Nominate a ‘No. 1 Lady’ for a trip to Botswana

The Botswana Tourism Board is partnering with HBO on a contest called “Who’s Your No. 1 Lady?” to promote the country where the new HBO series “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” is set and filmed.

Contest participants can nominate the “No. 1 lady” in their lives — whether a wife, mom, daughter, teacher, friend or even themselves — to compete for a trip to Bot­swana. Details are online at www.mynumberonelady.com.

Botswana Tourism also launched a new Web site in March at www.botswanatourism.us, where a variety of tours are being advertised, including an 11-night “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Botswana Safari” from the Eyes on Africa Travel &Safari company, with accommodations in camps, lodges and hotels, and stops in Gaborone, the Okavango Delta, Chobe and Victoria Falls.

The pilot for “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,” which is based on the bestselling books by Alexander McCall Smith, was shown for the first time to American viewers March 29, although it aired last year in Britain.

Seven additional weekly episodes are being shown new this season in both Britain and the U.S. The show stars Jill Scott, an American actress and Grammy Award-winning R&B singer, as Precious Ramotswe.

Botswana trips from the Adventure Collection, a consortium of adventure travel companies, include Micato’s “Botswana’s Great Herds,” Geographic Expeditions’ “Wilds of Botswana,” Natural Habitat Adventures’ “Family Botswana” and Bushtrack Expedition’s “Southern Africa Wing Safari-Photographic Expedition.”

At www.adventurecollection.com, you can search for Botswana on the “Search Our Trips” page. These tours do not come cheap, however, with the least expensive starting at $6,595 a person based on double occupancy, plus airfare.

The April-October dry season is the best time of year to travel to Botswana to see wildlife, which includes lions, leopards, giraffes, water buffalo, zebras, rhinos and elephants, along with 500 species of birds, and of course the meerkats seen standing on Precious’ head in the pilot.

The country is about the size of Texas but has just 1.8 million people, with 39 percent of the land protected, pristine wilderness. About 35,000 visitors from the U.S. traveled to Botswana in 2005, the last year for which statistics were available.