Jao Camp

The Hotel

Jao Camp sits on a private island in the northwestern Okavango Delta, the higher-water section of the Delta where seasonal flooding creates an island-and-lagoon mosaic distinct from Chief's Island's central-Delta context. The property is Wilderness Safaris' design-flagship, Wilderness Safaris commissioned the late South African architect Silvio Rech (the Pretoria-based architect who designed many of the higher-end Wilderness Safaris properties of the 1990s and 2000s, including the original Mombo Camp and the &Beyond Ngorongoro Crater Lodge baroque-Maasai signature) to redesign the original 1999 Jao Camp from the ground up; the 18-month 2018-2019 reconstruction reopened the camp as the deliberately-smallest-footprint Okavango luxury property, the counterpoint to the larger Wilderness Safaris flagship Mombo and Vumbura Plains.

The 5 keys are individually free-standing villas distributed across the property's private-island footprint. Categories are uniform, every villa is approximately 200 sqm with raised-on-a-wooden-platform configuration, the Silvio Rech-designed contemporary-Africana decorative register (large-scale Africana commissions, custom-made Botswanan-hardwood furniture, hand-loomed Botswanan-and-Kalahari textile commissions), private outdoor plunge pool, private outdoor sala, and direct Jao Concession-Delta sightlines. The named Jao Suite (the property's milestone unit, 280 sqm two-bedroom standalone configuration) is the largest unit and works for two-couple parties or families.

Operationally Jao Camp runs the smallest-footprint Wilderness-Safaris register at the design-flagship scale. The all-inclusive rate covers all meals, all premium drinks, structured water-and-land dual-safari programming across the surrounding Jao Concession, the conservation levy, and the property's signature structured spa-and-wellness programme, the only Okavango property running a structured spa-and-wellness programme at this scale (the Jao Spa runs three treatment rooms inside the central main building with the only Watsu-and-Pilates programme in the Delta). Game-drive operation runs the Wilderness-Safaris standard with the Jao Concession's distinct northwestern-Delta-water-mosaic context.

What gives Jao Camp the considered Okavango position, and the design-flagship alternative to Mombo's predator-density and Vumbura's water-and-land dual-safari, is the Silvio-Rech-design register at the smallest-footprint scale. The 5-villa footprint is by some distance the smallest top-tier Okavango Delta luxury property; the Silvio-Rech-design architectural register is unique in the Wilderness Safaris portfolio; and the structured spa-and-wellness programme is the only Okavango-cluster operation at this scale. For an Okavango honeymoon that values the Silvio-Rech-design register, a wellness-retreat that takes the Jao Spa as the daily anchor, or a multi-night Wilderness-Safaris-cluster circuit that uses Jao as the smallest-footprint base, Jao Camp is the most-considered choice.

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