DUBA NEWSLETTER April has been amazing month in the Duba Plains concession, with fantastic sightings, hard working guests and inspired guides. A large group of Australian guests arrived for their fourth visit to the area and were not disappointed on their first night when they were greeted by a large herd of elephant in camp [...]

April is the cruellest month….as the temperatures continue to drop on a daily basis, I was almost tempted to believe TS Eliot but in fact April has been anything but cruel in terms of its safari this month. It all started with African wild dogs who decided to appear at early morning breakfast and kill [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Safari Architects’ Brad reviews the wonders of Selinda Explorers Camp on a Private Safari Day 1 My guests and I had been waiting for this trip for the last 6 months! After a lot of banter and excitement, the day had finally arrived when we would be leaving for our Selinda adventure.  Both myself and [...]

The breeze coming off the spillway in February helped cool the residents of Selinda reserve and the insects were given haven in the long grass, this has lead to some pretty fantastic birdwatching in the area and the lush greenery adds to the feel of really being out in the bush. There is nothing like [...]

SWEET-TOOTHED GIANTS   Elephant reaching up for marula fruit (Sclerocarya birrea) near oL Donyo Lodge, Kenya.

Fred is back at Zarafa, with  an absence of a few months but he has returned! Good ‘ol Fred, the sleeping elephant.  If you can remember Fred from last year?   He was the famous elephant who liked to sleep on the termite mound in front of camp – all the time and made famous [...]

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 [...]

Yesterday’s HES Zibadianja cruise was rather lovely. Guests enjoed a superb lunch on the boat’s deck, floating alongside a herd of munching eles who were happily snorkeling in the lagoon.  Later, we passed a pod of particularly pink hippos and joked that they looked about as pink as our pink champagne. The sizeable boat is [...]

On 22nd February, Ride Kenya assisted a vet from the David Sheldrick foundation in darting and treating an elephant with an arrow wound wandering near ol Donyo Lodge and the Ride Kenya stables.                   Ride Kenya managers Paddy and Kim were on hand to track the elephant and follow it [...]

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 [...]

You don’t have to travel far in Duba Plains Camp before you see something lively.  Whether it is a herd of 1000 Buffalo, or the occasional Lions following them, or the local herd of Kudu pictured, you can immerse yourself very quickly by just stepping out of your tent. Then you can look up and [...]

The most exciting thing happened last night when a couple of our guests along with Seki our head guide stumbled upon our well known local lion! It’s always a treat to get a sighting of a species which has been so heavily persecuted in this region. Small conservation steps matter. Today, all of the birds [...]

December 2012, Zarafa Camp. Babies! It’s annual “baby-time” again around Zarafa Camp. All the animals are waiting for the first rains in order to deliver their young in times of plenty. With these delightful rains, fresh grasses and leaves emerge everywhere and the mothers agree that this is a safe and bountiful time for birth. [...]

Duba’s December Delights December is an exciting month all around the world and no less so at Duba Plains. We received big rains in the first week of December and within days the bush became alive and green again. Many birds started breeding so the sky is filled with bright and beautiful colours while the [...]

All too often in the world of conservation, we are peppered with tragic stories. De-horned rhino here, speared lion there, but today we bring to you a conservation story which might just give you great hope for 2013 and beyond. Sure, you might say, “but it’s just a set of games, who cares, what’s that [...]

November’s sometimes stormy skies have provided gorgeous backdrops for photography and the plains game have been plentiful. The forest areas at the base of the Chyulu Hills are fully green, and green is spreading across the plains and up the El Mau Hills. Wildlife has grown fat and happy in the midst of all the [...]

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 [...]

We still have not received any rainfall save for the showers that we had mid November. It looks like the rainy season is delayed but the sky is always filled with rain-pregnant clouds and anytime we might get a down pour. All our game drive areas are accessible as the area is dry. Game viewing [...]

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 [...]

November’s abundant rainfall has filled the ol Donyo waterhole, and elephant visitors have been numerous. With the pressure to find water lessened, we’ve been seeing lots of interesting interactions, and joyous splashing and bathing. Green season has certainly brought elephant action, and it can all be experienced close range from the lodge hide!

Great Plains Conservation is not simply a tourism venture. As our name suggests, we are actually primarily focused on conservation and use tourism as a vector to achieve our conservation goals. Hence we we call ourselves a “Conservation Tourism” company. To this end, Dereck & Beverly Joubert founded Big Cats Initiative in partnership with National [...]

Our friend and fan, Dan Achber of Trufflepig, crafted this entertaining and informative video of the Selinda Canoe Trail. It’s a must-see, if for no other reason then to know what to do when you face a pod of hippos be it in in Botswana, or elsewhere in your life. Glad you enjoyed it, Dan! [...]

It’s the driest time of the year in the Chyulus, with sun-bleached grasses stretching into the distance on the plains.     The resident bull elephants are congregating at the Ol Donyo waterholes, making for great photo opportunities from the hide.   In anticipation of the short rains (due to arrive in late October to [...]

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 [...]

“You don’t change the world to travel, you travel to change the world.” Dedrick D. L. Pitter This June, in comparison to other years, has been a wet one, adding to the way-over-average amount of rain this part of the Masai Mara has received in April and May. Consequently we are living in a sea [...]

Imagine this scene… We were following two brother Cheetah as they crossed the Ntiakitiak river, it was getting dark and the brothers were clearly agitated so we let them be and drove on a few hundred meters. Then on our right we saw a mother Leopard (Acacia) with her five month old cub in the [...]

The change in season from summer, through autumn and into winter is an interesting time in the bush. Our winter months – May, June, July – mark the return of the bulk grazing species such as Cape Buffalo and Zebra. With them come the massive herds of Elephants as they seek out the permanent sources [...]