The safari of the decade: Botswana's Okavango Delta "In the 1990s, the Okavango was still split up into the Moremi Game Reserve and a number of hunting areas - and tourism to the Delta was relatively small. The last decade has seen a steep change: Southern African safaris are no longer the poor relation of East Africa trips, and the Okavango has turned from a backwater to the continent's ultimate safari destination. From 2000 onwards, small, often fabulous lodges began arriving in areas previously reserved for hunting: gradually, over the last decade, we've seen many of these change to be photographic concessions, where hunting is no longer practiced. Safaris are now firmly established in the Okavango as a much more humane money-spinner."
And what's coming next? **The Twenty-Tens/Oh-tens/Teenies/Tenties/Tenners**
Zimbabwe - Chris McIntyre "With the Mugabe era likely to end in the next few years, Zimbabwe's tourism industry is poised to bounce back, and the good news is that its environments are generally in great shape. The wonderful national parks are all situated on land that's difficult or impossible to farm, so they remain largely untouched, while much of the game is apparently in good shape, too - even if a few areas have had high levels of hunting. Recent news has been very encouraging: an apparent upsurge of visitor numbers in 2009, and now a much less unstable, dollar based economy. Once an effective protection plan is re-installed and development returns to the country's people, I can see it taking off fast in tourism terms. Zimbabwe used to have vastly more visitors than either Botswana or Namibia - and it can do so again."
- Chris McIntyre, MD of Africa specialist Expert Africa* (020 8232 9777, www.expertafrica.com)
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