Mara Crossing Camp

Excellent!! Amazing place with fantastic staff! They really are so attentive to your needs and the food is great! The tents are spacious and luxurious! Special shout out to johnstone the tour guide who is really knowledgeable and goes out of his way to show you the game reserve and is filled with interesting facts. The cook is amazing and all the staff are friendly! Really was an experience that I won’t forget.

A hidden gem. Perfect. We spent 3 nights/4 days at Mara Crossings in mid-October 2022. The camp was perfect - luxurious, excellent food, attentive staff, and an amazing location just above two cascading waterfalls full of hippos. The white-noise sound and grunting hippos were lovely at night. The tents were spacious, private, and well-appointed, with comfortable beds, rainfall hot water showers and electricity/plug-ins, both 24 hours. The location was ideal: abundant wildlife just outside of camp (sometimes in the camp too). We were assigned a private land cruiser and an excellent driver. Our driver, Joshua, had an uncanny knack for knowing where to go to get us the best views of rare animals and views. We were very happy that we booked this camp. I had a lot of questions before coming to my first safari, so I’ll share some of what I learned: Location: there’s a reason all the camps are in this section of the park - it’s an excellent location for game drives. Mara Crossings shares the same airstrip with Governor’s and is just south of that area. We came across herds of elephants and several giraffes on the way into camp. Immediately after leaving camp on our first morning game drive, we found three giraffes and an elephant against the sunrise, and then followed around multiple groups of lions that were just around the corner. Migration had left the area behind at this time of year, leaving the “regular” wildlife behind - and that was plentiful. We were alone with the animals most of the time - no other guests or vehicles around. We were able to be as close to the animals as we wanted to be. Crowds: In mid-October, we had near isolation and were often the only vehicles around when observing animals. I think this is partly because we were at Mara Crossings, which is much smaller and more private than other camps. The migration tourists were gone. We spent most of our time alone observing the animals and had a vehicle and driver to ourselves, Mosquitoes: we didn’t notice any mosquitoes at this time of year. The camp was in the low 80s during the day, low-60s at night. Perfect temperatures/weather. Fly or drive in to the safari? It seems like you can only get the truly open-sided safari vehicles if you fly in. Those vehicles stay in the park; if you drive in from Nairobi you may be in a pop-top van or a land cruiser that is enclosed with windows and may share with other guests. Be sure to ask about the vehicle and driver you will get with whatever safari you book. Length of stay: three nights felt just right for a first safari. We would have been disappointed to leave after only one full day. We had two full days in the park and were able to see a lot of variety in animals and scenery. All in all, we were very happy that we made the choice to stay at Mara Crossings and hated to leave it behind. I imagine it’s a good spot for migration season, even though it will be crowded then, because it’s near some of the most interesting crossing points. You can’t go wrong here.