Greenwood Safari Camp — Hotel in Siana ward

After a lot of research, chose Greenwood Safari Camp for my 3 night, 2 day visit to the Masai Mara. This was a great experience as a solo traveller using the tents.

Staff and manager Magdy were very friendly, who met us each morning before, and each afternoon after game drives, and at dinner. He knew our names before we arrived, and was very welcoming, and responsive on Whatsapp. I never felt like I was being pushed/guilted to buy or order more things.

Location is incredible - in the park through the Talek Gate within 2 or 3 mins each morning, which maximised sleep before 6am game drives. I'd considered joining a group safari from Nairobi, but most of these stay at/near the Sekanani gate, which is very far away from the Mara River, where crossings are during the Great Migration - Talek is a sweet spot. Most of them only do a half-day drive on the first day, which simply isn't enough. By staying at Greenwood, it was easy to maximise the park fees by staying 3 nights, and game driving on 2 full days.

Tents (there are 5) are installed and have a roof over them, with actual beds and comfy enough. Mosquito nets are not provided, so I'd recommend bringing your own and/or a repellent diffuser and/or actively wearing repellent. There's a light bulb and 2 power sockets that seemed to always be on, which was better than other campsites which only had limited hours. Bathroom and showers were shared, but clean and hot water present through firewood.

Breakfast and lunch were packed and sufficient (would recommend bringing own snacks if you easily get hungry!), but dinner was fresh, filling and nutritious each night, with soup, salad, cooked vegetables, rice, a stew of some kind, and salad. When lunch went missing one day, Magdy was very apologetic and compensated for this.

Game drives were great! Magdy was very flexible in allowing me to join with another group to share a vehicle and its cost, even though we'd separately pre-booked. Our driver Alex was an excellent driver, and had great intuition and understanding of the animals and respected them, irrespective of how other drivers acted. We had a little trouble communicating, but saw incredible things (including river crossings!).

I organised transport through Greenwood via Whatsapp. There was a Toyota Probox from Narok to the campsite (I'd taken an Uber from Naivasha to Narok before), and an SUV from the camp back to Nairobi. This was simple and efficient, and though the rate was roughly market rate, it was on the more costly side for a solo traveller. I'd needed to be in Nairobi by a particular time to not spend the whole day travelling, but if you have time, I'd explore other options, such as sharing with other patrons at the camp.

Overall, Greenwood was an incredible place to stay to experience the Mara. I'd highly recommend it and would easily choose it again if...

Book this place at your own risk!

Towards the end of September/begging of October, my boyfriend and I booked Greenwood camp for three nights. We paid 220 Dollars a night.

Here is our feedback:

Location: The place is perfectly located. Talek gate (one of the entrances to Maasai Mara) is just a less than 5-minute drive away. The staff: The staff is friendly. Food: The food is not the best; the only good thing they have is the butter chicken soup. The amount of money paid does not reflect the quality of the food served.

Accommodation: The tents don't have padlocks. Someone, I don't know who, goes through your belongings. We put our belongings in the tent, went for dinner, and the owner asked us while having dinner if he could check if our tent had warm water. We agreed. During our stay, there was a staff member who made our bed, and there was also a security guard who kept walking on the premises, even to our tent to switch the lights. After leaving the place, we realized that 700 euros were missing from our bag. After contacting the owner, he apologized and told us we should have taken care of our belongings, as this is the recommendation they have written on their board. Mind you, during these three days, my boyfriend wasn't feeling well, so I was more concerned about his health than the one bag that had the money.

The owner then said that he fired two of his staff members without conducting enough investigation. I told him he shouldn't have fired them, but that did not change anything. He should have at least said he would buy padlocks or something. There are not that many tents in the place.

The water temperature that was checked was only warm on one day; the rest of the days, the water was cold.

I'm Kenyan, I speak Swahili, so I could understand a lot of what was going on. I received information that the staff members are poorly paid. I find it unfair, especially when the tents are that expensive.

I went to other tents in Tanzania where the tents were also not closed, but nothing got lost. What I also noticed is that the owner is a micromanager; the cook can't order something and cook, he cooks what he is told. Once we went for a game drive with a packed lunch, we ate but had some leftover chicken. That was the same food we had for dinner. I'm all for recycling and avoiding food waste, but paying that amount means that you should also receive good food that wasn't leftover from lunch. Or at least tell us that's that is the same food we are going to have. He drives guests to the game drives himself. Someone complained about a car breaking down, I never followed it if they got a...

My wife and I spent 4 nights at Greewood Safari camp. The camp is at a very convenient location just outside the Talek gate of the Masai Mara park. All that separates us is the river and the entry fee to the park 😄. The camp is a very peaceful place nestled amongst trees with lots of beautiful birds that sing sweetly and neighboured by the river home to a smal family of hippos who sometimes come to graze at night inside the camp. We had booked one of the small tents with a balcony, but when we got there we were pleasantly surprised when Magdy, the owner and manager, graciously upgraded us to a bigger tent that was very spacious, equipped with cosy beds and tables making our stay very comfortable. The common shower and washroom facility outside the tents is maintained well with provision of hot water as well. We took the full board package. Packed breakfast and lunch was arranged on all 3 days of our game drives. Dinner was mostly buffet with a soup, chicken/fish(on our request since we don't eat red meat), rice/potatoes, vegetables, salads and fruits with tea/coffee. Magdy was kind enough to customise the meals as per any requests we made. He arranged for our smooth transfers to and from Nairobi and also the game drives for all 3 days which relieved us from the stress of planning. Thanks to Alex, our guide and driver to the game drives, because of whom we saw and encountered all the animals very closely until our eyes were satisfied which made our trip really worthwhile. We were lucky to witness apparently 2 rare moments - a leopard sighting and a zebra kill by 2 cheetahs. We missed the wildebeast migration by about 2 weeks but saw lots and lots of animals including prides of lionesses with their cubs, lions, hyenas, warthogs, elephants with their very little ones, giraffe fight. All in all we enjoyed our trip to Masai Mara thanks to Magdy and his team. Hoping to...