The best way to experience the Okavango is by mokoro ride on the water. The mokoro is a local canoe traditionally made from the hollowed out trunk of a sausage tree, or latterly fibreglass. Passing through narrow water channels, punted by a guide, you relax and watch a peaceful, reflective world simply glide by.

The most likely wildlife you will spot here will be birds, such as the exquisite azure and orange malachite kingfisher, majestic sea eagles and endangered slaty egrets and wattled cranes. You might spot a crocodile languishing in the sun. On the fringes of the delta lie some of the best wildlife viewing areas in the country, including the Moremi Game Reserve.

Chobe National Park on the Botswana border is one of the most difficult environments to conserve. Different rules and attitudes to conservation in neighbouring Namibia and Zimbabwe make co-operation difficult in terms of resouce management. Animals migrating to the area in the dry season, such as the African elephants from the Chobe River floodplains, know no frontiers of course, and this can be to their detriment.

The Kalahari is a pristine wilderness covering almost two thirds of Botswana’s landmass. Like most deserts, it is an arid landscape filled with grasslands, low-lying bushes and scrub. As with the Delta, however, the Kalahari varies widely throughout the year and transforms from a land of lush grasses and frequent waterholes in the wet to a dusty shrivelled up place in the dry. In the transition periods, great migrations of animals can be witnessed.

Botswana wildlife is awesome and accessible. It is a place where one feels close again with nature and gets a real feel for how humans were before they became misplaced predators.

If you are lucky you will see the big five here, but four is a more likely result. Rhinos, formerly extinct in the area, have been reintroduced in small numbers to Chief’s Island in the Moremi Reserve. Elephant, lion, leopard and buffalo are all present, but you'll need luck to spot a leopard. There is much more wildlife to see from the impossibly elegant impala to the spiral horned kudu to a giraffe troop to a dazzle of zebras.

Safaris are sometimes built up to be exciting National Geographic style sightings of the big five and predator kills every few minutes. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. You will rarely get close enough to a kill and it doesn’t really happen in slow motion. It all happens in an instant.

Your chance of seeing a kill depends on how good your guide is. The one who relies on his radio will give you an up close and personal view of a feeding or sleeping lion, but in the company of hoardes clicking on their digital cameras.

If you have a proper tracker guide who reads the signs of the bush radio and TV, you'll get a slightly less voyeuristic experience. The true tracker listens to the warning barks of impala and birdcalls to tell him if lions or leopards are in the vicinity. From tracks in the sand, he can determine age, sex and when the animal passed.

For game viewing, the best time to visit is in the dry season from May to October. In the winter (our summer) the temperatures can plummet at night and even be cold during the day so bring some warm clothing. You may need to take antimalarials in the wet season. Lemon balm based insect repellants are particularly effective. Perfumes can attract insects and the colour blue attracts the tsetse flies, which spreads sleeping sickness, although that is not as prevalent as it used to be.

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