The renowned Duba Plains Camp sits in the heart of the Okavango Delta. A matrix of palm-dotted islands, flood plains and woodland, the 33 000-hectare private reserve typical of the region’s unique landscape. Duba Plains Camp offers 5 bespoke suites, in addition to a separate 2-bedroom suite aptly named the Duba Plains Suite, all designed by Dereck Joubert to blend into the forest and to take advantage of the shapes and textures of the shade but also to evoke the old classic African safari style of the 1920’s. It is a wildlife connoisseur’s getaway with literally thousands of animals in an almost endless pattern across the flood plains. All the rooms are raised on recycled railway sleeper decking and offer guests amazing views of the surrounding floodplain and the steady stream of wildlife parading past.
This is the place that the owners, and National Geographic filmmakers, conservationists and explorers, Dereck and Beverly Joubert, chose for their home base. Great Plains Conservation is the only operator on the concession, thereby offering guests the ultimate opportunity for private wildlife sightings.
Duba Plains has developed a model that creates maximum benefit for the community nearby with lease funds, jobs and other projects like our Big Cats Caring for Communities, Lamps for Learning (solar jars) Conservation Camp for Kids. This partnership ensures that these communities receive tangible and substantial benefits from wildlife conservation.
Duba Plains prides itself on its extraordinary wildlife experiences and intimate up-close exposure to the best of the best wildlife, from lions and leopards to elephants and buffalo and everything in between. Duba Plains is also known for interesting Kalahari species like Aardwolf and Pangolins.
Each of our camps have executive chefs and a hand-picked wine list. Duba Plains is no exception and boasts a cellar of a few hundred bottles of wine from friends of the Jouberts - winemakers who tell their story beyond the bottle, conservationists, people who have a community they support or something they give back besides being on the Great Plains Wine Selection for the quality of their wines.
While Duba Plains offers Botswana’s best land safari as well as an Okavango Delta experience, this is truly a place to find an invigorating, yet peaceful all-round set of experiences, from wildlife viewing and birding or fishing from the boat and exciting drives with knowledgeable guides and friendly hosts.
This is a great activity during mid-day siesta. Make sure you’re with a guide. During January and February there is a moratorium on fishing. Catch-and-release fishing only.
Another huge benefit of staying within the conservancies is the ability to appreciate the stunning landscape on foot, peacefully, without the noise of engines. Usually early morning or evening is the best time, as the middle of the day is too hot to venture out of the shade. Wear good walking shoes, a hat, and neutral coloured clothing so as not to alarm the wildlife, and take binoculars. Your guide will have water for you. Walks are led by licensed guides with firearm training.
Zipping through the Okavango Delta's network of waterways is an invigorating way to get a sense of the scope of this huge wetland. You’ll undoubtedly have wonderful birding and maybe even some hippo, buffalo and elephant sightings. (Boating is a seasonal activity, typically between May and October but varies seasonally).
Game drives (day & night) take place in some of Botswana’s best adapted vehicles. Duba Plain’s Toyota Land Cruisers are uniquely designed to traverse the floodplains. These are, of course, open-sided, canopied and customised for photographers (raised roofs, photographic bars, multi-plug inverters). Seating only four to six guests on each vehicle, the Cruisers are fully stocked with drinks and snacks. Each suite has a professional camera and lenses as a package for guests to use or try out. Images are downloaded and presented for them to take away at no additional charge.
While the focus remains on the most comfortable times of day (early to mid-morning and late afternoon to evening) for drives, it is very common in Duba Plains to spend full days out in the field, having brunch delivered to the vehicles because the wildlife is so good and our focus is on finding and spending time with these extraordinary experiences.
Our schedule is flexible and guests are encouraged to create their own itinerary according to their interests. Very often, our safaris will continue into the night in search of nocturnal species. Great Plains guides are also keen trackers and birders and guests are encouraged to experience everything the camp has to offer.
Duba Plains Camp offers a full syllabus of bush craft skills for our young explorers. This is a complimentary program that follows in the footsteps of National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert. An extensive pack will be provided to eager children on arrival, so they can learn about animal calls, how to track wildlife, and other facts and figures about the wild. At the end of a child’s stay, he/she will become a Young Explorer and Conservation Ambassador - ready to go out and tell the world about what they have learned and what they too can do to help protect this beautiful environment.
Each Duba Plains guest suite comes with a pair of high-quality binoculars for guest use as well as a professional camera set, including a camera body and lenses. Photos will be downloaded to a memory stick on guest’s departure. Photographic tuition through the Great Plains Wild Studio can be arranged for guests (at an additional cost and booked in advance). Tuition can be either on company cameras or own guest’s personal cameras.
Great Plains is first and foremost a conservation organization that uses eco tourism as a tool to sustain conservation programs. We even coined a new name for what we do – “Conservation Tourism”. We define it as the use of quality led tourism experiences that are environmentally sound, with the benefits going specifically into making the conservation of an area viable and sustainable.
It is important to us that this is done without any negative influence on the land, on any species that uses that land, or, indeed, on any individual animal. We do not do conservation by triage, killing some to save the rest, because this is a defeatist and disrespectful way of interacting with nature.
Our model takes stressed and threatened environments, surrounds them with compassionate protection and intelligent, sustainable management, and funds them with sensitive, low-volume, low-impact, tourism. Communities are an intrinsic part of this model and benefit directly from it. The final piece of the puzzle is you – our clients and guests – who pay to visit the camps we create, and through doing so, become our valued partners and agents of positive change.
Our philosophy is grounded in the fundamental appreciation of the good in life… Good people, good staff, good decisions, good things we share and enjoy, but most of all we try to extend that “goodness” to our interactions with you, with wildlife, with nature and with the local communities which so depend on them
