Nothing can quite prepare you for the awe-inducing sight that is southern Africa’s mighty Victoria Falls. The waterfall, which is known as Mosi-oa-Tynua (‘the smoke that thunders’) in the local Sotho language, is a roaring, powerful spectacle and one of the great natural wonders of the world. It’s formed by the 1.7m-wide Zambezi River (below) as it cascades over a 300ft gorge, making it the largest waterfall in the world. It’s estimated that at the height of the rainy season, between February and May, some 500 million cubic metres of water tumble over the gorge every minute. Victoria Falls is…

If you want to see elephants in the wild, look no further than Chobe National Park. The 11,700 sq km park in north-western Botswana is home to some 35,000 elephants, the highest concentration of the pachyderms in the world. The sprawling park was opened in 1968, making it Botswana’s first national park, and it has a diverse range of habitats. The area around the Chobe River is home to the park’s biggest concentration of animals. There, alongside the aforementioned elephants, you’ll find giraffes, vervet monkeys, lions, crocodiles, impala, kudu, zebra and more. The park is also home to more than…

One of the most archaeologically significant and sacred sites in southern Africa, the captivating Tsodilo Hills are adorned by more than 4,500 rock paintings, painted by the San and Bantu peoples over thousands of years. Lying on the western edge of the Kalahari Desert, you can’t miss the hills, a series of four monumental rocks that dominate the otherwise flat, barren landscape. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001, archaeologists estimate that Tsodilo has been occupied by humans for some 100,000 years and it’s long been revered by the people who live here. The San people believe it was the…