Botswana · game reserve since 1963
The Okavango floods in the dry season, not the wet: rain that fell in Angola months earlier arrives in June, just as the land around it turns bone dry. Game concentrates, boats launch, and the reserve the Batawana people proclaimed in 1963 becomes one of the finest wildlife destinations in Africa. Two hours from Maun.
Photo: diego_cue (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Moremi sits in the eastern Okavango Delta, 92 km and about two hours' drive from Maun via South Gate, its busiest entrance. North Gate at Khwai links to the Chobe route, while Xakanaxa and Third Bridge lie deeper inside the reserve, where the log bridges and boat stations are.
This guide is written by someone who overlanded much of Africa in his own Land Cruiser with a rooftop tent, and for whom the national parks were what stayed. The information about them online was usually missing, wrong or years old: fees from three tariff sheets ago, camps that had closed, roads described by people who had never driven them.
So this guide runs on the park authority's own tariff document rather than a copied operator page, on thirty-year climate normals rather than brochure weather, and on what the camps tell us directly. Every claim carries a date. Where DWNP is silent, so are we, apart from saying that it is silent.
Nothing here is for sale. Listing a camp is free and no position on any page can be bought. Some outbound links earn us a small commission, and that changes neither the order of a list nor a single figure on these pages.
Found something out of date? Tell us and it changes the same week.
Moremi allows game drives and boats but not night drives or walking, rules stricter than the concessions around it. That single rule decides which combination of activities you plan.
Sand tracks along the Khwai, the Xakanaxa lagoon circuits and the Mboma loop's lechwe floodplains, all at your own pace and your own dawn start. Off-road driving is not allowed, so plan every day backwards from the gate hours.
Photo: Visit Africa Publishers
Xakanaxa Boat Station runs lagoon cruises to the Gcodikwe heronry, and Mboma Boat Station poles a mokoro through the reeds when water levels allow. The mokoro gives the Delta's atmosphere; the motorboat gives more game.
Photo: Visit Africa Publishers
Over 400 species recorded, world class year-round, with a DWNP permit needed to fish outside the closed season in January and February.
Photo: Visit Africa Publishers
Thirty-five places to stay, from a DWNP-concession campsite to a fly-in lodge on Chief's Island. These four are not the best four; they are the four that mark out the range.
The cheapest way in
A Khwai Development Trust community campsite on the reserve's northern boundary, at roughly P400 a person, the cheapest bed in this guide.
The park authority's own gate
Run by Kwalate Safaris on a DWNP concession right at South Gate, the arrival point for most self-drivers coming from Maun.
Mid-range, inside the reserve
A long-established Desert & Delta camp on the Xakanaxa lagoon, inside Moremi itself rather than in a surrounding concession.
The top end
Wilderness's flagship camp on Chief's Island, and the benchmark against which the rest of the park's rates read.
The current DWNP rates for Moremi, why the planned 2026 increase was postponed, and the campsite fees most guides leave out.
See the fees →From P400 community campsites and the four public campsites inside the reserve to Mombo, one of the most celebrated camps in Africa.
Browse lodges →Two hours by 4x4 from Maun, or a 30 to 45 minute light aircraft hop. Routes, bridges, fuel and the veterinary fence rule.
Plan the route →One of Africa's largest wild dog populations, lions that swim between islands, leopards in the riverine forest and over 400 bird species.
What you'll see →The flood peaks in the middle of the dry season. Understand that one fact and every month falls into place.
Pick your month →Self-drive game drives, motorboat trips to a heronry, mokoro from Mboma, and the honest truth about night drives and walking.
See activities →Our own research
We collect the official tariff of every park we cover, convert it, and hold each one to the same standard day. Twenty-nine parks are in the index now, the famous ones included. These three pages come out of that table.
Ngorongoro charges $278 for a standard day and $148 of that is the descent into the crater. The ranking straight down, with the line item behind each number.
See the ranking →One person, one car, no one to split the vehicle fee or the campsite with. Uganda's foreign-vehicle tariff turns the order upside down.
See the self-drive ranking →The highest nightly rates any camp in our network puts in writing, and why the real top of the market names no price at all.
See the rates →Every change to this guide, dated.
