An outstanding adventure with so many ups and downs and only made possible by the “can do” attitude of Paul Goldstein, the Polar Team at Exodus and the crew of the Polar Pioneer. This is what all holidays should be like! My daughter and I would happily do it all again in an instant.

Botswana Safari Holidays
Botswana Safari Holidays
Botswana Safari Highlights
Thanks to the country’s stable government and progressive social policies, Botswana is now one of Southern Africa’s hottest safari destinations. Here are four great places to visit in Botswana for animal lovers.
- Central Kalahari Game Reserve: The second largest wildlife reserve in the world (20,000 square miles), the Kalahari Desert is the ancestral home of the Bushmen people. Its diverse array of animals includes Lions, Leopards, Hyenas, Wild Dogs, dozens of Antelope species, and many more. The area’s annual Zebra migration is spectacular, but little-known.
- Chobe National Park: Chobe is home to over 120,000 Elephants– about 1/3 of the continent’s total population. The park offers lots of different ecosystems to explore, including savannah, swamps, floodplains, and mopane woodlands. Besides Elephants, Chobe National Park is a great place to see big cats, which are largely found in the Liyanti Marshes.
- Makgadikgadi Pans: These are the world’s largest salt pans in the world. When flooded, the area is visited by thousands of Zebras, Wildebeest, and Flamingoes. But even when they’re dry, the Makgadikgadi Pans are worth a visit for their surreal beauty. Visit at sunset to get stunning photos framed by the silhouettes of ancient Baobab trees.
- Okavango Delta: The most famous of Botswana’s many ecotourism attractions, the Okavango Delta’s 5791-square mile wetland area earned UNESCO protected status in 2014. In the winter its myriad canals and swamps attract some 200,000 large mammals (Cheetahs, Lions, Elephants, Rhinos, Wild Dogs, etc.) and over 400 bird species, including the Crested Crane, Hammerkop, and Sacred Ibis.
Richard Edwards Spitsbergen Photography: In Search of Polar Bears
Tony Teperek Galapagos & Amazon – Cachalote ExplorerThe Napo Lodge Wildlife centre lodges are amazing and very comfortable. Lots of wildlife to see from the open canoe up the various creeks and the easy walking through the jungle.
In Galapagos we did the western itinerary (B) this time having done the eastern itinerary 10 years ago. We found the two to be quite different in some ways with noticeably fewer seabirds on this trip compared to 10 years ago although they were slightly different times of year. However this itinerary is much better for penguins and turtles and the flightless cormorant can only be seen on itinerary B. B is said to be better for whales but we didn’t see any – just dolphins. Either way it is a tremendous wildlife experience but don’t expect an idyllic tropical island paradise, the islands can be quite stark and barren and the water is cold despite it being on the equator.
John Colverson Discover Costa RicaThis is certainly a trip for wildlife lovers, and on that score it certainly does not disappoint, though a good pair of binoculars is probably more important than a good camera. However, I think marketing this trip as something which can be enjoyed in the rainy season is misleading at best. It doesn’t just rain for a bit then the sun comes out – when it rains it can rain for hours and hours. While we were lucky in that in rained mostly at night on our trip, on a few occasions we were caught in it, and our trip was at the beginning of the rainy season.
The early starts were too early at times, and when you’ve just come on two long flights involving twenty four hours of airports, security checks, passports, flights . . . being told you need to get up for a 6.00am breakfast seems just cruel.
Our tour leader argued that because of the early sunset around 5.30 – 6pm we needed to make the best of the day light, which is a fair point, but our afternoon trips invariable finished well before dinner, so a later breakfast at say 8am would not really have created a problem.
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