The camp journal · No. 01
A letter fromthe Delta.
On the romance of a small camp, the things we choose to keep, and the pleasure of belonging somewhere for a little while.
Dear traveller,
The first thing we ask of you is very little: set down your bags, take the chair facing the water, and give the afternoon a moment. Beyond the canvas, the Delta carries on without ceremony. A breeze catches the cloth on the table; the light moves across timber and reed; somewhere nearby, conversation settles into the comfortable rhythm of people with no reason to hurry. This is the romance we return to at Cha Cha Metsi — not a past arranged behind glass, but a way of being together: open rooms, generous tables and the closeness of the wild.
After thirty years of exploring Botswana, the Niven family wanted to create somewhere personal enough to feel like a home and open enough never to shut out the place that inspired it. Family heirlooms, photographs and collected furniture have found another life beneath canvas. They sit beside pale linen, old wood and views across permanent water. Comfort matters, but so does the sense that the world outside remains close. The pleasure is in those quieter hours: a long lunch, a swim, a book, a sundowner and the changing light.
Editorial · At Cha Cha Metsi
Vogue
The Vogue editorial photographed at camp brought another language to a place we know intimately. Fashion, movement and the changing light did not turn the Delta into a set; instead, the landscape became part of the story.
These two images belong together: the runway and the water, each carrying the same sense of movement, heat and distance that made the shoot so distinctive.
African Legacy · The family story
The Rake
African Legacy turns towards the objects, history and family memory behind Cha Cha Metsi. The point is not nostalgia for its own sake. It is the idea that a place gains character from things that have already lived a little.
Books, photographs, field objects and old pieces around camp connect the current chapter to a longer story, while the landscape keeps it from becoming too precious.
Read African Legacy
Galloping the Okavango · The journey
Condé Nast Traveller
Condé Nast Traveller’s riding story follows the Delta at a different pace. From horseback, water, grass and distance become physical; the scale of the landscape is felt as much as it is seen.
The riding photographs sit inside the article rather than dominating it, allowing the story and the landscape to carry equal weight.
Read Galloping the Okavango
Come for the Delta and for all the possibilities a day may hold. Leave some space, too, for the chair by the water, the story that carries on after supper, and the soft change of light across a room you have begun to think of as your own.
Until then,
The Cha Cha Metsi family