The Delta, after the first rains.

The Okavango changes in December. The first rains arrive, the floodplains turn green, and the impala drop their young within a few weeks of one another. It is a quieter Delta at this time of year, and a greener one.

The camp

Feline Fields Vintage Camp sits on the Mbudi Channel, part of the Khwai River system on the edge of the Delta. It is a handful of tents, a lounge under canvas and a fire. From Maun it is a twenty-minute light-aircraft flight to the Khwai airstrip, then a short drive into camp with a guide, watching for game along the way.

Mornings are spent in an open vehicle, afternoons on foot with a guide, and evenings on a mokoro when the water allows. There is catch-and-release fishing, and on hot afternoons a sheltered lagoon to swim in.

Around the fire

After the last drive, the fire is lit. The guides pull up chairs, a drink is poured, and the day is told again from the beginning. Families share a family tent, and the guides have time for every question. Children learn to read tracks, to tell a hyena's call from a lion's, and to sit still long enough for the bush to come to them.

The tent is not what they will talk about at school. This is.

Into the Kalahari

An hour away by helicopter, flying low over the Delta, is Feline Fields Lodge in the Kalahari. The landscape changes completely: open desert, a pool suite, horse riding, fat bikes and a night out on the dunes. Time is spent with the Ju/'hoansi San, and the lodge's trust has brought four young giraffes back to this part of the Kalahari for the first time in generations.

The lodge can be taken exclusively for up to sixteen adults and six children aged fourteen and under. That makes it a rare thing: a safari property the whole family, three generations included, can have to itself.

Closer to home

For families with a few days rather than a week, South Africa's private reserves are a short flight from Johannesburg, with the same unhurried pace and no international travel.

Photographs: Feline Fields.