“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 [...]

A Visit to Ol Donyo Lodge (full text and images here) So I just came back from a week in Kenya. I initially planned the trip because of a friend’s wedding and because of a Fashion Designers without Borders trip that I planned with Chrissie Lam the Founder of The Supply Change. The trip was [...]

“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 [...]

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 [...]

And here’s how the cheetah vs. leopard sighting at Selinda Reserve transpired. Written by Jamie Hopf, guest and photographer of this extraordinary event. Dicks of Selinda Camp was the guide. Our very first morning drive definitely set the bar high for the rest of our trip! Our guide, Dicks, spotted some cheetah tracks in the [...]

“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 [...]

January has been a month full of fun activities at ol Donyo Lodge! Activities coordinator Scott Dyson and children’s program guide Elijah Morintat have been helping guests document their Chyulu Hills experience through art. Whether painting at the lodge or out on the plains, guests have been treated to dramatic  views of Mt Kilimanjaro and [...]

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 [...]

“Look deep into Nature and then you will understand everything better” – Albert Einstein After having had one of the wettest Christmas and New Years any of us can remember, on the 3rd January, as we closed the camp for the full rebuild, the sun emerged and is shining brightly on our plans for the [...]

“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 [...]

“To see ten thousand animals untamed and not branded with the symbols of human commerce is like scaling an unconquered mountain for the first time, or like finding a forest without roads or footpaths, or the blemish of an axe. You know then what you had always been told — that the world once lived [...]

Underneath the Mangosteen… We have this huge Mangosteen tree right in front of Zarafa. And every year in November it gives us very tasteful orange fruits. The birds like them, the squirrels, the warthogs, the elephants and the housekeepers. So the battle of the fruits has started. Since we like our animals in camp it [...]

October heat has carried onto November, temperatures reaching the maximum of 42 degrees flushing away the hopes of rains. This has been an amazingly dry season with the wilderness covered with a brown blanket of dying grass and leafless trees. This was a perfect game-viewing time of the year, also a disheartening time to watch [...]

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 [...]

A safari is definitely about more than just the big cats but it’s not everyday that one can see the three big cats of Africa in one drive. ‘Cat-trick’ last night with Ping. Cheetah with yearling cub, Notch’s boys (4 mafioso male lions) and Fig the Leopard.. who ended up getting chased up a tree [...]

Mammal count in Kenya’s central Olare Orok Conservancy in one 20km game drive. 18 mammal species! not to mention the birds and reptiles. 28 Lions- (two prides) 1 Leopard 2 Cheetah 2 Hyena +-1500 Wildebeest, +-1000 Zebra, +-200 buffalo, 68 Topi, 8 Kongoni 16 Giraffe, 124 Impala, 18 Elephant, 25 Grant’s Gazelle, 7 warthogs, 7 [...]

Summer is on the way! We were all astonished at how quickly the trees and shrubs on the Selinda Reserve started to green up this month. Astonished because it was not until late November last year that this started to happen. We have had some rain too! Not a lot at 3.5mm but it is [...]

Botswana’s Selinda Reserve is home to both of Africa’s big cat species who have spots; the Leopard and the Cheetah. Sightings of either of these two are exceptional and a special part of anyone’s safari. Jamie Hopf, a photographer and recent guest, along with her husband Andre were treated to an extremely rare sighting of [...]

Just an hour ago (2pm) ‘Yellow’ our resident territorial male leopard killed a Thompson’s gazelle right next to the camp. As of right now he has it hanging in the huge hollow fig tree within 100 meters of the camp. Thanks to the resident troop of vervet monkeys who brought this to our attention with [...]

We stayed at Selinda from September 6 -8,2012 . Selinda was everything we desired and more. It is a magical setting with outstanding game drives,guides and service.It was recommended to us by our excellent travel agency, Explore Africa. We cannot thank Explore Africa enough for their great recommendation of Selinda. John and Liz are fabulous [...]

Considering our last post was a little over a week ago we thought it may work out well to give you all a teasing taster of another incredible day-long experience at Mara Plains Camp from the eyes of a honeymoon couple in Africa for the first time. They left the camp yesterday morning and headed [...]

Last night, like so many others was one to write home about, with two cars out on drives and one on a walk the feedback was as follows: Mara Plains guides, Ping and Kevin, spent the first part of the drive with the whole Enkoyeni lion pride. After this they found the leopards, Acacia and [...]

“Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars…and if you have eyes you will see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to [...]

This morning, as the first light spread over the plains, the mother Cheetah with the now almost fully grown male cub managed a successful hunt across the plains right in front of the mess tent. They both managed to eat their fill before crossing the river above the camp and moving further into the conservancy. [...]

Considering it has been an amazing month with the hugest Masai Mara migration and all the action that goes with it the last two days could only be called the icing on the cake. Imagine 30 large cats in one day? Multiple Lion prides and Cheetah (many with cubs) sightings all added up to a [...]

The month of July will be dedicated the largest of our many diverse mammals – Loxidonta Africana – The African Elephant Simply put, they are everywhere. We have not had rain since April, even then the rainy season provided us with little rain. This has meant that all the water holes all around Zarafa and [...]

Yesterday guests witnessed one of the longest river crossings anyone can remember. By 11 am in the morning the Zebra and Wildebeest that had been building and crossing the Mara river in dribs and drabs had reached huge numbers on the northern bank. Some of these animals started filing into the curl de sac crossings. [...]

July has been an interesting month in the Selinda reserve. This was a month full of extra-ordinary sightings as well as a month of water challenge for both the guides and the maintenance team. Selinda camp has now turned to what we can call an island camp as all game-drive excursions have to tackle the [...]

Migration update from our friends and colleagues in the Mara: As of August 1: For the past two days there have been a lot of activities at the Mara river by Look out hill where the wildebeest have been crossing over to the triangle. However, there has been a change in direction of movement of [...]

  As the sun broke the horizon this morning the resident troop of Vervet monkeys started their warning calls from the tree tops on the verge of the camp. Their attention turned out to be on a female cheetah stalking across the plains in front of the sitting and dining area. Some Topi had spotted [...]