Okavango Spirit

By light aircraft into Shakawe, at the top of Botswana's far north west. The boat's own guidance is about an hour in the air from Maun, where a guide meets you at the airstrip, then fifteen to twenty minutes by road to whichever bank the boat is tied to that day. Those airstrip transfers sit inside the rate; the flights themselves do not, and we book them alongside everything else. Driving instead is possible, around the top of the Delta from Maun and through the riverside villages, but it takes closer to five hours. Arrivals from Kasane or Livingstone, along the Caprivi Strip, can also be built in.

We can put you on a private charter rather than a scheduled seat, typically a Cessna Caravan or a Pilatus PC-12, and it earns its keep on this route because Shakawe sits at the far end of the country from Maun and a fixed departure time can cost you half a day at either end. Tell us who is travelling and we will price both ways of doing it so you can see the difference before you choose.

It does not move at night. The boat repositions during the day, working slowly upstream, and then ties up against the bank for the night, at a different spot each night, so you wake somewhere new without having travelled while you slept. Most of that repositioning happens while guests are out on the small tender boats or sitting on the sundeck, which is why the days feel unhurried rather than scheduled around a departure.

Seasickness is rarely the problem people expect. This is an inland river with no swell and no tide, the tenders run on flat water between papyrus banks, and at night there is no movement at all. If someone in your party is genuinely prone to motion sickness, say so when you enquire and we will raise it with the boat before we hold the cabins rather than leaving it to be discovered on day one.

The whole boat is how it is sold. The published rate is an exclusive use package covering the vessel for up to seven guests, with a per person per night addition for guests eight to fourteen, so whoever books it has it to themselves rather than sharing with strangers. Below decks are seven en suite cabins, four doubles and three twins, and fourteen guests is the ceiling. Three metres above them sit the dining area, the lounge, the bar and the sundeck. Children are taken from six.

Two nights and three nights are the two packages, with a nightly rate beyond that. Two nights is the shortest stay and it still covers the cruise upstream, the tender boats and the excursion to Tsodilo Hills, where more than four thousand San paintings sit in the rock about fifty kilometres south west of Shakawe. The third night is the one that adds the morning game drive over the border into Bwabwata National Park in Namibia. We confirm the exact terms and the count in your party with the boat when we hold it for your dates.

The Panhandle is the part of the Okavango that does not dry out. It is the deep trench the river runs down after arriving from the Angolan highlands, held between fault lines and generally somewhere between two and eight metres deep, and it carries water every month of the year. That is precisely why a boat can be based in the Panhandle rather than on the seasonal floodplains further south. The annual flood raises and drops the level by roughly a metre and a half to two metres, at its highest around March and April, but the channel itself keeps flowing, and the published seasons run across all twelve months.

What the level changes is reach rather than whether you go. High water lets the tenders push further into side channels and flooded backwaters; at low water the main river and the lagoons still work but some of the narrower channels close up. Tell us your dates and we will ask the boat what is open at that point in the year instead of guessing, and if getting deep into the papyrus is the reason you are going we will steer you to the months that deliver it.

Yes. TravelHealthPro, the UK's official travel health service, classes the northern half of Botswana including the Okavango as high risk for malaria from October to May and lists antimalarial tablets among its recommendations for those months; for the rest of the year it drops the area to low risk and recommends awareness and bite avoidance instead. The CDC names the Okavango and Ngamiland districts, which is where Shakawe and the Panhandle sit, among the parts of Botswana for which it recommends prescription medicine to prevent malaria. Low risk is not the same as no risk.

We do not make medical recommendations, and we would not want to. We arrange travel; we are not doctors. Which tablets suit you, how they sit with anything else you take, and what is right for a child are questions for your own doctor or a travel clinic. On the practical part, dusk is the hour that matters, so long sleeves, long trousers and repellent are worth the packing space.

The package covers the cabin, all meals, all drinks, guest laundry, the daily activities, the road transfers to and from Shakawe airstrip, the guiding and the park entry fees, with tax included. In practice almost nothing on board is chargeable.

Outside it sit premium brand spirits, gratuities and comprehensive travel insurance, along with the flights in and out, and a conservation, community and reserve charge levied per person per night that funds anti-poaching, wildlife monitoring and community work in the areas the boat runs through. That charge does not apply to children under six. We build every one of those into a single quote before you commit, so there is no arithmetic left to do at the end of the trip.