Okavango Delta

The Okavango Delta is an extraordinary place: a thin skein of water over a thirsty desert, home to vast numbers of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles. Fertile yet fragile, it’s a wilderness of matchless natural beauty created by seasonal cycles and the fickle ebb and flow of flood waters. It’s a wild paradise and one of those places that’s a must-see on anyone’s list.

The Okavango is a labyrinth of lagoons, lakes and hidden channels covering an area of over 17 000 km and is the largest inland delta in the world. Moremi Game Reserve, which encompasses the central and eastern areas of the Okavango Delta, has some of the most diverse ecosystems in Africa. The best way to explore the Okavango and its 50 000 islands is in a mokoro (dugout canoe). Slip silently through the waterways of the delta along lily-sprinkled channels of dark water spotting wildlife like hippos, crocodiles, elephant and buffalo.

In the middle of Southern Africa’s driest and flattest arid region, the water of the Okavango River travels southeast for five months across hundreds of kilometres. Starting in the Angolan highlands in summer, 1000 km from Maun, the water is then squeezed through the geological fault lines near the Caprivi Strip, then spreads out across 20 000 square kilometres, a huge fan of surface water seeping into the red detritus of the Kalahari Desert. There is no mouth to the Okavango River: 95 per cent of the water evaporates, and, if the rains are good in Angola, the waters will push past Maun in June or July and spill over into the ancient lakes of Ngami, Ntwetwe and Xau. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world.

Maun is the closest major town and acts as a gateway to the Okavango Delta. There are only four camp sites available to the self-drive tourist in the delta, and all are in the Moremi Game Reserve in the northeast: North Gate, South Gate, Third Bridge and Xakanaxa. Facilities are simple – there is drinking water, showers and toilets. Accommodation tends to be in the high-end category, with many tourists flying in to luxury lodges. The best time to visit is between April and November, when large herds of animals migrate to the waterways.