Jacana Camp

By light aircraft into the Jao airstrip in the western Okavango Delta, then about thirty minutes on to the camp's island. Most guests fly in from Maun, but the same small aircraft also serve Kasane, so Jacana can follow a stay in the Chobe area as easily as a night in Maun.

For your own timings, we can book a private charter into the Jao airstrip: a Cessna Grand Caravan EX seats up to eleven, and the five-seat GA-8 Airvan is right for a couple or a family of four. Luggage is limited to twenty kilograms a person, hand luggage included, and soft bags pack into the hold far better than hard cases.

Both, though the water comes first. Jacana sits on a small island in the open floodplain of the Jao Flats, so most outings are by mokoro, the poled dugout canoe, or by motorboat through the papyrus and lily channels, with catch-and-release fishing in season.

Game drives run on the larger islands nearby, reached from drive stations close to camp, and they cover the most ground from October to April, once the flood has dropped. Guided walks go out in season, and you never walk alone. For more big game on land, we pair Jacana with a drier camp such as Tubu Tree, on Hunda Island in the west of the same reserve.

Yes, because almost every outing is on the water, where the birds are. The camp takes its name from the African jacana, which walks the lily pads on its long toes, and the smaller lesser jacana is found here too.

Other birds the guides look for from the mokoro include Pel's fishing owl, the slaty egret and the African pygmy goose, and the wider reserve holds more than 400 species. Sightings are never certain, but quiet water and a poled canoe let you get close without disturbing them. Painted reed frogs on the papyrus and red lechwe on the floodplain add to the small-scale pleasures of the place.

The Kays family of Maun, who hold the Jao Reserve, a private concession of about 60,000 hectares with Moremi Game Reserve along its eastern side. Jacana was one of their first three camps, welcoming its first guests in July 1999 alongside Jao and Kwetsani.

In 2019 the camp was taken down and rebuilt: larger tents with indoor and outdoor showers, a main area under arched canvas between two tall sycamore figs, a pool deck, a fire deck over the floodplain and a jetty, all of it running on solar power. David, Cathy and Martin Kays still run the reserve, and its six camps share it with nobody else.

Yes. TravelHealthPro, the UK's official travel health service, rates the northern half of Botswana, the Okavango Delta included, as high risk for malaria from October to May and low risk for the rest of the year. Low risk is not no risk. The American CDC lists the Okavango and Ngamiland districts among the areas where it recommends medicine to prevent malaria.

We are travel planners, not medical professionals, so whether to take tablets, and which, is for you to decide with your own doctor or a travel clinic. On an island camp ringed by water, cover arms and legs from dusk and keep insect repellent to hand.

In the dry winter, roughly June to September. The Delta's flood comes from rain that fell months earlier in the Angolan highlands, so the channels around Jacana fill just as the local rains stop, and the mokoro and boat trips are at their fullest. That same window, June to October, is our recommended time for the Okavango Delta, with July to September the standout.

April, May and November sit either side. December to March is the green season: wetter, hotter and quieter, with summer migrant birds in, newborn antelope, dramatic storm light for photographers and far fewer vehicles about. The water is lower then, which is when game drives from Jacana range furthest.