Satao Elerai Lodge in Kenya

Satao Elerai, a small luxury lodge situated on a 5,000-acre communally-owned conservancy in southern Kenya, is the product of a unique partnership between the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), the Entonet/Elerai Maasai community, and Southern Cross Safaris, a leading private operator.

The local Maasai community owns the lodge, which it planned and created with strategic support from AWF. As part of the project, the community broke down fences and set aside the surrounding area for conservation. Southern Cross Safaris, a leading private company, operates the lodge and the conservancy as a single high-quality, highly efficient enterprise.

The two facets of Satao Elerai are mutually reinforcing: revenues from the lodge are reinvested in further conserving wildlife and lifting the community's well-being; the thriving conservancy, in turn, provides the basis for a high-quality tourism experience that attracts visitors year after year.

At Satao Elerai, visitors have a chance to experience southern Kenya’s stunning wildlife while staying in unique, conservation-minded accommodations. Located just south of Amboseli National Park, the camp boasts spectacular views of the world-renowned park and Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest peak.

The lodge itself resembles a traditional Maasai boma, and is built almost entirely of dried, naturally felled yellow fever acacia trees — called “elerai” in the Maasai language — collected from the surrounding lands. The thatched roof is buttressed by dried elerai trees, and the triangular-shaped windows are framed in elerai branches. Even the large beds are constructed mostly of elerai wood.

With each passing year, more animals are expected to return to the Elerai area, vegetation should thrive and adapt to protected conditions, and the ecological health of the land will surely improve and evolve.

The 5,000-acre conservancy is already home to a variety of East Africa’s diverse wildlife: lion, cheetah, buffalo, giraffe, serval cats, dikdik, gerenuk, and leopards, as well as a wealth of birdlife. Amboseli’s free-ranging elephants also routinely cross the land as they move south into the forests of Tanzania. It’s these iconic elephants that naturally pushed down many of the trees used to construct the lodge.

As the conservancy’s place in the larger landscape matures, new conservation initiatives will be designed and introduced for the benefit of people. That's the vision of Satao Elerai – creating a community anchor to preserve an area of ever-changing natural wealth.

Satao Elerai is a small but important part of AWF's Kilimanjaro Heartland, a vast cross-boundary landscape at the center of the Kenya-Tanzania border. The Heartland spans a variety of terrain, from afromontane to woodland, open savanna, to aquatic, along with large swaths of community lands tended by the Maasai people. In this critical network of protected and unprotected landscapes, Satao Elerai broadens the area dedicated to conservation – a key to keeping wildlife habitats from fragmenting and to maintaining important wildlife corridors.

If you are interested in visiting Satao Elerai, click here to learn how to book your stay.