botswana & zimbabwe: delta waterways to kariba

The Lady Jacqueline is a small private houseboat run by Bumi Hills, nothing like a cruise ship.

She takes at most eight guests, in two double cabins with their own bathrooms and two bunk rooms, and sails with a captain, a chef, a deckhand and a professional guide from the lodge. You cruise the Matusadona shoreline, go out in the tender boat to fish or to watch game on the bank, can walk in the national park with the guide, and sleep on board.

The lodge offers the night to guests staying at least three nights, so that it never falls on a travelling day, and this trip has four. It has to be reserved ahead and depends on the boat being free, so tell us when you enquire.

Children under twelve are not taken on board. If sleeping afloat does not appeal, leave it out: the lodge runs its own boat cruises and fishing trips by day.

Yes, more than most safaris, with a few age limits to plan around.

Shinde takes children from six, and asks families with children of fifteen and under to have a vehicle of their own, which we arrange. Verney's Camp takes all ages and has two family tents with two bedrooms each; with under-sixes it too requires a private vehicle. Bumi Hills welcomes all ages and runs a children's club.

The limits apply on foot and afloat: walking safaris at both Verney's and Bumi Hills are for those of sixteen and over, and the houseboat night on Lake Kariba is for twelve and over. At Victoria Falls each activity sets its own age limit, so let us have each child's age when you first get in touch, and every activity can be checked before you book.

If anyone under eighteen is travelling, carry a full birth certificate for each child: the UK Foreign Office says Botswana asks for it on the way in and the way out.

In the dry months, very, and the reason is water.

Hwange has very little natural surface water through its long dry winter, so once the rains end the natural pans shrink and the park's animals come to depend on waterholes fed by boreholes, most of them now pumped by solar power. We put Hwange's elephant population at around 45,000.

From about July the elephants gather at that pumped water in herds, with the pressure building to a climax in October and November, just before the rains break. A permanent pan in a quiet corner of the park, like the one at Verney's, is then busy for much of the day, and you can watch it from the camp's deck between drives.

The other side of this is that after good rain the herds scatter to fresh water all over the park, so between about December and April the pan may be quiet for days. Nobody can promise a herd on a given afternoon.

By a mix of light aircraft and road, with the border crossed by road.

The trip opens with a flight of 25 to 30 minutes from Maun to Shinde. From Shinde the usual way to the falls is a light aircraft to Kasane, in the north of Botswana, and then a drive across the border. Allow between ninety minutes and two hours for it, including the stop at immigration.

British travellers need a visa for Zimbabwe and, like most visitors, normally get it at the border, while Botswana asks them for none for a stay of up to 90 days; holders of other passports should check.

Verney's Camp can be reached from the falls by road or by light aircraft to the Manga airstrip, a 50-minute game drive from camp. Hwange to Lake Kariba is normally flown: the flight takes about an hour and a half, landing five minutes from Bumi Hills.

On every flight the limit is 20 kilograms per person in soft bags, hand luggage included.

July to September: those three months are the only ones recommended on our own pages for every stop.

By then Hwange's natural water has gone and the elephants are crowding the pumped pans, the Delta's flood is high for the mokoro at Shinde, the game on Kariba's shore has been drawn down to the lake, and the falls have dropped far enough for the spray to clear and the gorge to show. June is close behind; only Hwange is still building.

October has the heaviest gatherings of animals in Hwange and on the lake, but it is fiercely hot, above all at Kariba, and by then the falls have thinned.

April and May have the falls at their fullest, when spray can hide the view from the paths, and fewer people about, while the game is still spread out.

December to March are rated challenging for most of this route: hot, wet and green, good for birds and young animals but poor for the big gatherings this trip is built around.

Kariba is one of Zimbabwe's classic tigerfish waters: its tigerfish tournament has been fished there since 1962, in October, when the weather is warmer.

Fish can be caught all year, but we favour the warm months, and that is worth weighing against the heat, because October is also the hottest month on the lake.

At Bumi Hills the tigerfishing is catch and release, from the lodge's boats or from the tender of the houseboat, along a shoreline you will often share with elephants and hippos. Bream is the fish most often caught, in a lake that holds dozens of species.

Keen anglers should say so at the start, so that guides, boats and tackle for your dates can be settled with the lodge before you book.