JW Masai Mara – Luxury Safari on Points

My family recently spent 5 nights at this ultra luxurious JW Masai Mara safari in Kenya. To see how we booked it and all of the logistics on getting there, see this post.

JW Masai Mara Safari – what to expect

Going on safari had been a dream of mine for as long as I could remember. We picked this specific “camp” because we could use points to offset a bulk of the cost and I’d heard a ton about it from other people in the points/miles world. I am a sucker for luxury. And everything I’d seen about the JW Masai Mara exuded luxury. And guess what… it exceeded my expectations!

Here’s what’s included:

• They’ll pick you up from the bush plane landing strip. They are there waiting with their beautiful jeeps, cold towels, bubbly, sodas, waters, and snacks.

• Each jeep is tiered with big open windows. Blankets are on each seat for you to use. There is a cooler stocked with sodas and waters. But you can make requests to have it stocked with whatever you want. On morning drives the snack tin has morning pastry items (3 different ones) + nuts. On afternoon drives the snack tin has potato chips, terra chips, nuts & a sweet.

• All of your food & drinks are included. Early in the morning before game drives, there are trays of pastries for you to grab. Or you can order a quick yogurt or really whatever you want. There’s baristas to prepare any kind of coffee you’d like. And they can put it in a to go cup for your morning safari drive. Want to order multiple things for dinner? Sure, no problem. Want to order something off the menu? They can probably make that too. Really truly, there was no request they didn’t meet for us. My son even requested protein shakes! You guys, I was like, dude, they won’t have those. They concocted one with cereals blended in there and yogurt and peanut butter and who knows what else and he loved it!

• 2 game drives a day or sometimes 1 all day game drive (you’ll work this out with your guide). Morning drives are usually 6:30 – noonish. Late drive is 4:30pm – 6:30pm.
• 5 pieces of laundry per day, per person. They have these cute cloth laundry bags and you simply add your stuff in there before you head out to safari in the morning. Then that night when your room has been turned down after dinner, your clean laundry is returned to you.
• Use of the spa. The spa includes a cold plunge, sauna, steam room and shower. It has cold cloths waiting for you plus refrigerated waters. You simply need to call ahead to reserve your hour because they don’t have groups of guests overlap.

• Masai bracelet making, spear throwing and archery. We did the spear throwing with archery with a Masai Warrior (Kelvin). At first my son was not excited, because you know, he’s 13. And he’d done archery plenty of times at camps. But he proclaimed this was way better and the actual real deal.

• For a rental fee of $25 for your entire stay, you can rent the big, high end cannon cameras. You simply go into the camera room and pick the one you want. Each day after safari, you can pop into the camera room and Felix or Mascha will go through your photos to do some light editing with you and also give you tips for taking photos on the next day’s drive.

• Binoculars are in the vehicles for each drive. Usually it’s 1 binocular per group in the car, but since we were a group of 3, we requested an extra pair and that was no problem (with a group of 3 – someone will be looking through the camera but then you want the other 2 to have binoculars).

One more item on what to expect… I had read before arriving that you will be in a jeep with whoever you arrive with. And that is exactly what happened with us. There was a couple from North Carolina on our same Safari Link plane for the same 5 days we were there. So we became jeep mates. The jeep mate husband and Asher bonded over protein daily counts and working out – it was very cute 🙂

The JW Masai Mara property

Prepare to be blown away. Even though you’ve seen photos. Or maybe watched You Tube videos, it’s even better in person.

Each room is actually a secluded villa. 1100 square feet! Each room has a deck overlooking the river and a jacuzzi in that deck. There is no AC in the rooms. The afternoons do get super hot. But the nights can be very cold and you’ll probably wake up a bit cold (which I love!). On the coldest nights, they’ll put heated water bottles under your sheets at turn down to make your bed warm.

The bathroom is massive with double sinks, water closet, separate shower AND an outdoor shower with hot water.

The 2 main rooms on the property are the bar/lounge with a huge deck with fire pit. And the restaurant which has a roof but is open to the outside plus has a huge deck. These decks overlook the river. And at the top of the embankment on the other side is the hippo pond. It’s amazing to watch the hippos head down the the river at night. The Masia Warriors have flashlights and they’ll let you see. We got to see the most massive hippo and her baby making their way down to the river, it was incredible.

What is not included?

• Tipping. You will want to bring cash to tip. There is no ATM on property and they can’t break cash to 1’s, just 5, 10, 20.
• Super high end alcohol – I can’t imagine needing anything more than what they offer because they have a ton of variety and great choices included.

Additional activities

Hot air balloon – My family had never done a hot air ballon before, so I figured I’d spurge on this activity. You will book it through the hotel and they set everything up via their 3rd party vendor. It is just over $500 per person. You’ll tell them the date you want. Someone from the hot air balloon company meets you at the hotel at 5am and drives you (very bumpy) to the balloon spot. The balloons are crazy cramped – 16 people total, 4 in each basket. The morning we went, we barely saw any animals. We didn’t love this experience at all. The saving grace for it was the bush breakfast after. All the balloons from that company meet at for this massive bush breakfast with free flowing champagne, hot breakfast, made to order eggs AND real bathrooms!! The hot air balloon ride itself was a bust for us. But this breakfast was a blast chatting with people from other camps.

Professional photos – You can do professional photos via the JW. At the last minute we decided to add this. It was a 1 hour shoot for $200. Your family + 2 photographers + your guide take the jeep off property and do photos there. Then when you get back to camp they do a few more on property. They don’t limit the photos to how many you get. And the photos turned out so good. I am so glad we did them. I thought the price was a steal!

Sundowners & more

We had 2 bush picnics while on safari. One for breakfast and one for lunch. Your guide will let you know the day before that you are doing it. And you will choose everything you want from the menus and what you’d like to pack to drink. There are a TON of foods each day to choose from. And sooooo much food is packed. The breakfast wasn’t my favorite because the foods just can’t stay that hot – so somewhat cold hash browns or scrambled eggs don’t work. The fruit, yogurt, croissants are the way to go. For lunch, you had a ton of sandwiches to pick from. I chose the steak sandwich and it was delicious. The set up is adorable!

On our last night, we had a sundowner with all the JW jeeps. Usually you have to be out of the park by 6:30. But for a special event like this, they were able to stay in the park late and set up a bar, snacks, and a bonfire. They do story telling. And it’s really a special night.

The other reallllly special thing we did was a garden lunch. I didn’t even know this existed. The gardens at JW Masai Mara are absolutely gorgeous. On our last day, they gave us a tour of one (of many) and then us 3 and our 2 jeep mates had lunch there. It was incredible.

What to tip at the JW Masai Mara?

A few important things to know:

• You can tip in US bills
• If you leave a tip on the restaurant check, it gets divided with everyone who works at the camp
• You can also tip at the very end of your trip on the credit card and leave it for specific people

Here’s generally what we tipped:

• We tipped our guide $60 each day at the end of the last safari drive and sometimes more
• We tipped our waiter $10 at breakfast, $20 at lunch, $30 at dinner and sometimes more
• We tipped the Masai Warriors that walked us to our rooms after dark and before sunrise (you are not permitted to walk to your room by yourself after sunset/before sunrise) $5 usually
• We tipped $20 after using the spa, $20 for our archery/spear throwing, $15 – $20 each time we were helped with cameras, $10 – $20 for breakfast coffees and cocktails in the lounge and sometimes more 😉

The people are what make this over the top special

I’m not an extrovert. But the staff at JW Masai Mara really won over my heart and I ended up really getting to know some of them. Some incredible conversations and takes on life there/here were had. During your stay, you’ll have the same waiter for every meal and the same guide for every drive.

We had the dream team:

• Guide: Issa
• Waiter: Benjamin
• Coffee specialist: Jossiah
• The coolest bartender on the planet: Victor
• Photo specialists: Felix & Moscha in the camera room & for our photo shoot

Final thoughts

Sometimes you dream of a vacation for a long time and it can’t live up to the hype. I feared this may be that. But I think at the end of the day it was the people we encountered that put this trip over the top for us. Yes, the extreme luxury accommodations were incredible. But it’s the people that I think of when I remember our days here. And I am so very thankful for the experience.