Moremi
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Things to do in Moremi
Drives, mokoro, boats, walks and the hours after dark: what each is like here, and what decides whether your camp offers it.
Land and water, in one stay.
A day in Moremi can start in a vehicle and end in a boat. Few safari areas can say that. The reserve is dry woodland and floodplain on one side and permanent channels and lagoons on the other, so the question here is less what there is to do than which of it your camp can reach. Game drives run everywhere. Mokoro, boats, walks and night drives each depend on two things: where the water stands, and which side of the reserve boundary the camp sits on.
All of it is part of a camp's rate. Drives, time on the water and walks are what a stay consists of, not extras to buy once you arrive, so the choosing is done when you pick the camp.
The shape of a Moremi day.
Whatever the camp, the day runs to the same rhythm. The hours drift with the season and the sightings; the shape stays.
Before first light
A wake-up call at the tent, then coffee at the fire while it is still dark and, in winter, properly cold. You are out as the light comes, because the cats are still moving and the wild dogs hunt early.
The morning
The long outing of the day: a drive, a mokoro, or a walk while it is cool, with a stop for coffee somewhere out in it. Most of what you will remember happens before ten.
The middle
Back in camp as the heat builds. A late breakfast, then hours that belong to a book, the pool if there is one, or sleep. The animals are doing much the same.
The afternoon
Tea, then out again as the light softens, often on the water where a camp has it. For the last of the light you are usually stopped somewhere with a drink in your hand.
After dark
Inside the reserve the vehicles are home by nightfall. On the Khwai side the drive carries on under a spotlight before dinner. Either way the evening ends at the fire, with hippo grunting from the water and, some nights, lion further off.
An hour or two at water level.
A mokoro is a narrow canoe, poled from the stern by a guide who stands behind you. You sit low, almost at the waterline, and move at walking pace through channels no vehicle reaches. It is the quietest thing you will do on safari, and what you notice changes scale: reed frogs on a stem, lilies opening, a malachite kingfisher at arm's length, elephant heard before they are seen.
It is not how you find big game, and guides keep well clear of hippo, so the routes stay in the shallows. Think of it as the counterweight to the drives and not a rival to them. An outing or two in a stay is what most people want.
Whether it runs depends on the water level. Many camps on the Khwai side and the camps out in the delta offer mokoro, and all of them take it off the programme when the level drops too far; on the Khwai that can happen in any season. If it matters to you, say so when you choose the camp and the month, and treat it as likely, not certain.
Lagoons, channels and the heronries.
Where the water is deep enough for a motor, the afternoon can be spent on it. These are small boats, a guide and a few guests, working papyrus-lined channels and open lagoons, a different outing from a river cruise at Chobe. You idle up to a hippo pod or a basking crocodile and keep your distance, drift under fish eagles, and stop for the sunset with the engine off. When the Xakanaxa heronries are breeding, a boat is how you see them.
Boats need permanent water, so they belong to particular camps: those on the Xakanaxa lagoons, which keep theirs running through the year, the camps out in the delta, and a few in the Khwai Private Reserve while the water is up. At the right camp you can drive in the morning and be on the water by late afternoon, and that pairing is the case for staying in Moremi.
The bush at walking pace.
A walk is a morning of paying attention. You go out early, in single file, behind an armed and licensed guide, and the subject is everything the vehicle passes over: tracks, dung, termite mounds, which bird is alarming and why. Big game is met on foot only by accident, and handled with care. The point is the ground itself, and it changes how you watch from the vehicle afterwards.
Walking depends on the land a camp stands on. Most camps on the Khwai side walk, and so do a few out in the delta; the camps in the reserve's public areas mostly do not. Camps set their own minimum age for it. If walking is a priority, it belongs in the conversation when the camps are chosen.
A second cast, under the spotlight.
Inside the reserve the day ends with the light: night drives are not permitted there. Outside the boundary, in the Khwai community concession and the Khwai Private Reserve, the camps make their own rules, and the afternoon drive carries on after sundown with a spotlight. The bush you drove through an hour earlier has a different cast: genet and civet, a porcupine, bushbabies in the trees, hyena on the move, and with luck a leopard starting its night.
It is cold in winter, the sightings are brief, and the photographs are poor. It is also the only time much of this is awake. If the hours after dark matter to you, that is a reason to put a Khwai camp into the trip, often alongside a few nights deeper in the reserve.
From the doing to the plan.
From the day to the trip.
Browse the camps, or start from a journey that already pairs land with water. Or tell us your month and what you most want to do, and we plan around it.