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My son saw his first elephant from the window of a tiny Cessna as we flew over the gleaming swamps of a delta: They were bulky shapes standing hip-deep (elephant-hip) in the water, patches of their skin blotched dark with cooling mud.

He saw his second elephant as we took a small power boat from the dirt airstrip where the Cessna had left us to the luxury tented camp where we would stay: There was a whole herd of them, in fact, massive bulls, tiny babes and irritated, protective mamas, drinking at the edge of the swamp grass in the shade of leadwood trees.

He saw his third elephant the next morning when he woke: The efelant, as he calls them, was a metre outside the mesh wall of our tent, loudly demolishing a tree, picking up jackalberry fruit berry by berry with its prehensile trunk tip. We sat and watched in petrified glee, close enough to see the efelant's eyelashes flutter.

By the next afternoon, when I realized a long-time dream to see elephants swimming in the waters of the Okavango Delta, my two-year-old son was over elephants. He wanted hippos. Maybe a lion.

The delta has all of these (soon a family of curious hippos would drown out our breakfast conversation with their harrumphing), but for me it was all about the elephants. They are abundant in the 16,800 square kilometres of the Okavango, and, unlike most other animals, they wade merrily through the reeds, making a slush, slush, slush sound like an overfilled washing machine as they go.

I have had the opportunity to learn a fair bit about elephants in five years as The Globe and Mail's Africa correspondent and have grown only more fascinated. I am also fortunate enough to live within a couple of hours' drive of some easily accessible elephant viewing.

The Okavango Delta, on the other hand, is about as inaccessible as it gets. But nothing compares to seeing the elephants here.

The Okavango is the world's largest inland delta. It begins high in the hills of central Angola as a river that flows south, cuts across the corner of Namibia and, not long after it rushes into Botswana, widens into thousands of channels and streams — like the wrist, then palm, then fingers of an outstretched hand, as one delta native described it to me — before draining into the sands of the Kalahari Desert.

The delta is an ever-changing terrain. It inundates in the rainy season — islands disappearing and re-emerging, the growth of vegetation blocking some channels and opening others. The landscape is a mix of woodland, savannah grasses and acacia trees, and watery areas, much of which are lined with high stands of bright green papyrus or lower swamp grass. It looks like nowhere else on Earth.

The delta is navigable only by canoe. The indigenous people of the area travel thousands of kilometres in mekoro, traditional dugouts. Mekoro are propelled by poles and they glide through the swamp grasses with a hushing sound.

It would be smoother and faster to travel on the open water than in the weeds, but those areas are kept clear by hippo traffic, and the last thing you want to do is encounter a hippo when you're shoulder-high in papyrus. A beauty queen on honeymoon in the delta did just that not long after I moved to Africa, and she did not live to tell the tale.

In addition to heaps of hippos, the Okavango is home to all classic African beasts — lions, leopards, giraffes, zebras, buffalo — plus some that are found only in swamps like these, such as the red lechwe, an antelope that has natural waterproofing on its legs and spends most of its life knee-deep in marsh, the better to avoid the water-loathing lions, which are its main predator. Most of the animals, other than lechwe, giraffes and elephants, are difficult to spot from the water; however, many delta lodges are positioned so that guests can do both mekoro trips and game drives on nearby patches of dry land.

But it is the water — the thousands of twisting, turning channels heading off in all directions, the carpet of lilies and the spectrum of greens in the grasses and weeds — that make this place magic. So we headed for a water camp called Xaranna, which sits on a permanent channel, its luxurious tents set so close to the edge that the hippos, whose mothers apparently never told them to chew with their mouths closed, can keep you awake for hours when they emerge after nightfall for their feed of grass.

When we arrived, the boat delivering us to Xaranna's low wood jetty pulled up as beaming staff sang a Setswana welcome song. We were then ushered into the main tent, its sides open to the delta all around, and onto vast green couches.

Xaranna is fantastically, whimsically decorated on the theme of the delta's water lilies, in pinks and greens and creams. Curving horns from greater kudu antelopes are painted cerise and sage and twined together like bouquets in huge glass vases. Carved wooden hippos, plump and painted white, are placed strategically to serve as tables.

We were soon escorted down a winding path to our tent, which had wood floors, a huge tub, the de rigueur outdoor shower looking over the delta and an outdoor sala, or deck, with another vast green couch and a sublime bed with a green felt throw dyed in watery patterns.

And, of course, there was our almost-resident elephant, which sometimes kept us trapped inside when it parked outside the door to munch — we would call a ranger to come from the main area to escort us carefully past it.

Most often, we were ambling toward the main tent, where fantastic meals, all the more improbable for being created in the middle of nowhere, were served by lantern light, with pink linen napkins, green embroidered table runners and chubby, wee hippo carvings in the centre of each setting.

Xaranna has an embarrassment of excellent staff. Our butler, Oscar Xhao, was forever stepping forward with champagne in one hand and some new distraction (such as a wind-up crocodile) for my son in the other. And the lodge is operated by Conservation Corporation Africa, a company known for the quality of its rangers: Absurdly knowledgeable, easy-going, with a passionate determination to ensure every wish is met, they make the trip.

I told Christopher Hange and Phetogo Bagosi, the pair assigned to us, that I had always dreamed of seeing elephants swim, and on our second day they delivered, and then went on delivering for the rest of our stay.

They were as excited about my excitement as I was about the elephants. Most of the staff are delta people, and they have a huge pride in the region; Phetogo told me childhood stories, as we poled along in the mokoro, of travelling for weeks with his parents as they traded along the delta waterways, raising money so he could go to school.

I went to the Okavango for the elephants, but in the end it was humbler creatures that intrigued me most.

Phetogo taught me how to pull up a water lily, remove the flower and drink through the stem — an effective natural water purifier. He showed me the silvery, empty husk of a dragonfly pupa, stuck on a reed, and the holes in lily pads made by jacanas, wading birds that stab them with their beaks to look for the midge larvae clinging underneath.

Sitting in the mokoro, grass on either side above my head, I couldn't see the animals, but the rangers showed me how to listen for them for the shh-shh-splash of the red lechwe moving nearby, and the whush, whush, whush of an elephant wading from island to island.

I was daydreaming in the front of the canoe one afternoon when three drops of cold delta water hit my shoulder — dripping off a pole proffered from the back of the mokoro. Hung on the end was a necklace.

A ranger named Gently Molaeimang, who had taken me out for a quick canoe, had pulled a water lily from the swamp, somehow separated its stem into two skeins, snapping but not quite breaking the skin at perfect intervals so the single strand of stem became a chain of "beads," leading to the cream lily, its petals tinged with pink.

"It's a delta necklace," Gently said, gently. "My mama taught me how to make it."

The trip was full of magic moments like these. That afternoon, we saw a herd of lechwe take fright and leap through the water, sending perfect scallops of spray up behind them in the sunlight. Gently showed me how to catch the tiny reed frogs, and hold them for a moment to admire their kinetic colours — chartreuse with gold feet, or black-and-white polka-dot with fuchsia feet, each frog no bigger than my thumbnail.

The next day, we poled out to an island (made of termite mounds and elephant droppings, hardened through the years into tree-covered land) for cocktails at sunset. Christopher assured me it was a favourite fishing spot, and as dusk fell fish began to jump around the boat. Then the birds flocked in. Malachite kingfisher dove like kamikazes all around us, so fast and close it was unnerving. Metre-high saddle-billed storks, with their crimson legs and beaks, stalked past, ignoring us, intent on dinner. Two giant African fish eagles perched in the tree above, giving their eerie, disjointed call.

And, of course, there were my swimming elephants. They cross the channels continuously in their perpetual hunt for food (they spend 18 hours

of each day eating), and

take a cooling dip each evening. Late one afternoon, we came across two young bulls in a dominance battle, neck- deep in the delta.

We sat in the boat and watched from 20 metres away as they reared and crashed and leaned against each other, until one managed to push the other one under for a moment and make its point. Then it turned its back and dog-paddled (elephant-paddled?) across the deep water, wading out on shore with water streaming off its vast hide.

Somewhere in the middle of the elephant wrestle, my son, bored with elephants, glutted on boats and canoes and hippos and big hairy spiders, fell quietly asleep in my lap.

PACK YOUR BAGS

GETTING THERE

The starting point for virtually all delta trips is the northern Botswana town of Maun. It is best reached through Johannesburg, the hub for southern Africa. There are direct flights on Air Botswana (www.airbotswana.co.bw), but many itineraries inexplicably route through the Botswanan capital, Gabarone, which can turn the two-hour flight into a whole-day trip, so avoid those.

From Maun, most trips continue with a charter flight ($550 to $700 a person), which your lodge will usually book for you. There is not much to see in Maun itself, although if you are not visiting anywhere else in Africa, it might be worth a quick stopover just to see how people (and not just lions) live.

WHERE TO STAY

From the moment you land in Maun until you are delivered, blissed out, back to the airstrip days later, everything will be arranged by your lodge. Almost all stays are all-inclusive, and you plan your itinerary — game drives, fishing, sundowners on an island — with your personal ranger when you arrive.

LOW-END

The only way to do this trip on a budget is to drive and stay in one of a handful of camping sites. But that can mean a trip from Gabarone or even Johannesburg, depending on where you find a vehicle and gear to rent. And of course there's the small matter of the Kalahari to be traversed, so unless you have months to spend planning and then driving, be prepared to splash out.

One good way to control costs is to book with Dumela Botswana (www.dumelabotswana.com). The Internet-based local company — Dumela is Setswana for "Hello" — offers good-value trips at prices that beat most of the competition.

The South African company Bundu Safaris (www.bundusafaris.com) also has a Botswana trip that includes a couple of days in the delta. Oddballs Camp, which has regular domed tents rather than claw-foot bathtubs and zillion-thread-count sheets, runs about $750 a person a night — a reasonable rate compared with upscale lodges. Their rates also include the return charter flight from Maun.

HIGH-END

Wilderness Safaris (www.wilderness-safaris.com) operates several high-end properties in the delta, including Jao Camp, which earns raves from its visitors. At Jao, staff will take you out to the delta to sleep under the stars, with just your mosquito net (and a discreetly posted ranger with a gun) between you and the beasties for about $1,500 a night.

Xaranna Camp is operated by Conservation Corporation Africa (www.ccafrica.com; 888-882-3742), one of the few operators that accept children on their properties. They are known for putting a premium on skills transfer to staff. Rates are $1,400 a person a night and include all meals, drinks and gratuities. The lodge is a 20-minute flight from Maun and will soon have 14 tents available. The camp's sister property, Xudum, has less of a whimsical quality and offers more land-based activities.

VISAS

Canadians can obtain free visas for Botswana when they land.

HEALTH AND WELLNESS

The delta is a malaria area and while lodges provide mosquito nets and spray, it is advisable to take prophylaxis as well.

PACKING LIST

Charter planes are tiny, so luggage is restricted to 10 kilograms and must be in a soft-sided bag that can be squished into corners of the plane. As for what to pack, bring light-coloured, lightweight, layerable clothing and sturdy shoes for day. For evenings, when the temperature can drop dramatically, bring a warm fleece or sweater.

MORE INFORMATION

For more information on Botswana or on Chobe National Park, visit www.botswanatourism.co.bw.

Stephanie Nolen is The Globe and Mail's Africa correspondent.