Three generations in the Okavango

The Andersens were seven. Two grandparents in their early seventies, the parents in their forties, and three children aged fifteen, thirteen, and nine. The brief came in over email from Margaret, the grandmother, who had been on safari twice in the eighties and wanted to do it once more before her knees gave up. Her one rule was that she wanted everyone in the same camp. No splitting into two vehicles. No "the children eat at six and the adults eat at eight." She wanted to look around the table at dinner and see all of them.

This is harder to plan than it sounds. Most safari lodges in Botswana are small. Most have a six or eight guest limit. A family of seven, with a nine-year-old, takes the whole camp, or it doesn't get in at all. We built this one carefully.

Eight nights. Two camps in northern Botswana, both selected for a family of mixed ages and energy levels. Linyanti for the elephants, the Okavango Delta for the water and the variety. We held the booking pattern for nine months. Here's how it ran.

Duma Tau, Linyanti

Four nights at Duma Tau. The camp sits on a lagoon in the Linyanti concession, which is one of the wildest parts of northern Botswana and runs along the Botswana-Namibia border. The lodge has eight rooms, all on raised decks looking over the water. Elephants come to the lagoon to drink in the late afternoons. There is a plunge pool on each deck. Margaret took to sitting on hers at four o'clock with a gin and tonic, watching the elephants come in.

Linyanti is what you book when you want big game and you want it close. The concession has the highest dry-season elephant density in southern Africa. Lions in the area are habituated to vehicles and easy to find. The wild dogs den in this region, and we timed the trip for July, which is when the puppies are old enough to be at the den site but young enough to still be there.

The thirteen-year-old, Sam, was the wildlife enthusiast. He'd been printing out species lists for six months. Duma Tau gave him a head guide named Mods who took the family out twice a day and treated Sam as the lead spotter. By day two Sam was calling out impala, kudu, sable, and roan correctly from a hundred metres. By day four he had identified a martial eagle from a tree silhouette and Mods had to admit he was right.

The nine-year-old, Noa, was less interested in lists and more interested in the elephants. Mods worked out within an afternoon that he should slow down at every elephant sighting and let her watch them for as long as she wanted. There was a herd with two young calves at a waterhole on the second morning. We later heard the family stayed there for an hour and a half.

The grandfather, Peter, had recently had a hip operation. We'd briefed the camp on this and they put him in the room closest to the main area. The walkway was flat. The vehicle had a fold-down step. None of this was discussed in front of him. It was simply set up.

Margaret had a quiet day on day three. She'd wanted one. She did not go on the morning drive. The lodge brought her breakfast on her deck. She read for an hour, watched the elephants again, and was back in the vehicle by four with a sun hat and an expectant expression.

The transfer

Day five was a flight day. A short hop on a Cessna from the Linyanti airstrip to a small airstrip in the Jao concession in the Okavango Delta. Total time in the air was forty minutes. The kids got window seats. The pilot dropped low over the floodplains so they could see elephants from above.

Jao Camp, Okavango Delta

Four nights at Jao. The lodge had been rebuilt in the years before our visit, and the rebuild was good. The rooms are large, raised on decks, and connected by walkways that wind through wild date palms. The main area sits over the floodplain. In the green season the water is high and you do most activities by boat. In the dry season more game drives become possible. We were there in late July, which is the inflection point. We could do both.

The Delta is what you book when you want the variety. Margaret had specifically asked for the mokoro, the dugout canoe, because she remembered it from her trip in 1984. We had three mokoros booked for the family on day six. The polers worked together and moved them through the channels in near-silence. Frogs on the reed stems. A fish eagle on a dead tree. The fifteen-year-old, Lily, had been deep into her phone at Linyanti and put it down for the first time in the canoe. She said later it was her favourite hour of the trip.

The activities at Jao were varied enough to keep everyone different. The boys went on game drives in the mornings with the parents. Margaret had a spa massage one afternoon. The grandfather and the nine-year-old went to the camp's small interpretation centre and looked at insect collections for an hour. There was a guided walk on day seven for the older kids only, with a tracker who showed them how to read elephant prints.

The food. We get asked about the food in Botswana more than people realise. Jao has a chef who does properly. The bread comes out warm at every meal. The kids' menu is real food, not chicken nuggets, but it scales down. Margaret had gluten-free needs that had been logged in the original email. The chef met her on arrival and walked through the week with her. None of this was visible to the rest of the family. It was simply handled.

What we built, and why

Linyanti for the elephants. The Okavango for the water. Duma Tau and Jao chosen specifically because they have the room configurations to take a family of seven without splitting them between two lodges. Both lodges had recently been refurbished. Both had head guides we'd worked with. Both have the kind of staff who can read a family quickly and adjust.

The pacing was deliberate. Four and four, with the more active camp first. We didn't want Margaret and Peter doing two long drives a day in week two. By Jao, the older grandparents were on a slightly slower schedule, with one drive a day and the option of an afternoon by the deck. The younger members of the family went out twice. The flexibility came from the camps. Both have enough capacity in their guiding teams to split when the family wanted to.

The logistics for a multigenerational trip add up. Three flights with light aircraft. Different luggage limits. A private fast-track at Maun on the way out so the older travellers were not standing in queues with the kids. Federal Air picked them up at the airport, the lodge had carrier seats for the nine-year-old. We pre-paid the park fees so nothing had to be settled at camp.

It works because the camps are small enough that the staff knew everyone's name by day two, and varied enough that no one got bored. It also works because Botswana, in particular this part of it, is set up for a family who wants to be together but at different paces. Linyanti and the Delta give you two completely different countries inside one trip.

If you've been thinking about this kind of family trip and you're not sure where to begin, start with a conversation.