Botswana Travel Guide
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Okavango - Moremi
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The Mopane Tongue
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South Gate
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Botswana Travel Guide

South Gate



Also known as Maqwee Gate, South Gate (GPS: SOGATE) is usually treated as a transit stop for most visitors as it's in the midst of fairly unexciting mopane forest. Camp amongst the trees; there are toilets, showers and water here.

Having described it as unexciting, this may just be my failure to really get to know the area well. I've only stayed here for three individual nights, one during each of three different trips (always at the start or the end of a trip across Chobe and Moremi). However on one of those occasions, just as I was getting up, about half a dozen wild dogs gently jogged through the camp and into the forest. I don't think our roof tent has ever been packed away so rapidly – but try as we might, tracking them was a waste of time with park rules forbidding off-road driving in Moremi!

On another trip entirely I found a whole pack of wild dogs lounging in the road a few kilometres south of South Gate, in the NG33/34 concession area. They posed for photographs just a few metres from my vehicle for twenty minutes or so – totally unconcerned with our presence. So perhaps, especially in the earlier months of the year, South Gate warrants a closer look and more than just an overnight stop.

Orientation


The geography of South Gate is very straightforward. There are no game-viewing loops as such, just four clear roads: one to Maun via the veterinary checkpoint, another to North Gate, one to Third Bridge which stays close to the southern side of the Mopane Tongue, and another to Xakanaxa which cuts through the heart of the Tongue.


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