Laurens van der Post, in The Lost World of the Kalahari, referred to the Okavango Delta area of Northern Botswana as the Swamp of Despond: an apt chapterhead in the context of his vivid account of a visit to the delta some years ago. But it was the late Lawrence G. Green's description of this, the world's largest inland river system, as an African Paradise that received the full endorsement of our party of six after we had ventured deep into the swamps in the winter of 1974, in much greater style and comfort than either Van der Post or Lawrence Green were able to enjoy. Starting from a remote point downstream of Sepopa - "the place of the eddies" - at the northern end of the delta, we were taken on an unforgettable riverboat cruise of seven days, into the maze of clear-water channels that forms the Okavango delta system - home of one of the greatest and most varied concentrations of wildlife in Southern Africa, if not in the world. Our home for those seven interest-packed days was the triple-decked vessel Sitatunga, designed and operated by Tim and June Liversedge of Botswana in collaboration with David and Tessa Hartley of Caledon, in the Cape Province of South Africa. Our party comprised Victor Smith, doyen of South Africa's light-plane pilots and well-known for his flying exploits in the I930's; his wife and my wife; Dr. Nellie Downes, Mayor of Sedgefield near Knysna, and Mrs. Peggy Reid, whose late husband Colin was for many years a prominent commercial photographer in Cape Town. And here is how this latter-day Okavango Odyssey came about: Victor Smith, whom I had befriended during his tenure as chairman of the Outeniqualand Trust, and the Garden Route freeway controversy, flew to Cape Town from his home at the Wilderness one day and invited me to join him at lunch in a city restaurant. Here, he produced an American air-map of Northern Botswana and told me of his plans. He had chartered the Sitatunga for a week, he said, and would my wife and I care to join him and the other members of his group to make up the maximum of six people that the riverboat could take at a time, on its exploratory cruises in the swamps.