Flora & fauna — what you can see

Loxodonta africana

Smaller herds, longer legs and a memory for water: the Kunene elephants walk up to 70 km a night between the dry rivers. One of only two desert-adapted populations in the world — the other lives in Mali.

Loxodonta africana

Botswana holds around 130,000 elephants — a third of all African savanna elephants. In Chobe the herds walk down to the river every evening, and at Savuti the bulls own the waterholes.

Giraffa giraffa angolensis

Angolan giraffe in the dry rivers of the Kaokoveld, southern giraffe in the delta. The tallest animal on earth browses the ana trees nobody else can reach.

Oryx gazella

Gemsbok on a red dune

The animal on Namibia’s coat of arms. Survives without drinking and lets its body temperature rise to 45 °C before it starts to sweat.

Antidorcas marsupialis

Namibia’s national animal, pronking across the plains of Etosha and the Kalahari. The herds on the Etosha pan can number thousands.

Equus zebra hartmannae · Equus quagga

Hartmann’s mountain zebra on the escarpment, Burchell’s zebra in Etosha — and on the Makgadikgadi the second-largest zebra migration in Africa.

Acinonyx jubatus

Namibia has the largest cheetah population in the world — roughly a third of all remaining animals, most of them on farmland. In Botswana we meet them on the edge of the delta.

Panthera leo

Lion on the track in Etosha

Desert lions of the Skeleton Coast, black-maned Kalahari lions and the big prides of Savuti and Moremi. You hear them more often than you see them — usually at night, from the roof tent.

Panthera pardus

Leopard on an evening prowl

Present almost everywhere, seen almost nowhere. Best chances: the riverine forests of Khwai and the boulders of the Kaokoveld at dawn.

Diceros bicornis

Black rhino in the white dust

The Kunene region holds the largest free-roaming black rhino population in the world — outside any national park, protected by community rangers.

Hippopotamus amphibius

The delta’s architects: hippo paths keep the channels open. Rule number one on the water — never between a hippo and the river.

Syncerus caffer

Herds of several hundred along the Chobe — and the reason we keep the roof tents zipped at night.

Connochaetes taurinus

In the green season the Kalahari fills with wildebeest, springbok and oryx following the rain — a migration few people have heard of.

Lycaon pictus

Wild dog pack on the move

Fewer than 7,000 remain, and northern Botswana is their last stronghold. Watching a pack hunt at dusk is the safari jackpot.

Three meerkats on sentry duty

Brown hyenas patrol the Skeleton Coast beaches, meerkats stand sentry on the Makgadikgadi, honey badgers raid the camp kitchen. The Kalahari at night is busier than by day.

Coracias caudatus

Lilac-breasted roller on a perch

The most photographed bird in Africa — eight colours on one perch, usually the dead branch next to the track.

Haliaeetus vocifer

Fish eagle on a dead branch

The sound of the delta. Its call carries across the lagoons at dawn, and it is the first thing you hear at Ngepi and on the Chobe.

Ardeotis kori

Kori bustard on the open plain

The heaviest flying bird on earth and the national bird of Botswana — strolling across the Etosha and Kalahari plains at walking pace.

Struthio camelus

Ostrich crossing the red dunes

The largest bird in the world, and at 70 km/h fast enough to keep pace with a Land Cruiser on the pan.

Phoenicopterus roseus · Phoeniconaias minor

Flamingos wading at Walvis Bay

Greater and lesser flamingos at the Walvis Bay lagoon all year — and after good rains, tens of thousands on the Etosha and Makgadikgadi pans.

Scotopelia peli

Pel’s fishing owl by the river

The delta’s ghost: a huge rufous owl that fishes at night from the riverine trees of Khwai and Xakanaxa.

Monteiro’s hornbill, Damaraland

Rüppell’s parrot, Monteiro’s hornbill, the dune lark, the Herero chat — fourteen species that live almost only in the Namibian escarpment and the Namib.

Welwitschia mirabilis

A plant that grows only two leaves — for up to 1,500 years. Found only in the Namib, where it drinks the coastal fog. The oldest known individuals were seedlings before the Romans left Britain.

Aloidendron dichotomum

Quiver trees near Keetmanshoop

The San hollowed its branches for quivers. A giant aloe that grows on the rocky slopes of the south and the Kaokoveld and blooms yellow in June.

Vachellia erioloba

The shade tree of the Kalahari, roots down to 60 metres. Its pods feed everything from giraffe to oryx — and our camps sit beneath it.

Adansonia digitata

Upside-down trees up to 2,000 years old — on the shores of the Makgadikgadi, along the Kunene and on the Angolan coast.

Colophospermum mopane

Butterfly-shaped leaves and the food of the mopane worm. The forest of northern Botswana and the Kaokoveld — elephants eat it, and then push it over.

Hyphaene petersiana

The palm of the Kunene and the Owambo north; its ivory-hard nut is carved into the pendants sold at Epupa.

Faidherbia albida

The tree of the dry rivers. It drops its leaves in the rainy season and greens in the dry — feeding elephants and giraffes when nothing else does.

Millions of bare, circular patches in the grass of the Namib and the Marienfluss — termites, competition for water or something else entirely? Science is still arguing.