Tips 👏
- Maun is fairly small, but with all the shops you might need.
- It’s a known city for Safari starting point, but not so much to do inside.
🏠 Accommodation
We stayed at Thamalakane River Lodge which was booked by the organisation. Great little houses rooms with amazing food and view on the river (including a spa).
🚲 Getting there
We got driven there by our guide Rock, which is about 20 minutes drive from Maun airport.
⏱ Duration
We stayed two nights there, which was our basecamp before starting the safari. In retrospect, an extra night would have been perfect to ensure enough time for the luggages.
Maun town 🚶
We didn’t visited too much the city since we were quite tired of the trip, and wanted to gather some energy for the upcoming 10 days safari. We also had to do some shopping to replace all our stuff in our luggages since they were delayed, so we spent most of time either at the hotel or in shopping malls.
In case you end-up in a similar situation, ask your guide to bring you to the ‘New Mall’ in town, where you can find all the shops (food, clothes, accessories) to buy everything required for a Safari. Prices were slightly lower than London, but not by much!
Helicopter Tour 🚁
On the Sunday, one day after arriving, we decided impulsively to book an helicopter tour as suggested by our guide. We went with Helicopter Horizon, and booked the same day for 265USD/person. I know, very expensive, but honestly worth every pennies. We, midly convinced, decided to go for it thinking in any case doing helicopter is always fun and is probably one of those rare opportunities to do so.
After booking via WhatsApp, our guide brought us to the shop (close to the airport) where we proceeded to the payment. From there, we went to the domestic terminal, passed security and boarded a tiny bus until the helicopter. The staff of the company was super nice and offered our guide to come with us for free since there was 3 seats available in the helicopter, and Rock was very excited about it!
We then started our 45 minutes journey in the sky, with no doors! Yes, no doors! The views were incredible, we saw pretty much all the wild-life around, while doing very fast spins and flying super low under the sunset. It was not only amazing but great adrenaline and sensations. Definitely something to do while in the area!
Upon arrival, we got picked-up by the same minibus all the way to the airport exit, and headed back to the lodge by car.
We then headed back to the hotel to observe the hippos chilling in the nearby river and cool down in the pool!
Hope this was helpful, you can ask us any questions on Instagram.