“Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams”. Ashley Smith In April Kenya received a huge amount of rain, and in some regions the flooding [...]
Mara Camps Have Two More Silver-Level Guides In April 2013 Kevin Siayalel and Duncan Lenjirr sat for the Kenya Professional Safari Guides Association’s Silver Level certification and we’re very pleased to announce that they both passed! CONGRATULATIONS, Kevin and Duncan. Duncan Lenjirr Duncan was born in 1977 in the Narok area of the greater Maasai Mara region [...]
Mara Toto camp has a new resident – a Greater Galago (bush baby) is padding around between the tent lining and fly sheet above the dining table catching months. This is the first time that he has come onto the mess while there are lights on inside. His foot prints are making indentations on the [...]
While there’s no doubt that being alluded to as the Brangelina’s of the safari industry is quite a compliment, there’s much more substance to the work of Dereck & Beverly than appearances. Tiara Walters of South Africa’s Sunday Times weaves a story which we hope will “turn around a billion Chinese”. But it requires your [...]
“Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in it’s beauty” Albert Einstein Happy Easter to you from the team on the plains of the Masai Mara and Kenya, where the elections and appeals have gone smoothly and peacefully. [...]
A Masai Mara sunset with topis and an ostrich As some of you may know from previous reports, as of a month ago there has been a slow and steady stream of wildlife moving into the central Mara from the east. Impala and Eland silhouette Three weeks ago we reported of these large [...]
“When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?” William Blake In the three weeks it has been since our last report when we mentioned the wildlife moving south into this area, the herds have now [...]
To all our managers, staff, colleagues, and tourism friends in Kenya Our thoughts are with you all in Kenya this week for a peaceful transition in government and on the streets. Despite CNN and BBC wanting to show footage of the old election unrest, their efforts have largely been thwarted so far and there is [...]
Yesterday morning, after just leaving Mara Toto, guests immediately bumped into three of Notch’s boys as they licked their chops from finishing up a hippo killed a couple days earlier. These brothers have, since their time as a young coalition on the Masai Mara’s Paradise Plains become specialised in killing hippos. This is quite an [...]
On the 15th of February, after having been watching, and waiting for two months we had the first ever sighting of the Leopard cub belonging to the leopardess who has been a regular around Mara Plains and Toto for the last 5 months. On the morning of the 15th, guests out with the morning drives [...]
“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson One month into 2013 and so much has already happened here [...]
BREAKING NEWS….Mara Plains & Mara Toto status report from Richard and Lorna: We’ve done it. Mara Toto is now a fully functional seasonal camp running 100% on solar power, with no negative discharge into the environment (thanks to Biorock sewage treatment system), 5000 litres of rainwater catchment off the solar panel bank so far, all [...]
The finishing touches are all that remain to be completed for the grand opening of the NEW Mara Toto Camp, located just inside the Masai Mara Game Reserve, on the border with the private Mara North Conservancy. The 5-tent camp is Great Plains’ latest addition to its highly-regarded portfolio of camps in Kenya and Botswana. [...]
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly” – Richard Bach As some of you may already know this December (especially the second half) has been one of the most incredible months any of us can remember. After a brief reprieve from the early month rains that brought on [...]
Lara Logan of CBS 60 Minutes profiles “The Last Lions” filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert on location at their Great Plains Conservation Camps in Botswana Scheduled to air Sunday November 25, 2012 at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT Lara Logan and a team from CBS 60 Minutes profiled filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert at their Great Plains [...]
Recently our friends and colleagues at Ellerman House, based in Cape Town, hosted the annual ArtAngels charity art auction and party for the first time this year, following the success of the inaugural 2011 event at CIRCA on Jellicoe in Johannesburg where R1.6 million was then raised for charity This year, and going forward, ArtAngels [...]
As many of you know Dereck and Beverly recently made a new movie called The Unlikely Leopard Why not take 2 minutes and enjoy the short clip available here ? Easy Prey scene – The Unlikely Leopard
‘Toto’ means baby in Swahili, and was often used as a term of endearment in reference to young safari staff in the days of early exploration. But today, in our context, it is simply meant out of respect to its sister camp,
