Aerial view of three giraffes wading across a flooded floodplain dotted with palm-tree islands in low golden light

Area · The heart of the reserve

Chief's Island

The delta's largest island, ringed by water and reached over it — the richest big-game ground in Moremi, the fewest vehicles, and the top end of Botswana's camps.

At a glance

Signature characterPredator ground — wild dog, lion and leopard on floodplain that was never hunted

Where it sitsThe centre of the reserve, an island in the permanent water — no road reaches it

Best broadlyRewarding all year; the dry months from around June are the sharpest

AccessFly-in only — a light aircraft out of Maun to each camp's own strip

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The area

Surrounded by water, and kept by it.

Chief's Island is the ground the delta's other camps are measured by. It is the largest island in the Okavango — more than seventy kilometres long and about fifteen wide, a fault-line uplift of dry ground in the middle of the wetland — and it was the BaTawana chief's own hunting preserve, closed to everyone else, before the tribe gave it to the reserve in the 1970s. That history is why the game here was never hunted out and why it is so at ease around a vehicle. Wild dog, leopard and lion prides work open floodplain with the antelope herds in concentrations that, at the island's northern tip, begin at the camps' own decks.

The price is plain. No road reaches the island; you fly in, and the camps that stand on it are at the polished end of the country's camps, and priced accordingly. The reserve's rules apply — daylight drives, no walking, no spotlight — so a stay here is about what the daylight holds, and it holds a great deal. If the budget is a question, Khwai and Xakanaxa deliver the reserve at every level; if solitude and the top end of the game are the point, this is where they are.

On the map

The island at the centre.

Chief's Island lies at the heart of Moremi, west of the Xakanaxa lagoons and the Mopane Tongue and across the channels from both. Its dry ground is some seventy kilometres long from south-west to north-east; the camps stand on its northern and north-western reaches, at the parting of the delta's main channels. To the west, on the reserve's edge, is the Okavango's permanent water.

See how the whole reserve divides

Chief's IslandS 19°21′ · E 23°01′

01Wildlife here

The predators, in daylight, up close.

The island's fame is predator fame, and it is earned on open ground. Floodplain and island woodland at the northern tip carry the prides, the leopard and the dogs, and the herds they work — antelope in numbers, elephant, buffalo — with cheetah on the open grass and spotted hyena clans that kill for themselves as often as they steal. Because the ground was never hunted, the animals let a vehicle sit with them; because the vehicles are few, the sitting is long. Botswana's rhino programme was anchored on the island, and the camps carry that record.

The island is also permanent water on every side, so the water cast is here too: hippo in the channels, red lechwe on the flooded grass, and the birds of the papyrus and the riverine forest — Pel's fishing owl among them on the western side, where the ground is wettest. Which of them you are likeliest to meet, and in which month, is a reserve-wide question with a graded answer.

The full cast, and where the Big Five stands The wild dog, in depth

02When it suits

Good in every month, because the island never floods out.

Chief's Island is dry ground with water on every side, so its game has nowhere it needs to go. That is the island's quiet advantage. When the flood is up, from around June, the water is at the island's edges and the animals are on it; when the dry sets in, from around September, the plains game presses in to the channels and the predators follow. Either way the drives are on the same ground, and the dry months sharpen them: shorter grass, thinner bush, the herds in the open.

From around December the green months bring the calving, the migrant birds and the storm light, and the grass stands tall; the island's camps run through them. The decision between water, game, heat and price is one to make across the whole reserve, not one area at a time.

The month decision — water, game, heat and rates How the flood moves through the year

03A day on the island

Few vehicles, long sightings.

A day here is two drives, and the drives are the point. Out at first light and again in the late afternoon, four to a vehicle at the two camps on the northern tip, six elsewhere, and guides who have often spent a decade on this one ground. The sightings begin early — the drive in from the airstrip is the stay's first — and they are unhurried, because the concession on the island's northern tip shares its tracks with very few other vehicles. Between the drives the camps do the rest: a plunge pool, a hide in season, the deck over the floodplain.

Where the camps stand near the water — the north-western side and the western edge — the day has a second half on it: mokoro at lily height through the channels, motorboats into the deeper waterways, and on the western edge walks in season on the drier ground. Inside the reserve's boundary the rules hold everywhere — no night drives, and no walking at the northern camps — so a stay here is daylight, and a good deal of it.

Drives, walks, mokoro and boats, compared Khwai — for the night drives and the walks

Cameras out before the airstrip transfer — on the island, the safari starts before you reach camp.

04Getting here

By air, or not at all.

There is no road to Chief's Island. A light aircraft out of Maun puts you down at the camp's own strip — Mombo Airstrip for the northern tip, typically about twenty-five minutes — and a short drive, or on the western side a crossing of the bridge over the papyrus, brings you to camp. Seats on the scheduled flights are shared between camps, so the island pairs in one trip with Khwai, with Xakanaxa, or with the camps of the wider delta.

Self-drivers and mobile safaris do not reach the island, and that is part of what a stay here buys. The flights, Maun and the light-aircraft rhythm are answered in full elsewhere; here the practical fact is the one that matters — you fly.

Flights, gates and the road in Maun — the gateway and the light aircraft

Where to stay here

Few camps, at the top end.

The island's camps are few, and among the first in Botswana to fill for the peak months. Mombo Camp is the name that needs no introduction — the northern tip, the predator ground, guides with decades on it, and suites that settle the comfort question by themselves. Little Mombo beside it is the same ground at the size of a single table: four suites, and the easiest camp at this level to take whole. Chief's Camp stands in a jackalberry grove on the north-western side with a plunge pool at each pavilion, cooled beds and the drinks included. Xigera is the water-side answer, on the reserve's western edge where the island's dry ground meets the permanent channels — mokoro and motorboats alongside the drives, and a collection of African art under one roof.