Mokoros and Meerkats Safari

On arrival at Maun, you’ll be met and escorted to your bush flight to the Khwai Private Reserve in the Okavango Delta. Nestled between the Moremi, Linyanti, and Chobe game reserves, the vast Khwai is situated on a natural elephant migration route from the Okavango Delta to the Savute Marsh. This region is rich in wildlife, with elephant, buffalo, lion, hyena, and leopard roaming free, amid sable, roan and other plains game. Nocturnal species are spotted on night drives and animal calls reach out from the dark.

Spend three full days exploring this wildlife-rich region. Head out with your naturalist guide on a game drive or bush walk each morning as the sun breaks over the delta and the wildlife comes alive. Boating and dugout canoe excursions are also possible. Elephant, kudu, leopards, wild dogs, and lions are often seen nearby camp. Toast the setting sun with a cocktail before returning back to camp on a night game drive, watching for illuminated eyes peering out from the darkness.

After a final game drive to the airstrip at dawn, you’ll fly over the delta and far out into the central Kalahari basin of Botswana to the vast Makgadigadi salt pans. Once an ancient lake, these are the largest salt flats in the world. Arid and desolate, much of the landscape looks like another planet, the endless moonscape stretches of white sand continuing on to meet blue horizons. Baobabs claw at heated skies and rock formations dot the landscape, breaking the earth’s profile. Springbok, gemsbok, eland, hyena, and meerkats can all be found here and your guide knows just where to find them.

The next two days are yours to explore this immense wild place. Learn about desert-adapted wildlife that has carved out an existence in these harsh environs. The rare brown hyena and the nimble bat-eared fox, along with the reclusive aardvark and aardwolf, all have made this place home. Zebra and wildebeest migrate through here en route to the Boteti River. Spend a morning walking with the Zu/’hoasi Bushman and hear about their history and traditions or visit with a habituated meerkat colony as they warm up in the rising sun. Every day, the sun sets over the palms and baobabs that dot the edge of the salt pan as the dark skies only serve to radiate the brilliance of the endless stars of the Milky Way overhead.

Bid farewell to the desert as you fly back to Maun in time to meet your departing international flight.