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SOPA

LAKE NAIVASHA SOPA RESORT

Throughout time, the breathtaking images of East Africa’s iconic landscapes have captured the hearts and souls of most discerning travellers. According to the Lake Naivasha Sopa Resort website, Africa is one of the few places left on earth where adventure still awaits, this evocative land of rolling savannas, dense forests, mighty mountains, rivers, lakes and unparalleled wildlife provides a unique backdrop for a truly memorable experience.

Kenya and Tanzania claim some of the world’s most beautiful National Parks and Wildlife Conservation areas which teem with countless species of birds and truly wild animals. They also host the family of eight Sopa Lodges; all individually designed to complement and blend in with the magnificent surroundings of their environments while reflecting the themes and influences of Equatorial African cultures.

Large open-plan areas and cottage-style guest rooms nestle unobtrusively into the vastness of Africa, and are representative of the traditions of the local inhabitants who make up the rich tapestry of Kenya and Tanzania. The location of every facility at all Sopa properties has been carefully chosen to promise the best views over the wilderness while also offering an unrivalled ambience amongst cool and elegant surroundings.

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The high standards and spacious guest accommodations at all Sopa Lodges are equally matched by the unrivalled attention guests can expect from the dedicated team who are carefully selected for their commitment to personal service and genuine, heartfelt friendliness.  This ensures that all guests visiting Sopa Lodges enjoy an extraordinary and unparalleled level of true African hospitality.With over thirty years of experience in the hospitality industry, Sopa Lodges teams know full well that the meals not only have to be savoured by the guests, but that they also have to become family and social occasions to be looked forward to. Because of this, the highly trained executive chefs at each of Sopa Lodge’s properties design their menus around classical African, European, and Asian food preparation techniques which are fused with modern eclectic themes and influences.Wherever possible, Sopa Lodges source all the food required for the menus from the rich farmland areas around each, to not only ensure garden freshness, but also to continue with traditional support and commitment to surrounding agricultural communities.

Set in one hundred and fifty acres of grassland studded with Acacia bushes and trees, the resort is not only home to resident giraffe, waterbuck and both Vervet and Colobus monkeys, but it is also a night stop for the hippos when they leave the lake every night to come and trim the grass on the expansive lawns.

With Sopa’s traditional and conscientious care for the environment, this lodge has carefully positioned all the buildings on this property so well that no felling of any of the many trees was done. As a result, Sopa Lodge designers had to come up with a radically innovative and artistic design for the main public area building which now snakes its way between the trees with long and graceful curves.It certainly explains why Lake Naivasha Sopa Resort’s swimming pool, bar, snack kitchen, pizzeria, tennis court, conference halls (with their six differently sized meeting areas), and the stables are so widely set apart. And understanding the conscious conservation decisions made around the build, make the resort even more endearing.

Lake Naivasha Sopa Resort is located on the Southern shore of Lake Naivasha, 90km from Kenya’s capital of Nairobi. The accommodation consists of 82 rooms, including 6 inter-connecting rooms on the ground floor and 2 wheelchair accessible rooms.

The facility boasts of 6 conference rooms, with the largest accommodating 150 people, theatre style. This makes it the go-to hotel for large conferences out of Nairobi, both corporate and public.

Other modern service facilities incorporated are bars, lounge, restaurant, private deck, swimming pool, gym, gift shop and an expansive ground to host classical weddings and events, including Wi-Fi in public areas.

Key activities include private deck for an outdoor dining experience, boat rides, biking, bird watching, nature walks, card and board games.

The drive from the property’s main entrance gate to the reception car park takes you through Acacia shrub land where you will often see giraffe or waterbuck. The massive entrance portico is high roofed and oval in shape, and the steps down to the cozy, circular reception area are divided by an attractive water feature.

Lobby and Lounge is enormous, with the split-level area roughly circular in shape with an open to sky garden at its centre, and a wooden panelled 1950’s style bar at its far end. The high ceiling has decorated skylights and supports a number of chandeliers as well as the chimneys for the ornately worked copper fireplaces, while the fabric and leather upholstered furniture, wooden tables and a piano curve around the room whose huge picture windows offer sublime views over the surrounding landscapes.

The Naivasha Sopa Lodge grounds boasts a flat area between the resort’s main buildings, with the lake shore covered with lush grass that is regularly manicured by the hippos when they leave the lake to feed at night, and is bordered on all three sides by mature Acacia trees.

To the right of the lounge is a small forest of tall Euphorbia – a type of cactus – whose upper limits are conveniently trimmed by our resident giraffe, and through which leads the access path to the guest cottages.

The dining room to the left of the lounge has a shaded patio, and beyond this are the conference halls and the swimming pool. These are all fronted by cultivated gardens which follow through to line the access path at the rear of the guest cottages and, wherever you go on the estate, you will almost always be certain to come across giraffes and waterbuck, solemn Colobus monkeys, and the more mischievous and frivolous Vervet monkeys.

A section of the circular lounge roof gently curves away to shelter the dining room with its huge chandeliers and large, centrally located fireplace. The buffet area is located to one side of this in a large annex with a spectacular, red granito-topped live cooking area, and the excellent food ranges between Continental, Swahili (Kenya Coast), and Mediterranean cuisines, often with a deliciously subtle fusion of all three disciplines. These are accompanied by a selection of home baked breads, and garden-fresh fruits and vegetables.

The dining room also has a large, outdoor patio with umbrella-shaded tables for those who wish to enjoy an open-air meal during the day, or during our often warm and balmy evenings.

The swimming pool is always a favourite spot for kids because of its open sided snack restaurant which fills them up with pizzas, burgers, hot dogs, toasted sandwiches and, of course, French fries. However, the facility also has an a la carte menu here, and occasionally uses this area for private dinner parties.

The lounge area in the main public area building is split into upper and lower levels and the main bar is located between these. With its entire dark timber panel finish, cozy ambience, romantically subtle concealed lighting and high, upholstered bar stools, it would have once been the perfect setting for a scene from one of Dirk Bogarde’s movies.

By way of a total contrast, the pool bar is located in the roofed but open sided area between the swimming pool and the tennis court.

The rooms are in cottages built in a crescent shape, and each has 4 rooms, 2 on the ground and 2 at the top, totalling 82 rooms. 2 of these rooms are suitable for the physically challenged. 6 of the 21 cottages have inter-connecting rooms on the ground floor.

The exterior walls of the cottages have stone walls giving it character and the creepers and bougainvilleas add a lot of colour. The same stone work is carried into the rooms, and is the exterior bathroom wall. The banister going up to the top floor is crafted in beautiful wrought iron with creepers and bougainvilleas intertwined around them.

The double storey guest cottages with their ingeniously designed roofs gently sweep away from one side of the main building to form a crescent which leads towards the lake shore. While the upstairs guest rooms have a single king size bed and the downstairs ones have two queen size beds, both have one thing in common and that is an extraordinary amount of space as well as lavishly appointed bathrooms.

Ground floor rooms have 2 queen size beds and a sunken living room at the front which opens out on to the beautifully manicured lawns.

Top floor rooms have 1 king size bed and in front of it a balcony which has a beautifully designed wrought iron railing and furniture to match. This faces the lawns as well.

All rooms have large frontal windows; televisions; mini-bars; telephones; electronic safes; tea and coffee making facilities; and spacious, open-air verandas.