“Zarafa Camp,” says Dereck Joubert, CEO of Great Plains Conservation, “is a beautiful sweeping design we had a little fun with and epitomises the romantic Botswana safari many seek. The décor is hand-made in a colonial style, all from reclaimed wood, which we purchased after the 2005 Tsunami to support local artisans in the East. I love spending an afternoon drifting quietly along the edges of the Zibadianja Lake in our houseboat. Sharing great stories as we watch the setting sun cast long shadows over huge herds of hippos and crocodiles or gently track elephant bulls as they swim the deep water from island to island. We recently watched painted dogs (wild dogs) chase an impala into this lake once, only to have it stolen by a hippo!
Zarafa Camp was the first camp where we added our beautiful copper baths to the suite’s bathrooms. That romantic Botswana safari touch has become our signature design feature in all our camps, especially our Réserve Collection camps. We inserted Zanzibar doors to the suite’s designs, and the camp’s name Zarafa (meaning Beloved One) is a nod to the story of the first giraffe to be taken from Africa to Europe as a gift to King Charles X of France. The Dhow Suite at Zarafa pays homage to this story and is an extension of the camp, and that story, downstream from the main camp.
We are, in essence, storytellers, of which there is still a beautiful ancient history in Africa to be told.”
