Botswana. The country has adopted a “low-impact tourism” philosophy in order to protect its natural treasures. Low-impact: fewer people, higher prices to create sustainable tourism for decades to come—and give lions, leopards and elephants the best chance to survive.
We had partnered with Lelobu Safaris, a small local tour operator, in creating our 2-week itinerary. After a long non-stop flight from Newark to Johannesburg we hopped to Maun, one of the larger cities in Northern Botswana and the start of many Okavango safaris. There we were greeted by our mobile safari guides Rams and Chris from Chase Safari, another Maun-based local company. We boarded the (super cool!) Toyota Land Cruisers, remodeled to serve as game drive vehicles, and entered Moremi Game Reserve. The next six nights we camped in very remote parts of the delta. Meru-style tents with real beds, en-suite bathrooms with a bucket as a shower and a deep hole as a toilet—it may not sound like it but it was immensely comfortable! Currently it is winter in Southern Africa, with nighttime temps dropping into the 40s and daytime highs in the 80s. Zero humidity—what a blessing. We stayed at three gorgeous private camp sites and had terrific food and drinks, thanks to our safari team’s amazing cook Mike. And the views at sundown! Every night we heard lions roaring close to us and hyenas trotting through our camp in search of leftovers. The first night was scary until I learned how safe our sturdy tents were. After that I slept better than I have anywhere else in decades.
Every morning at 6 a.m. we got up and after a quick breakfast and fire pit coffee we were off to see game! Over the six days on game drives we saw countless elephants, hippos, zebras, giraffes, wildebeest, and the beautiful antelopes of Africa—Impala, Kudu, waterbuck, Lechwe, steenbok, tsessebe. On our very first day we saw majestic lions dozing in the sun, and an endangered white rhino mother-and-baby pair. We would have additional lion sightings further north—on our last day we saw more than a dozen lions of the famous Savute Marsh pride, the lions that hunt elephants. Before that we managed to see the elusive leopard, the nocturnal serval, jackals, wild cats, hyenas—and the birds! Even though July is not the best time for bird viewing, we saw dozens of stunning storks, eagles, vultures—and many beautiful smaller ones. We decided that we need to go back for bird viewing alone (upriver which is called the panhandle, earlier in the year) –it is just so stunning.
Stunning sunsets
We ended our mobile safari in the Chobe National Park and spent two additional nights in a beautiful eco-lodge just 10 minutes from the Zimbabwe border—a boat took us to the only place on the planet where four countries meet, in the middle of the mighty Zambezi River. We managed to enter Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana in the span of 15 minutes! We went on to visit Victoria Falls, the world’s tallest waterfalls and a truly stunning sight. A dinner cruise on the Zambezi River, navigating around hippos and crocodiles, and beautiful recovery days at an eclectic Bauhaus villa converted to a boutique B&B by our Australian-Zimbabwean hosts.
When we had planned this trip, we anticipated it to be the “trip of a lifetime”—it wasn’t, we decided. Why not? Because we will be back! We fell in love with Southern Africa—its people, its fauna, its beauty. “Africa is good for the soul,” many people had told me before—now I understand the wisdom behind these words.
In Botswana and Zimbabwe all our hosts told us that were it not for (fully vaccinated) Americans their businesses would not survive—and if local tourism doesn’t survive then conservation will not survive. Most of the world has canceled trips for a second year in a row but Americans are traveling—thank you, they all said. Something we can be proud of as Americans.
Mother and son
Swarthmore – if you feel a desire to fall in love again, travel to Botswana! See the Okavango delta. Be mesmerized by those sunsets and those nightly roars and those beautiful big cats grooming each other. We took more than 3,000 photos—a few are attached here to whet your appetite.
We’d be happy to give advice if you contact us by email—below are a few web addresses for a start.
Happy August and hopefully to a COVID-recovering world in 2022—we all need it. Botswana desperately needs it.
The Hartungs
helgeh@lycos.com
