February
10
2010
By Dan Achber
I’ve gone on at length before about how great I think safari is, and I won’t do it again here. Instead I’ll tell you how great sleeping out in the wild is. First and foremost you need a good bed, and in my view there are none finer than those at Vumbura Plains in Botswana.
I think my friends would agree that at 6’5” I am a man of considerable dimensions, but even I was lost in this camp’s beds. They are so big that even when sharing with someone else, you can almost lay with your arms outstretched and not touch the other person. The bush is not really a quiet place at night and for some, the racket can be a little unnerving. There’s something to be said for having your head hit the pillow and being so comfortable that you don’t move or hear a thing until you’re woken at dawn the following morning for your game drive.
A good sleep really puts you in a positive frame of mind about the place you're staying and perhaps this was the idea with Vumbura Plains. At first blush, the modern lines and slightly imposing style gave me pause, but the longer I stayed the more I loved it. I won’t gush about the food and the service since they are as expected—top notch. The area is rich in game and in the hands of a guide like Obie the safari experience is hard to beat. Plus there’s a helicopter—what more can I say?
What I really like about Vumbura Plains is that Wilderness Safaris has managed to merge the modern with the traditional. The entire place is made of that slightly greenish pressure treated lumber, but the whole is definitely more than the sum of its parts. It’s part sleek boutique hotel and part the kind of tented camp that I imagine when I think of a classic African safari. The rooms are huge and contain every amenity you could want, yet they're light and have spectacular panoramic views of the flood plain beyond. In safari parlance, the camp is classified as ‘premier’ and it lives up to its billing without question.
Dan Achber is a Trufflepig trip planner who looks down upon the giraffes when he heads out on safari. To get his eagle-eyed perspective on the trip planning process, email him at dan@trufflepig.com.