Zarafa camp is located in the Selinda Reserve and offers stunning views of the Zibadianja Lagoon. The camp offers luxurious tents with private plunge pools, excellent dining options, and guided game drives. Zarafa Camp is one of Botswana’s best camps, with a spectacular location overlooking a permanent lagoon on the huge and private Selinda Reserve. Some of Botswana’s most famous animals may be found in this pristine 130,000 acre reserve located between the Okavango and Chobe rivers. With just four achingly elegant suites, this is a truly rare camp, Botswana’s first Relais & Chateaux resort, offering an exclusive and exclusive safari experience.
Zarafa Camp was the first camp to have our gorgeous copper bathtubs installed in the suite bathrooms. That romantic Botswana safari touch has become a hallmark design feature in all of our camps, particularly those in our Réserve Collection. We included Zanzibar doors into the suite designs, and the camp’s name, Zarafa (meaning Beloved One), refers to the narrative of the first giraffe brought from Africa to Europe as a gift for King Charles X of France. The Dhow Suite at Zarafa pays respect to this narrative and is a downstream extension of the camp and that story.
The décor is handcrafted in a colonial design using recovered wood that we obtained after the 2005 Tsunami to help local artists in the East. I enjoy spending a day in our houseboat drifting calmly around the shores of Zibadianja Lake. Sharing fantastic stories while we watch the evening sun create long shadows over vast herds of hippos and crocodiles or softly trace elephant bulls as they swim from island to island in the deep sea. We recently saw painted dogs (wild dogs) pursue an impala into this lake, only for it to be taken by a hippo!
