Segera Retreat

On the Laikipia Plateau, where the equator crosses central Kenya, Segera Retreat opened in 2013 on a 50,000-acre former cattle ranch bought by Jochen Zeitz, then chief executive of Puma, in 2005. Zeitz turned the ranch into a conservancy and built the retreat as a working example of what he calls the 4Cs: conservation, community, culture and commerce held in balance.

History

Segera was a ranch before Zeitz acquired it, with cattle grazing where elephant, lion and reticulated giraffe now move. The Zeitz Foundation, set up in 2008, runs its conservation and community work, including anti-poaching patrols, grassland restoration and support for schools in the surrounding area. The retreat opened in 2013 after several years of building. Zeitz, who also founded the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, keeps part of his art collection at Segera, so sculpture and painting by African artists stand in the gardens and the public rooms rather than in a museum store.

Architecture and design

The guest villas are timber and thatch, raised on stilts above the grassland and set apart from one another around a botanical garden planted with indigenous species. Each has a deck and a private plunge pool. Segera House and Villa Segera are larger houses for families or groups, with their own staff. In 2017 the Nay Palad Bird Nest was added: a sleep-out platform of woven timber on three levels, designed by Daniel Pouzet, where guests dine on the lower deck and then spend the night under the sky, with the bed raised above the canopy.

Rooms and suites

Six villas, with the two houses and the Bird Nest, make up the accommodation, so the retreat rarely holds more than a couple of dozen guests. Villas have sleeping and sitting areas under high thatch, open to the garden, with outdoor showers and the pool on the deck. The houses add kitchens, staff and private vehicles, which makes them the usual choice for a family taking a week.

Dining

Meals use produce from Segera's own farm and gardens, served in the main house, by the pool, in the garden or out in the bush. The wine cellar is one of the larger ones in Laikipia, built into the ground for temperature. Dinners are often set up at a different spot each night, and sundowners are taken on the conservancy with the view towards Mount Kenya.

Wellness

A spa and a swimming pool sit at the centre of the retreat, with treatment rooms open to the garden. Yoga and walks in the conservancy are arranged. Game drives, guided walks, horse riding and helicopter flights over Laikipia and towards Mount Kenya, visible on clear days to the south-east, fill the days, and the foundation's projects can be visited.

Weddings and events

Segera takes exclusive-use bookings for weddings and gatherings, with ceremonies in the garden or at sites on the conservancy. The two houses and the six villas together set the ceiling on numbers. Meetings and retreats use the main house and the gallery spaces, and the whole property is let as one unit for such occasions.

Location

Laikipia lies north of Nairobi, between the Aberdare range and the drylands of the Northern Frontier. Segera has its own airstrip, served by scheduled and charter flights from Nairobi Wilson Airport in about an hour; Nanyuki, with its own airstrip, is the nearest town. By road the drive from Nairobi takes around four hours. As a safari lodge in Laikipia it belongs to the group of private conservancies, with Ol Pejeta and Lewa, that make the plateau the main wildlife region of Kenya outside the national parks.