8 Day Best of Desert and Delta Safari

Pronounced "Makgadikgadi," these salt pans in the centre of Botswana are the remnants of the largest lake in Africa, which dried up thousands of years ago.  The shimmering white, deadly landscape adds to Botswana's adventurous reputation, with only the bravest of early explorers having the courage to try and cross the seemingly endless wasteland.

We are fortunate nowadays to explore these pans from the comfort of a 4x4, and the luxury of lodges with swimming pools and shaded tents.   However, even with these amenities, the Makgadikgadi Pans evoke a sense of adventure in travellers.   Including the salt pans in a Botswana safari adds to the remarkable variety of your holiday, and to the beauty of your photo album.

The very word "Okavango" evokes a sense of adventure and exploration, and this is exactly what the Okavango Delta is about.   Often called the Okavango Swamps, this intricate maze of waterways and sandy islands is an explorer's dream, and the destination should be on the wishlist of anyone looking for a unique travel experience.

The geology of the Delta is fascinating, with its creation being attributed to tectonic plate action from thousands of years ago causing the Kavango River to flow from Angola into the Kalahari Desert as opposed to the Atlantic Ocean.

So while the vegetation is lush, and the wildlife plentiful, the waterways are actually cutting through Kalahari Desert sand, and the entire delta is an enormous oasis.  

Termites are credited with the creation of the many islands around which the water slowly flows, as their mounds, common features of the landscape, are responsible for the formation of sand and foliage around them.
There is a continuous scurry of life in the Delta, from the smallest of creatures to the largest of elephants, and every twist and turn of the channels brings some new form of  life into view.   The Okavango Delta is truly one of nature's greatest creations.

Situated about mid-way between the Chobe River and the Okavango Delta, Savuti is a harsh, arid landscape, which until recently, was only watered by the annual rains.  These rains were the lifeblood of the Savute Marsh, which would then play host to huge herds of zebra, as they migrate from the north.

However, after about 30 years of dryness, the Savuti Channel has started to flow again, changing the dynamics of the area, and providing year round water access to the resident animals.

Stretching from the waterways of the Linyanti all the way to Savute Marsh, the winding waterways of the channel have pumped life into the western section of Chobe National Park for many thousands of generations.    But this fickle and unpredictable channel has a fascinating history of flooding and drying up independently of good rainy seasons and flood levels elsewhere - a mystery that has intrigued geologists and other researchers for many years.

When David Livingstone discovered the Savute Channel in 1851 it was flowing.   Thirty years later the channel had disappeared and the Savute Marsh had dried out, remaining this way for almost 80 years.    It flowed again in the late 1950s, continuing until the early 1980s when it again receded, gaining the channel its reputation as ‘the river which flows in both directions.’

In 2009, after another extended hiatus, the channel began flowing again and by January 2010 had spilled into the Savute Marsh for the first time in three decades.

Savute has long been spoken of  in awe by safari enthusiasts due to its wild reputation, and fierce concentration of predators.