Luxury

Mara Plains Camp

Mara Plains Camp is a unique and wondrous camp located in the private, 35,000-acre Olare Motorogi Conservancy on the northern boundary of the Maasai Mara National Reserve. This intimate tented camp mixes some of the best wildlife viewing in Kenya with amazing hospitality and guidance, ensuring that your holiday is both exciting and luxurious. No other camp offers the huge traversing area of Mara Plains Camp, which enables guests to access to a total of 100,000 acres of private conservancy land, plus the famous Maasai Mara, home to the Great Migration.

Safari

Game drives take place at both day and night, in some of the Mara Plains’ most coveted vehicles. The four Toyota Land Cruisers are all open-sided, canopied and specially customised for photographers with fold-down screens, raised roofs, photographic bars and multi-plug invertors all installed for the guests’ convenience. With a passenger allowance of four to six guests each, the Cruisers each come with fully-stocked fridges of drinks and snacks.

No two days are the same on safari. A typical day consists of a drive at sunrise, before returning for lunch and departing again in the mid-afternoon, getting back just after sunset. However, it is not uncommon to go out all day, deeper into the Conservancy with a packed breakfast and lunch to ensure no meals are missed. One visit per guest is included in a 3-night stay, with additional visits subject to park fees. It is also common for safaris to continue into the night, with night drives being particularly prolific in the Olare Motorogi Conservancy. Patience is required for these dark safaris, but sightings often include lesser-known nocturnal mammals, and if you’re really lucky, even lion and hyena hunts.

Photography

Every one of the guest tents at Mara Plains comes with a professional Canon camera set, including a 7D camera body and 100-400mm and 24-70mm lenses all made by Canon. Photos you take will be downloaded to a memory stick ready for you to take home on departure, creating memories that will last forever. In addition, each tent comes with a pair of Swarovski binoculars ready for guest use as well. To ensure that your photos are as good as possible, photographic tuition can be arranged for guests (at an additional cost); prior booking is recommended if possible.

Hot Air Balloons

Hot air ballooning is available, but make sure to book in advance as it is subject to availability and has an additional cost. Departures for this activity occur very early in the morning because you need time to transfer to the nearest launching point.

Maasai Visit

The Maasai are the local indigenous people of the area. If a chance to learn about them and their culture is of interest to you, visits to a nearby Maasai village (locally known as an “enkang”) are available and would no doubt serve as a highlight of your trip. Locally produced crafts are available to purchase at the camp, every penny of which goes towards the community, particularly the women’s groups and schools.

Pack for a Purpose

Mara Plains Camp is a proud member of Pack for a Purpose, an initiative that allows travellers like you to make a lasting impact in the community at your holiday destination. Saving just a few kilos of space in your suitcase allows you to bring school supplies for the Endoinyo Erinka Primary school, built by the Olare Orok & Motorogi Conservancy Trust, or for the Women in the Mara beading cooperative and adult literacy project. If you do this, you will make a priceless impact in the lives of the local children and families whose home is East Africa.

Great Plains Foundation

The story of Great Plains Conservation and its Foundation has its roots in the earliest days of conservation, when the idea of protecting untouched wilderness was recognised as a public service. Those early models gave birth to the notion that truly protecting wilderness requires the entire ecosystem to be preserved. It is this approach that guides Great Plains Conservation and its Foundation.

Founded as a hybrid organisation, with both commercial and charitable arms, Great Plains Conservation and its Foundation aim to secure the future of African landscapes in order to protect its resident and seasonal wildlife populations. Key areas are identified that are under threat, often next door to national parks, World Heritage Sites, and reserves, and they are converted into protected areas with economic benefits. For example, hunting land or agricultural land is converted into wildlife conservation supported by photographic tourism. The collection of world-class safari camps offerd to guests are also global leaders in sustainability, demonstrating that commercial operations can positively benefit landscapes when done correctly.

Great Plains and its Foundation currently manage around 1,000,000 acres, with plans to expand five times over to 5,000,000 acres across a variety of fragile landscapes and habitats.

Community

The Great Plains Foundation is committed to investing in local communities and with its vast network, it can identify projects that are action-oriented and embraced by the communities they serve. The Great Plains Foundation believes in partnering with local community groups to implement its projects, as working together creates real, lasting change.

Solar Mamas – the Solar Mamas initiative empowers local women in Botswana to improve their economic prospects whilst providing a much-needed service to their communities with solar-powered electrical systems.
Maasai Olympics – Maasai men and women gather in the shadow of the great Mount Kilimanjaro every two years for the “Maasai Olympics”. This unique conservation program is a fun sporting event that celebrates the best of athletic endurance, skill, and strategy, all with a clear goal in mind: the conservation of lions.
Student Conservation Camps – sustainable conservation is undeniably linked to communities living among the wildlife and protected lands. Withou initiatives like these that a focus on the future, lasting conservation legacies are simply not possible.
Great Plains Earth Academy – the Great Plains Earth Academy looks to use the positive relationship between local communities and the Great Plains Foundation to engage local young people and adults in northern Botswana and provide supplemental education, vocational skills, and scholarships.
Life With Elephants – through a relationship with villagers who are members of Ecoexist in Eretsha, the Great Plains Foundation brings guests to their Life With Elephants Tour. This has benefited the participating community both financially and culturally, through a meaningful exchange with international guests.

Solar Power

The camp’s electricity is fully generated by an impressive solar farm. This eco-friendly power generation aids the conservation of the wild animals that you come see, helping them to survive and thrive in the future.

Conservation

Conservation takes many forms, and these projects are strategic, comprehensive, and action-oriented.

The Great Plains Foundation takes a holistic view of conservation and every project, be it wildlife, landscape or community focused seek to restore, reinvigorate, and protect wilderness areas. The following initiatives are focused on specific species conservation, but with a goal to preserve and protect the overarching ecosystems in which these species reside:

Rhinos Without Borders – together with industry partner andBeyond, the Foundation aims to relocate no fewer than 100 rhinos from South Africa to safe havens in Botswana.
Project Ranger – the COVID-19 pandemic is devastatin Africa’s wild places, as tourism has halted and wildlife protection budgets are having to be cut as a result. Project Ranger helps to fund front line conservation personnel in order to protect these important and fragile ecosystems.
Conservation Emergency Fund – one of the most important lessons taken from the COVID-19 pandemic is that unprecedented times and challenges call for fast, flexible and innovative responses.
Traditional Herding Workshops – humans and wildlife have coexisted for millennia in Botswana’s Okavango Delta region. Over the generations, unique cultural adaptations were developed to address the competing interests of wild animal populations and domesticated livestock.

Landscapes

Restoration and protection of landscapes is central to Great Plains Foundation’s conservation philosophy.

Healthy and fully functioning ecosystems are the foundation upon which all other systems operate. Via projects that look to address conservation across entire landscapes, the Great Plains Foundation is building a better, brighter future for Africa’s landscapes and the people and wildlife who depend upon them.

Conservation Roots – through Conservation Roots, the Great Plains Foundation is partnering with local communities in their mission to restore ecosystems, including bringing back indigenous trees to landscapes across Kenya, Botswana, and Zimbabwe.
Sapi Restoration – in Zimbabwe, the Great Plains Foundation is securing a large section of the fragile, depleted landscape that is essential to the larger Middle Zambezi Biosphere Reserve and the Mana-Sapi-Chewore Unesco World Heritage Site.