No, you do not have to time an Okavango trip to the month to get a game drive and a boat on the same day. Camp Xakanaxa, on the banks of the Khwai River where it meets the Xakanaxa Lagoon in the heart of the Moremi Game Reserve, runs land and water safaris all year round, and it is one of very few camps in the Delta that can say so.
Updated 03-Nov-2026
The usual Delta problem goes like this. Most camps are one thing or the other, or one thing for part of the year. The water camps give you the boat; the land camps give you the vehicle; and if you want both, the standard advice is to book two camps, repack the bag and climb into another small plane. Xakanaxa’s answer is shorter. It is both, always.
Why can Camp Xakanaxa do land and water in any month?
Position, mostly. The camp sits where the Khwai River meets the Xakanaxa Lagoon, which puts a boat at the bottom of the camp and the Moremi Game Reserve at the top of it. Rivers in the Okavango are where things happen, and a camp on the banks of one has already won half the argument. Desert & Delta, who run the camp, describe it as a year-round land and water game-viewing experience, and they do not hedge that with a season.
We are not going to tell you here when the flood arrives or how far it reaches in a given month. That is a different question, with its own post. This one is narrower and, for planning purposes, more useful: whichever month you pick, both activities are on the board.
What does a day at Xakanaxa actually contain?
Game drives in the morning and afternoon, in open 4×4 vehicles, through Moremi. Boat safaris through the deeper channels and lagoons, in hard-bottom aluminium boats. In practice the day can begin on a drive through the reserve and end on the lagoon with the light going soft over the water and the engine cut. Two entirely different Africas before dinner, from the same camp, without repacking a bag.
| By land | By water |
|---|---|
| Open 4×4 vehicles | Hard-bottom aluminium boats |
| Morning and afternoon game drives | The deeper channels and lagoons |
| The Moremi Game Reserve | The Khwai River and Xakanaxa Lagoon |
| Available every month | Available every month |
After the boat, the fire decks. There are two, over the Khwai River, and they are where the camp ends its evenings. Nobody has yet adequately explained why a drink tastes better beside a river with the engine off, but the evidence continues to mount.
Who is the family tent for?
The camp has eleven twin-bedded tents and one family tent, for a maximum of 24 guests. The family tent has two bedrooms, both en suite, and the camp takes children from six years old. Every tent has its own bathroom and a private viewing deck, and the basins come in pairs under the canvas, which settles a certain kind of morning argument before it starts.
For a family, the year-round point matters more than it does for anyone else. A child who has been promised a boat does not want to hear that the boat is seasonal, and a parent who has already repacked four bags does not want to hear about a second camp. Xakanaxa deals with both complaints at once.
Why does this save moving camps?
Anyone who has moved between Delta camps to get both land and water knows the price: a morning lost to an airstrip, a luggage allowance treated as a moral principle, and the small sadness of leaving a place just as the staff have learned how you take your coffee. Xakanaxa removes one of those moves. You can still combine it with another camp, and plenty of people do, but you are combining for variety rather than out of necessity.
It also keeps you out of your own vehicle. Moremi is not a reserve to tackle on your own in the wet. One of our contributors spent 31-Dec-2003 in a short-wheelbase Pajero up to its doors in a Moremi bog, four hours without another vehicle in sight, climbing in and out through the windows, before a passing delivery pickup hauled them twenty metres to firmer ground. The whole story is in A New Year’s 4×4 Mishap, and the moral is that the camp’s drivers and boats are a better way to see the same ground.
Is Camp Xakanaxa the right camp for a first Delta trip?
If the trip has to deliver both a drive and a boat, and you would rather not build the itinerary around a flood you cannot control, yes. If you want to compare it with the rest of the country first, our Botswana pages cover the other camps, including the ones that are water only or land only and proud of it.
One last thing. It is pronounced Ka-ka-na-ka. Get that right and the rest of the trip goes better, and you will be saying it for years.