Lionesses and young lions rest on a termite mound beside an open game vehicle of watching guests, under a pink sky

Area · The reserve's dry spine

Mopane Tongue

The peninsula of dry woodland where the reserve's roads are — mopane, floodplain edges and log-bridge crossings; as near as Moremi comes to a safari made of driving.

At a glance

Signature characterDry-land game drives — mopane woodland, floodplain edges, the big herds in the dry

Where it sitsThe reserve's eastern half — between the Khwai and the Xakanaxa lagoons, South Gate at its base

Best broadlyStrongest June to October, as the game draws to permanent water

AccessThe road in from South Gate; by air to the camps at its tip and on the Gomoti

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The area

The dry land between the waters.

The Mopane Tongue is the part of Moremi you can drive, and most of the reserve's tracks are on it. It is a triangle of dry ground with water on two sides — the Khwai River along the north-east, the lagoons and channels of the delta to the west — and South Gate at its landward base, about forty kilometres on each side. Most of it is mopane woodland: tall, even-aged trees whose butterfly-shaped leaves close in the heat of the day, which is why the shade is thin at noon and the light is good. Along its edges the woodland is broken by floodplain, and the floodplain edges are where the drives earn their keep.

This is the classic Moremi game drive — not a river or a lagoon to sit beside but country to move through, with the log bridges over the channels, the campsites at Third Bridge and South Gate, and the long tracks up to Xakanaxa. It is the ground the self-drivers and the mobile safaris use, and in the dry season the well-known crossings will have company. Its camps are few: the Xakanaxa camps at its tip, and one lodge on the Gomoti to the south-east, on ground that had never held one. If you want a lodge with water on its doorstep, Xakanaxa and Khwai have more choice; if the drive itself is the safari, this is its country.

On the map

The spine of the reserve.

The Tongue is the eastern half of Moremi's dry land: from South Gate in the south-east to the Xakanaxa lagoons at its north-western tip, with the Khwai River as its north-eastern edge and North Gate at the far end of that river. The Gomoti River is its southern margin, on the reserve's edge. Chief's Island is across the channels to the west, reached only by air.

See how the whole reserve divides

Mopane TongueS 19°24′ · E 23°31′

01Wildlife here

The herds, along the edges.

The Tongue's game is on its margins, and the drives follow the water. Elephant and buffalo herds move between the woodland and the permanent water, and in the dry months they come to it in numbers; giraffe are the tallest thing on the skyline in the open mopane, and impala, kudu, tsessebe and zebra fill the floodplain edges. Lion prides work the same edges, leopard the riverine belts along the channels, and wild dog range across the dry ground — the Tongue is the kind of open, driveable country a pack can be followed on, and packs den on this side of the reserve from around June in some years.

The mopane itself is quieter — it is elephant browse and hornbill country, and a drive through the middle of it is the price of reaching the next edge. Along the Gomoti to the south-east the permanent river holds the game once the floodplains have dried. Which animals are likeliest where, and in which month, is answered for the whole reserve, graded species by species.

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

02When it suits

A dry-season country, plainly.

The Tongue is at its strongest from around June to October. Once the rainwater pans are dry the game draws in to the Khwai, the lagoons and the Gomoti — the Tongue's edges — and the woodland is thinner, so you can see it. By September and October the herds are on the water in numbers, the predators with them, and the tracks are dry sand. That is the Moremi most people have in mind before they come.

The green months are a different proposition here. After the rains, from around December, the rain fills the pans in the woodland and the game spreads out into the mopane where it is hard to see; the grass is high and there is water over the tracks, so the crossings are slow and some are closed. The birds, the newborn antelope and the light after the storms are the reward. The month decision is best made across the whole reserve, where the water-side areas hold their game in every month.

The month decision — water, game, heat and rates What the weather does, month by month

03The drive

Sand, water and the log bridges.

The Tongue's tracks are the reserve's road network, and they are its own kind of country. From South Gate the track runs north-west through the mopane to Third Bridge and on to Xakanaxa, with North Gate at Khwai closing the loop along the river; the bridges are log causeways over the channels. The going is deep sand in the dry months and standing water on the tracks once the rains have come; a four-by-four is the minimum, the reserve sells no fuel, and the gates shut at sunset.

The public campsites, Third Bridge and South Gate among them, are booked with their concessionaires, never through a lodge, and they are the mobile safaris' and the overlanders' ground rather than ours: we book lodges, including for guests who drive to a reachable one, and the journey is theirs. Guests at the camps here are driven by the camps' own guides, in open vehicles, and the drive from the airstrip is the first of them.

Flights, gates and the road in Safety in the reserve, self-drive included

The floodplain edges are where the drives earn their keep — the woodland is the way there, and the herds are at the water.

04Getting here

By road from Maun, or by air to the edges.

The Tongue is the one area of Moremi that a road reaches, and most guests still fly. The camps at its tip are served by Xakanaxa Airstrip, half an hour or so from Maun, and the lodge on the Gomoti by its own strip, with a game-drive transfer from each. The road is the run up from Maun through Shorobe to South Gate: tar, then gravel, then sand, typically three to three and a half hours when the road is dry, longer once it has rained, and the reserve's tracks beyond.

The gates, the fees and who books which have their own full answer. The practical fact here is that the Tongue is the road link between the two water-side areas — Xakanaxa at one end, Khwai at the other — which is why it is the mobile safaris' route through the reserve.

Flights, gates and the road in Park fees, flight legs and the figures

Where to stay here

Few camps, and one new one.

The Tongue's woodland holds no lodges of its own; the camps are on its water. At its tip, on the lagoon, Camp Moremi and Camp Xakanaxa drive the Tongue's dry-season ground every morning and put you on the water every afternoon. On its southern edge, Tawana stands on the perennial Gomoti in a corner of the reserve with no other lodge in it — eight suites with plunge pools, family suites among them, and a river that draws the herds past the terraces in every season.