The knock-out stay that will ruin all future safaris
THE PLACE
Zarafa Camp, Botswana
CHECK-IN
Black clouds are on our tail as our LandCruiser speeds towards Great Plains Conservation's Zarafa Camp. It's only 45 minutes from Selinda Reserve airstrip, but we pull up at our luxury camp's tented pavilions just in time to beat the thundering rain, which causes the vervet monkeys on the deck to scatter in search of cover. I'm handed lemonade flavoured with rooibos tea to settle my excitement as staff begin to zip up the marquee lounge tent against the tempest. After the rain passes, I'm shown to my tented suite.
THE LOOK
Zarafa Camp was the first hotel in Botswana to join the Relais and Chateaux collection, which recognises exceptional hotels and restaurants around the world, and the attention to detail shines through. Touches like sanded-back Zanzibar doors, Persian rugs and the metal cast of a giraffe's skull evoke a sense of old-world romance. Much of the camp was built using recycled materials salvaged after a tsunami devastated parts of east Africa in late 2004. The camp's main hub comprises a communal tented pavilion housing the dining room, library, bar, lounge, and a new wine cellar added in 2023, with wraparound decking featuring a firepit with views over Zibalianja Lagoon. There's also an open-air gym, massage studio, and an on-site boutique offering locally made jewellery, clothing and art.
THE ROOM
Each of the camp's four marquee-style guest suites measures 100 square metres and feels like a private condo. Pulling open the heavy antique front door reveals a welcome lounge with a fully stocked (and included) mini-bar and writing desk with a complimentary Canon DSLR camera ready for me to take on a game drive.
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The Age
19-05-2025
- The Age
The knock-out stay that will ruin all future safaris
THE PLACE Zarafa Camp, Botswana CHECK-IN Black clouds are on our tail as our LandCruiser speeds towards Great Plains Conservation's Zarafa Camp. It's only 45 minutes from Selinda Reserve airstrip, but we pull up at our luxury camp's tented pavilions just in time to beat the thundering rain, which causes the vervet monkeys on the deck to scatter in search of cover. I'm handed lemonade flavoured with rooibos tea to settle my excitement as staff begin to zip up the marquee lounge tent against the tempest. After the rain passes, I'm shown to my tented suite. THE LOOK Zarafa Camp was the first hotel in Botswana to join the Relais and Chateaux collection, which recognises exceptional hotels and restaurants around the world, and the attention to detail shines through. Touches like sanded-back Zanzibar doors, Persian rugs and the metal cast of a giraffe's skull evoke a sense of old-world romance. Much of the camp was built using recycled materials salvaged after a tsunami devastated parts of east Africa in late 2004. The camp's main hub comprises a communal tented pavilion housing the dining room, library, bar, lounge, and a new wine cellar added in 2023, with wraparound decking featuring a firepit with views over Zibalianja Lagoon. There's also an open-air gym, massage studio, and an on-site boutique offering locally made jewellery, clothing and art. THE ROOM Each of the camp's four marquee-style guest suites measures 100 square metres and feels like a private condo. Pulling open the heavy antique front door reveals a welcome lounge with a fully stocked (and included) mini-bar and writing desk with a complimentary Canon DSLR camera ready for me to take on a game drive.
Sydney Morning Herald
19-05-2025
- Sydney Morning Herald
The knock-out stay that will ruin all future safaris
THE PLACE Zarafa Camp, Botswana CHECK-IN Black clouds are on our tail as our LandCruiser speeds towards Great Plains Conservation's Zarafa Camp. It's only 45 minutes from Selinda Reserve airstrip, but we pull up at our luxury camp's tented pavilions just in time to beat the thundering rain, which causes the vervet monkeys on the deck to scatter in search of cover. I'm handed lemonade flavoured with rooibos tea to settle my excitement as staff begin to zip up the marquee lounge tent against the tempest. After the rain passes, I'm shown to my tented suite. THE LOOK Zarafa Camp was the first hotel in Botswana to join the Relais and Chateaux collection, which recognises exceptional hotels and restaurants around the world, and the attention to detail shines through. Touches like sanded-back Zanzibar doors, Persian rugs and the metal cast of a giraffe's skull evoke a sense of old-world romance. Much of the camp was built using recycled materials salvaged after a tsunami devastated parts of east Africa in late 2004. The camp's main hub comprises a communal tented pavilion housing the dining room, library, bar, lounge, and a new wine cellar added in 2023, with wraparound decking featuring a firepit with views over Zibalianja Lagoon. There's also an open-air gym, massage studio, and an on-site boutique offering locally made jewellery, clothing and art. THE ROOM Each of the camp's four marquee-style guest suites measures 100 square metres and feels like a private condo. Pulling open the heavy antique front door reveals a welcome lounge with a fully stocked (and included) mini-bar and writing desk with a complimentary Canon DSLR camera ready for me to take on a game drive.
The Age
10-05-2025
- The Age
In all of Australia you won't find anywhere else like this wonderland
It's dangerous beyond the lodge, I'm warned on arrival. Salt-water crocs can walk long distances across floodplains. But I'm soon in a Land Cruiser riding down mud tracks among forest into escarpment country. It takes only a minute or so to feel like I'm deep in Amurdak territory. The evidence of the thousands of years they spent here is everywhere. At the end of a dirt path that climbs towards huge boulders, I slide on my back under overhangs to find rock art. The passage of time hasn't faded the paintings, and I wonder just how many people have ever seen them. Plenty are easy to, access too. Perhaps the most spectacular painting – a six-metre-long rainbow serpent painted in white and ochre – is barely 10 minutes' drive from the lodge. Buffalo hunter-turned-environmentalist Max Davidson first came here in 1985. By the following year, he'd set up a tourist venture with traditional owners. He'd travelled all over the Top End but he hadn't seen anything quite like this place. That sense of discovery is still palpable here, 40 years on. I'm enthralled by what I'll find on my first boat ride through water channels between paperbark trees. Then we hit a huge estuarine crocodile lolling in the shallows. The impact – and the subsequent splashing by the spooked croc – nearly knock me over the side of the boat. We make it out of the channels and into a lake in time for a fiery Territory sunset. There are more than 275 species of birds in these wetlands; had I come in September, 40,000 magpie geese would've joined the show. There are huge crocs all over, lurking in many waterways we motor down. But it's the sense of history that awes me most. I can feel it pulsing out of the Earth all around me – 1000 and more generations of ancient people who lived here long before, whose ghosts linger long. I find paintings no anthropologist has seen. Off one trail I find human skulls and bones lodged in the crevices of rocks, and middens collected and stacked across thousands of years. There are swimming holes too, with sandy bottoms and crystal-clear waters. I'm a regular in the swimming pool beside the lodge too, since I know it's 100 per cent safe from a croc encounter. Until I reach the bar next door, of course. THE DETAILS
