14 September 2025
Today we have an amazing scenic flight over the Okavango Delta seeing all its glory from the air and then continue on to the Makgadikgadi Pan.
We have a fairly early flight this morning but we have enough time for Bibi to show us some more of this amazing environment. We learn about elephants stripping bark from tree, not all round to avoid ring barking trees but they eventually do and trees die. There is also dried mud on trees where an elephant has had a mudbath and rubbed against the tree to remove parasites. We are starting to recognise all the different animal tracks. Wild sage plants are used for cooking but also used for making fishing creels.
At the bush airstrip, we drive around to make sure there are no animals. Previously a plane’s wings hit a giraffe on take off. It killed the giraffe instantly and destroyed plane. This time, despite animal tracks all over runway plus elephant poop, the area is clear.
We have two planes and I get to sit the front of the smaller one that takes 3 of us. It is fantastic to see the Delta from the air to really get a feel for the size of it – it is absolutely massive. There are areas that obviously have water and then extremely dry patches where the trees have lost their leaves. We also see the pools, islands and white clay pans that we visited yesterday where the mineral salts have killed off the trees. We see the river system coming in – areas where the water is very brown.
It is very easy to see elephants from the air – on the land and in the water. Groups of impala are visible. Anne sees a hippo on her side of the plane and the other group see buffalo.
Back in Maun we are reunited with our bus (and big bags) and begin our long drive through to Nata and the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans. There is a water pipeline running alongside the road; elephants have smashed manhole covers to get water to drink.
The Makgadikgadi Pan is a salt pan situated in the middle of the dry savanna of north-eastern Botswana, is one of the largest salt flats in the world (covering 37,500km2). The pan is all that remains of the formerly enormous Lake Makgadikgadi, which once covered an area larger than Switzerland, but dried up tens of thousands of years ago. Recent studies of human mitochondrial DNA suggest that modern Homo sapiens first began to evolve in this region some 200,000 years ago, when it was a vast, exceptionally fertile area of lakes, rivers, marshes, woodlands and grasslands especially favorable for habitation by evolving hominins and other mammals.
Very little wildlife can exist here during the harsh dry season of strong hot winds and only salt water, but following a rain the pan becomes an important habitat for migrating animals including wildebeest and one of Africa’s biggest zebra populations, and the large predators that prey on them. The wet season also brings migratory birds such as ducks, geese and great white pelicans. The pan is home of one of only two breeding populations of greater flamingos in southern Africa.
Makgadikgadi means ‘vast, lifeless land’ in the Setswana language, which is very apt. It is a vast flat area as far as the eye can see. At the moment is it very dry, dusty and salty. There are wildebeest everywhere. We see a male ostrich sitting on a clutch of eggs and others with 2-3 day old chicks; Grey Crowned Crane (national bird of Uganda); and masses of pelicans sitting on sandbanks but no flamingos.
We enjoy sundowners watching the pelicans, and then a drive back to the lodge in the dark. At the lodge we have big chalets complete with a bath in the room and an outdoor shower.
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