Okavango Explorers Camp is a brand-new Explorer Collection safari camp located in the southwest of Botswana’s private Selinda Reserve. At the intersection of the upper Okavango Delta water system and the famed Selinda Spillway, the camp's location is a unique combination of two iconic ecosystems. This area may be new to guests but has been known to us for many years as one teeming with wildlife. The 130,000-hectare Selinda Reserve in northern Botswana is a prime predator and elephant habitat. This new location has been handpicked for its access to some of the highest concentrations of wildlife in the region, along the southernmost section of Selinda Spillway. Lion, leopard and wild dogs hunt these parts regularly. There are good densities of giraffe, buffalo and exciting and now rare antelope like roan, sable and eland. At the peak of the dry season in late September, the Selinda Reserve has been documented to be home to over 9,000 elephants concentrated along this river system. For lovers of elephants, this is the place to be in the dry season. There is phenomenal birdlife in this area for those looking for some ‘lifers’. Okavango Explorers Camp creates a safari experience reminiscent of exploring the unknown African hinterland in a 1920’s style. The camp exudes a spirit of the romance of yesteryear whilst ensuring that adventure and discovery are an essential part of the journey. Enjoy moments where wildlife congregates along the Selinda Spillway to drink and marvel at the setting of the African sun across wildlife-filled plains. The safari experiences include wildlife viewing drives, canoeing and walking because Okavango Explorers Camp is in one of the most remote parts of this private reserve. Okavango Explorers Camp is the perfect safari camp to combine with its fellow Explorer-Collection safari camps, Selinda Explorers and Duba Explorers Camps. This camp is ideal for friends or families wanting to take the whole camp for extended stays and to make it their own.
Fly-fishing and rod/reel kit is available for those who want to try their cast at the local fish (except January and February when there is a moratorium on fishing).
One of the core activities at Okavango Explorers Camp is to enjoy a guided walk. It’s also a huge benefit of staying within the conservancies. Walks allow you to appreciate the stunning landscape around us on foot, peacefully, without the noise of engines. Talk to the managers to arrange a good time and location for a walk. 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.
Canoeing the Selinda Spillway is one of the most unique experiences in southern Africa. An ideal morning or afternoon trip would be to paddle down the spillway and to then walk back to camp, or be met by a vehicle for a game drive on your return. Canoeing is seasonal and dependent on water levels in the Selinda Spillway.
The focus of your stay is centred around exploration and adventure. As such, a large portion of the wildlife viewing activities involve drives in our specially adapted vehicles, walking with some canoeing on the Selinda Spillway as it enters the Selinda Reserve from the west being fed from the upper fringes of the Okavango Delta.
Our custom-built, open Toyota Land Cruisers are specially designed for our conditions and photography, including fold-down windscreens, raised roofs, photographic bars, and multi-plug inverters. Each Land Cruiser is fully stocked with reference books, drinks, and snacks.
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.
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
