It’s my first night at Xaranna, a safari lodge on an island in the Okavango delta. We eat outdoors at a long table, as the shape of a hippo ploughs the moonlit water and tiny reed frogs make their xylophone music.

I find myself watching the face of the guide sitting opposite me. Tight black curls, high smooth cheeks, laughing and avid as he relates how two hyenas mugged an impala off a cheetah. As the story unfolds, his excitement builds, and he morphs into each of the animals in turn. I can smell the ant hill where the cheetah hid her cubs; I can see the plain where the impala cried out.

It’s as though the storyteller shape-shifts as he sniffs the air. When he becomes the victorious hyenas — each tearing one side of the impala — it seems his face is covered with blood.

I have come to Botswana to search for the San Bushmen, with Laurens van der Post’s unsettling book The Lost World of the Kalahari under my arm. Writing in 1956, Van der Post says most of the Bushmen have been wiped out.

10 top wildlife conservation holidays

You can save a species while you laze on the beach - as long as you pick the right wildlife trip

• Really wild volunteering breaks

The 12 best wildlfe holidays

A month-by-month guide to the most spectacular wildlife holidays around the globe

BACKGROUND

• Africa's best barefoot lodges

• Where to go for safari and surf

• Zambia in the wet season

Related Links

• My top 10 dangerous animal encounters

I recall his lyrical description of how the Bushman “seemed to know what it felt like to be an elephant, a lion, an antelope, a steenbok, a lizard, a striped mouse, mantis, baobab tree, yellow-coated cobra or starry-eyed amaryllis... his world was one without secrets between one form and another”. Van der Post describes the San people as “gallant, mischievous, unpredictable and defiant”, and laments their passing as he journeys through the swamps of the Okavango and into the Kalahari desert. Huh.

The storyteller across the table from me is a Bushman, and anything but wiped out. He introduces himself: Ketshabile “TJ” Thamago.

“You know,” teases one of the other guides, “when TJ first came to work here, he thought you had to hit the canoes like donkeys to get them going.”

“Yes,” retorts TJ, “but when you need some difficult tracking done, who do you ask? Remember how I tracked that python in the sand...? ” The story starts up once more.

The Delta is all about light — light flashing off butterfly wings, pied kingfishers and shiny frogs; the hammocks of spiders’ webs trailing from reeds; pink lilies opening out to the sun. It’s a gorgeous place, and water camps such as Xaranna and Xudum make the most of it, with their terraces, outdoor showers and plunge pools overlooking the emerald swamps.

After four days in these watery paradises, I moved down to the Kalahari. It was here that Van der Post found Bushmen living in loincloths, but you don’t see that now. Many have become guides and trackers, like TJ, dressed in smart safari outfits, maintaining their traditions as hunters while working in conservation.

Others live in their own villages. About 100,000 Bushmen remain, and those I met were clever, dignified people, who took pride in their culture.

After the opulence, colour and noise of the Okavango, the Kalahari is all browns, blacks and silence: brown hyenas, black vultures, immense stretches of emptiness. The austere landscape refreshes the overloaded western soul as much as the waters of the delta soothe it.

Times recommends

• Oasis of the Seas: the Times review
• The 20 best new year party places to stay
• Green Spaces 2009: are you the winning writer?