Luxury safari in Botswana

This is where it starts to get a bit complicated.

There is no doubt that spending more money on a lodge does not guarantee you a better core safari experience. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true.

The danger in a luxury safari lodge is that the whole operation becomes more focused on relaxation and comfort, than on the actual wildlife experience. In some lodges, the Food & Beverage Manager ranks higher on the pay scale than the Head Safari Guide. Clearly something has gone seriously wrong.

The underlying reason is that the type of guest who puts luxury first also tends to appreciate more relaxed and easy-going safari outings. If you are more active and wildlife-focused, then you need to tread very carefully.

We also find it ironic that many of the highest cost lodges are larger, less intimate and load more guests on their vehicles than camps under half their cost.

Another phenomenon that we have witnessed time and again is that the harder-hitting lodges tend to attract the younger and more energetic guides, whilst the more upmarket lodges serve as ‘retirement homes’ for guides who have lost their enthusiasm.

Here at ATR, we are all about the core safari experience. You will find that the lodges we rate the most highly are those which remain capable of delivering the most intense safari experience to those guests who want it.

price is definitely not an indicator of safari quality

In the safari world it is commonly said that : “First time guests come for the wildlife, but returning guests come for the people.”

There is certainly some truth in that. There is no doubt that meeting the wonderful people of Africa is a very special treat. The tribal culture that remains so pervasive across the continent leads to a very strong ‘us’ culture, in contrast the the ‘me’ culture of other continents.

In Botswana, the safari experience tends to be unusually pure, with very limited exposure to local people, in towns and villages.

Your main interaction with locals therefore tends to be restricted to the staff at the lodges. Nevertheless, this can be fabulous. You may think that the welcome song on arrival seems a bit cheesy at first, but it is a big part of the culture. The staff in a camp is a tight-knit crew and they love nothing more than to join together in a song and dance.

Your guide and the front-of-house staff will be the most educated amongst the group, familiar with the ways of guests from around the world and able to handle conversation with great style.

But we strongly recommend spending time with other members of the crew. A stroll to the back-of-house, through the kitchen, laundry and garage is always fun.

If you have kids with you, then bring a soccer ball and have a kick-about at every possible opportunity. We are yet to find a situation in Africa where this did not lead to endless fun.

If you specifically want to visit towns and villages in Botswana, then let us know, there are also ways to make this happen with elegance.

By the way, the locals in Botswana speak Setswana. It’s definitely worth learning a few phrases if you can.

the luxury of spending time with local people

The usual arrangement in Botswana is that each camp has a team of resident guides, who know their patches inside out and look after their guests from arrival to departure.

The camp manager will allocate a specific guide to your group, based upon their availability and the information that we have communicated to them in advance of your arrival.

If you are travelling in a group of 1-3 guests, then the chances are you will be asked to share a vehicle with another group. This arrangement suits the vast majority of our guests, since spending time with other people in this way so often turns out to be a delight.

However, for some people, having a private vehicle is a significant way to boost the quality of a safari, since it provides you with much greater freedom to plan your days.

If you are travelling in a group of 4-7 guests, then you will usually be allocated a private vehicle without any additional cost.

If there are 1-3 of you, then you would have to pre-book a private vehicle at considerable extra expense.

usually far less important that it might seem

In many of the best camps in Botswana, for an additional daily fee, we are able to pre-book a specific guide for your stay.

This enables us to take greater control over the quality and tonality of your safari experience, since we will be able to choose a guide that we know personally and whom we are sure will suit your group.

For this vast majority of guests, this is unnecessary. All the guides at a good lodge should be of sufficient quality.

However, if you are a very experienced safari traveller, if you have a specific focus (such as birding) or if you have younger kids, then it might be worth considering.

There is a considerable cost attached to booking a private guide, so you also need to not be too concerned about that.

If you are visiting multiple camps under the same ownership in Botswana, then it can be a good idea to keep this guide with you throughout your stay, since they will have extreme expertise for each locality.

We generally do not recommend travelling more widely around Africa with a private guide, since they tend not to know the specific locations as well as the local guides.

A major exception to this is when visiting extremely remote locations, where suitable local guides are not available, but this rarely applies in Botswana.

only usually recommended for more specialist trips

If you are keen not to mix with other guests during your safari, then you may consider booking lodges and camps for your exclusive use.

We should mention that, for most people, one of the great pleasures of being on safari is meeting and mixing with other guests. But we do also completely understand the desire for privacy.

Some lodges have private annexes, usually consisting of a small public area and two or three bedrooms, in which you can enjoy complete privacy, including private dining, a private safari guide and vehicle.

Above and beyond this, it is obviously possible to book whole lodges, although you will usually be required to pay for all of the rooms (some camps in Botswana only have three or four rooms in total).

Outside the main Jun-Oct dry season, it may be possible to hire whole camps at much lower rates.

Our preference, if we were to book a camp for our own exclusive use, would probably be to book a small and remote camp, so that we could have that sense of being alone in an infinite wilderness. We would maybe combine that with a stay in a larger camp, where we could mix with other guests.

complete privacy can be both a positive and a negative

Almost all of the camps and lodges in Botswana can only be accessed by light aircraft or helicopter.

The least expensive way to get around is to use the shared charter flights, typically 6-12 seater light aircraft, which hop around the various bush airstrips.

Although in most environments it might seem extraordinarily extravagant, here in Botswana it is common to charter private helicopter flips between camps.

The great advantage is that these little helicopters can land at the camp, so you don’t need to drive to an airstrip and wait for half an hour. You can simply stroll out of camp when your helicopter lands.

The helicopter flights themselves are great fun, at relatively low altitude and ready to divert off course every now and then if there is an interesting wildlife sighting.

Most helicopter flips within the Okavango Delta only take 10-20 minutes.

We have done some sums and it would appear that using small helicopters in this way carries roughly the same carbon overhead as flying, so you don’t need to feel too guilty either.

When it comes to the longer connecting flights to Johannesburg, Victoria Falls and Cape Town, we almost always use the scheduled large plane services.

If you are planning to fly to Africa in a private jet, then please do let us know and we will figure out whether or not you should use it for some connections.

private helicopter flips are surprisingly accessible