Botswana

“Dumela” (hello in Tswana), girls and boys. I’m Balinda Buffalo, from Botswana. I hope you’re all well today!

I have been asked to write about my country by my good friends Zeb Zebra and Oki Oxpecker. Zeb, Oki, and I went on safari last year! We visited four amazing areas of Botswana and I’m going to tell you a little bit about each of them below.

The Okavango Delta was our first safari destination. This is my home! It’s a beautiful place to live. You can see a picture of the Delta at the top of this page. Zeb is treating me and Oki to a mokoro excursion! A mokoro is like a canoe. We are gliding through the water, lilies all around us. The birds perching on my head and shoulders are red-billed oxpeckers. They look like Oki, except that they don’t have yellow on their beaks. The Delta is full of birdlife!

There are lots of animals here too. That’s because there’s a good supply of water for us all year round. This water comes from the highlands of a neighbouring country called Angola. The Delta collects water like a big basin, but the area around it is actually quite dry! All my family love living here, along with rhino, elephant, wildebeest, antelopes, giraffe, zebra, and hippos.

The big cats live here as well – lion, leopard, and cheetah. I must admit, we buffalos wish they lived somewhere else! I’ve had a few fights with lions, which is why I have scars on my rump. The Delta is famous for fights between lion and buffalo.

As there is so much wildlife overall, game drives here are excellent! The mokoro excursions are wonderful too, and some camps provide special activities for children. These include fishing, playing football, making bows and arrows, and cooking on a camp fire.

You can enjoy lots of activities in Chobe National Park too! Activities especially for young people include nature walks, colouring, and learning which tracks belong to which animal. Chobe was the second area Zeb, Oki, and I went to on our safari. It’s north-east of the Okavango Delta and also has loads of wildlife!

Chobe is the third largest national park in Botswana, and has grasslands, woodlands, marshes, and floodplains. Game drives here are really interesting, as you see so many different landscapes and so much wildlife. You can even go on boat trips! Zeb, Oki, and I were on a boat trip when we saw these lovely elephants, crossing the water together.

We also saw elephants in the Linyanti, which was the next place we visited. This area is in the north-west corner of Chobe. It is split into three reserves – Linyanti, Selinda, and Kwando. All three have lots of water for wildlife, including some gorgeous lagoons!

The Linyanti has woodlands too. You can enjoy game drives, boat trips, and children’s activities such as making bows and arrows, cooking on a camp fire, and learning animal names.

On our last day in the Linyanti, Zeb said that this had been quite a watery trip so far. That’s when I told him and Oki that I had a surprise for them! At first they weren’t sure what I was talking about, but when we reached our final area they understood – we went to the Makgadikgadi Pans during the dry season, so it was very very dry!

This area is in the east of Botswana and the pans are enormous stretches of salt. In the word “Makgadikgadi”, the two “g”s are silent, so it’s “Makadikadi”. The pans are the remains of a large lake and close to a desert called the Kalahari. This really is an amazing area – Oki thought it was like being on the Moon!

During the dry season, the pans don’t have much wildlife. Nevertheless, we saw a few snakes and lizards, some tortoises, and we made friends with a gang of meerkats. So the game drives do have their highlights, and there are lots of other activities to enjoy. Some camps offer horse riding, walking with the local bush men, and even quad biking across the Pans! As you can tell from this picture, Zeb, Oki, and I loved our quad bike ride.

We have decided to visit the Pans again together soon, when it’s the wet season. Zeb has heard that so much grass grows on the Pans during the rains that huge herds of zebra and wildebeest come here! And there should be lots of birdlife for Oki.

I had such a wonderful time on safari with Oki and Zeb. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about it! Botswana is a beautiful country, perfect for a special vacation.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE WHO ZEB AND OKI MET NEXT, JUST FOLLOW THEM TO NAMIBIA! YOU CAN ALSO LEARN MORE ABOUT ME AND OTHER BUFFALOS BELOW.