To many, the Okavango swamps or Okavango Delta is the most beautiful part of Africa, but this area (flooded marshland all year round, but gets wetter/ more flooded between June and August) and in Africa, winter is not only its coldest time, but also its driest — not the Okavango. Between June and August the Okavango swells 3 times as big as it normally is, why it swells so much is because the water really has no where to go.
Let us give you a brief geography lesson: The Okavango Delta starts — its source, in the Angolan Highlands about 1, 250 km (777 miles) away.
The Angolan Highlands have a huge rainfall in January, and this water works its way, and takes a long time to reach this delta (it moves slowly) and usually this river (the Okavango river) would empty into the sea, but there is no where for it to go except into the Okavango Delta — causing it to swell and swell. The water is so much that it seeps into the Kalahari (that is why the Kalahari is not all desert) the water spreads out and covers an area about the size of Switzerland.
The ‘Okavango’ means ‘the river that never finds the sea’.
The Kalahari desert seeps into 3 countries. The biggest part is found in Botswana, where you also find in the eastern third of Namibia and then the northernmost part of the Northern Cape Province in South Africa.
In a part the Kalahari, a private reserve has introduced black rhino and the rare and beautiful black-maned Kalahari lions that were once abundant in that vast area.
