Nxabega Okavango Tented Camp

Location

Nxabega sits on a private concession of around 25,000 hectares on the south-western edge of the Okavango Delta, bordering Moremi Game Reserve and lying just west of Chief’s Island, the reserve’s wildlife core. This is the classic mixed Delta: dry riverine forest on the islands, ebony above all, with seasonal floodplains and lily lagoons between. The camp stands on raised platforms under a canopy of towering ebony trees at a lagoon’s edge, which is where the two halves of the place become obvious, big-game country on the islands behind you, water in front.

Being a private concession rather than reserve land matters more here than the map suggests. Inside Moremi, camps cannot leave the road, walk, or drive after dark. On this concession all three are permitted, and that short list is much of the reason to choose Nxabega over a reserve address.

The single fact to plan around is the flood. The Okavango fills not from local rain but from the Angolan highlands, and the water arrives late, swelling the channels from about May, peaking through the dry winter of June to September, then draining away by November. In those high-water months the camp is a true water-and-land safari, with mokoro, boats and drives possible in the same day. In the green season, from roughly November to April, the same ground is dry enough to drive across, the birding is at its best and newborn game arrives, but the mokoro and motorboats wait for the flood, and even the fishing pauses from about January to March. Neither version is lesser; they are simply different, and in our experience the question at Nxabega is less whether to come than when. One consequence to plan for: even the transfer from the airstrip is water-dependent, made by game-drive vehicle or by boat according to the season.

Rooms

Nine tented suites, one of them a family unit, plus a pilot’s room, and almost no hierarchy between them, every tent carries the full kit, and there is no better room to envy. Each is raised on a wooden platform beneath the ebony canopy, canvas-walled, with an extended veranda that does most of the work. On it are a shaded sitting area and a hanging daybed, and a private sala a few steps on, the pavilion you retreat to when the middle of a Delta afternoon becomes too much to spend in the sun.

Inside, the register is contemporary safari rather than colonial pastiche, the legacy of a 2016 refurbishment by Fox Browne Creative, the studio behind several of &Beyond’s camps. The open-plan bathroom has both an indoor shower and a screened outdoor rainshower, with the flush toilet set behind canvas panels; a personal bar comes stocked, and a pair of Swarovski binoculars is left in each tent to use for the stay. The tents are sealed and climate-controlled, which keeps the Delta’s insects out and makes the point that there is only canvas between you and the lagoon: the hippos grazing past at two in the morning are not a recording, and a light sleeper should know it before booking.

What the suites do not have is a private plunge pool; cooling off is done at the shared camp pool. At a nine-tent camp this reads as scale rather than shortfall. Families who book with us tend to take the interleading family tent, which joins two bedroom tents by an enclosed walkway, while the single triple tent takes children of twelve and under. October, the hot month before the rains, is the one time the canvas asks something of you, though the climate control answers most of it.

Communal Areas

The heart of camp is a single open lounge and dining space under the ebonies, its high pitched roof carried on an open truss above teak floors, its long views out over the floodplain. It is a small camp, so this is where the day gathers: coffee before the morning drive, the debrief after it, the slow hours in between. An interactive food and coffee bar runs through the middle of the day, with baristas and a waffle iron that sees more use than anyone admits.

Dinner moves around. Most evenings it is the boma, an open-air enclosure ringed by a rough wooden fence and set beneath the camp’s largest ebony trees, laid for a buffet under the stars; other nights it is a table on the deck or a private setting away from the group. The cooking is generous, the drinks are house-poured and included, and the pace is left to you.

Off to one side, a massage sala offers Healing Earth treatments for those who want them. The shared pool, edged with shaded salas and loungers, looks out on the same floodplain the rest of the camp watches, the place to spend the flat light of midday between a morning on the water and an afternoon in the vehicle. It is the kind of camp where, we find, the shared spaces do more of the day’s work than the rooms.

Activities

Game drives are the spine of a stay, twice daily, in open vehicles capped at six, every seat an outside one. Because this is a private concession, the guides can pull off the track to stay with lion on the move, continue after dark when the nocturnal animals come out, and take you out on foot, none of which is permitted inside neighbouring Moremi. &Beyond trains its own guides beyond the industry baseline and pairs each with a tracker, and the difference shows in how a sighting is read rather than merely found. Elephant are Very High through the dry months, when the herds concentrate on permanent water; lion, leopard and buffalo all run High; red lechwe, the Delta’s signature antelope, are Very High wherever the floodplain holds water. Wild dog, an endangered animal that Botswana holds in unusual numbers, are Opportunistic: a real possibility when a pack is working the concession, never a promise. Walking safaris are open to those of sixteen and over.

When the flood is up, from about May into September, the water opens a second safari. A mokoro, the Delta’s dugout canoe, is poled at reed height through the lily channels, close enough to hear the frogs; a motorised boat covers more water and finds the hippos and birdlife along the way. Catch-and-release fishing runs longer, from about April, and we rate it the strongest of &Beyond’s three Delta camps for the sport, thanks to the channels feeding down from the Panhandle. Birding is a year-round reward, with more than 450 species recorded in the area and the elusive Pel’s fishing owl among them. After dark, with no town for miles, the stargazing needs no equipment beyond a lounger.

One animal you will not see is rhino, gone from the open Delta since poaching forced their evacuation. Nxabega’s honest connection to them runs through Rhinos Without Borders, the &Beyond programme that has moved dozens to safer Botswana ground: conservation you can be told about rather than shown. The same ethos reaches the surrounding communities, with a visit to the &Beyond-supported school at Sexaxa offered on departure day and a team drawn largely from the Delta’s own villages. Families are well looked after, with a WILDchild programme for children between three and twelve, though the water sets its own ages: boat cruises from twelve, mokoro and walking from sixteen.