Okavango River Delta

General

The River Okavango, which rises in the highlands of Angola, never reaches the sea; instead, its mighty waters empty over the sand of the Kalahari Desert. Here the thirstland of the south meets a blue-green wilderness of fresh water, with emerald reedbeds and towering trees.

The Okavango Delta is one of the world’s greatest mysteries – water in a desert! The Kalahari Desert is the largest continuous stretch of sand in the world and within it lays the magnificent Okavango delta, an area that is home to a myriad of animal and bird species. The area is a magnificent expanse of waterways, floodplains, forested islands and lagoons that covers about 18,000 sq kms.

This African oasis originates from a catchment area in Angola called the Cubango River that flows southeast through Namibia as the Kavango River and finally enters Botswana 1000 miles later as the Okavango River. Once here the fate of the River is determined by a series of parallel fault lines that lie deep below the desert surface. Once the river passes over the first fault line, known as the Gomare fault, it splits up into several waterways and channels that spread out and create that fan like pattern that is actually visible from space. When the water finally reaches the final two fault lines, known as the Kunyere and Thamalakane faults, the water is literally dammed up here and disappears into the Kalahari in an almost magical fashion.

The Okavango Delta consists of luxury safari camps that vary in activities from pure game viewing camps to mixed activity camps or pure water based activity camps.