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WorldWild Tours: Kenya: Luxury Under Canvas

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Itinerary

B=breakfast, L=lunch, D=dinner

Day 1~Wednesday~May 27 San Diego / En Route
Your journey begins as you board your United Airlines overnight flight to London.

Day 2~Thursday~May 28 London/En Route
Arrive in London's Heathrow Airport this morning, where you will make your way to a nearby airport hotel where a private dayroom is reserved for you. Your brief stopover is a welcome opportunity for rest and leisure. There is a time differential between continents, and your mind and body have to adjust. This evening, return to the terminal for your overnight flight to East Africa via Kenya Airways.

Day 3~Friday~May 29 Nairobi
Early this morning arrive in Nairobi, the safari capital of East Africa, where you will be welcomed by your Classic Escapes expert driver/guides and naturalist and escorted to your luxurious hotel. Enjoy breakfast while waiting to check into your room.

After a briefing about the wonderful events ahead, get set for an exciting adventure as you visit Daphne Sheldrick’s Elephant Orphanage at the edge of Nairobi National Park. The orphanage is a nursery and rehab center for infant elephants that have lost their families, as well as rhino and occasionally, zebras and other wildlife. Daphne was the first person to successfully master the art of raising orphan infant elephants. The wife of the famous naturalist David Sheldrick, Daphne has dedicated her life to conservation. David was founder warden of Kenya's giant Tsavo East National Park, where he served from 1948 until his death in 1976. Daphne has continued her involvement and has had a real impact on the lives of elephants and rhinos, which would have normally died due to human poaching and surrounding population conflict. You’ll enjoy a visit with the elephants as they’re brought by their keepers to the waterhole and salt lick to be fed and socialize – see how they roll in the mud and play fight, as well as their affectionate interaction with their keepers. Daphne, or a member of her staff, will be on hand to discuss their habits, and impart interesting facts about their upkeep. These infants are eventually released into the wild at Tsavo East National Park and end up in the care of other orphans who have been successfully reintroduced to the wild.

Continue to the AFEW Nature Center near Giraffe Manor where you may hand-feed the Rothschild giraffes that live here. The giraffes were brought here by Jock and Betty Leslie-Melville, who founded AFEW (African Fund for Endangered Wildlife) and built the Nature Center to help educate young African children about wildlife conservation. The Rothschild giraffes are the tallest species and may reach 18 feet in height, but you can see eye-to-eye with them on the elevated walkway at the center. Lastly, visit the Karen Blixen House, the former house of the Danish Baronness, Karen Blixen (1885-1962), author of the book Out of Africa. Karen lived in this green residential area from 1914 to 1931 when she left permanently for Denmark. The house was built in 1910 and when Ms. Blixen bought the property, it had 6,000 acres of land but only 600 acres were developed for growing coffee; the rest was retained as natural forest. The house was bought by the Danish Government which offered it back to Kenya in 1963. In 1986, the house, formerly used as a school, was transformed to a national museum. Much of the original furniture is on display in the house and most objects were either used by Karen herself, for the shooting of a film based on the book or donated to the museum.

Days 4/5/6~Saturday/Sunday/Monday~May 30/31~June 1 Maasai Mara/Northern Serengeti
Your comfortable minibus now takes you on the 6-7 hour adventure to the Maasai Mara, Kenya’s most famous wildlife reserve. It was the setting for the film Out of Africa. (An optional flight between Nairobi & the Maasai Mara is available at a cost of $300 per person.) It is a classic savannah – grasslands, where animals are plentiful and the vistas spectacular. In this dreamlike land, animals live in freedom, and the Maasai tend their cattle, all sharing the same land with minimal conflict. You will have three days of wildlife-viewing opportunities in the Maasai Mara Reserve, also known as the “Jewel of Africa,” a site with one of the largest and the most spectacular animal migrations in the world. The reserve is inhabited by many of Africa's most popular wild animals, including lion, cheetah, elephant, leopard, black rhino, and hippo. There are also over 500 resident species of birds in the park including ostrich, red-winged larks and sunbirds as well as the lovely lilac-breasted roller.

The area is famous for rolling grassland and for the Mara River, which runs through the reserve from north to south. The reserve covers an area of 700 square miles and forms part of the Serengeti ecosystem, which hosts the world famous spectacle of the annual migration of up to two million wildebeest, thousands of zebra and an escort of carnivores from the Serengeti plains that follow the rains and succulent new grass. For some of the animals, it is a costly trek as many of the lame, laggard and sick will fall prey to the predators and many more will die in the swirling flood waters of the Mara River as they try to cross it. While you will not be in the Mara during the migration, you are sure to enjoy the astounding resident wildlife that calls the Mara home all year round!

Optional activities abound while you’re in the Maasai Mara. For a fee, you can try a balloon safari for an exhilarating experience over the savannah as the early sun rises and the animals are more active. Or, take a short flight to Lake Victoria, where either at Mfangano or Rusinga Islands you can see the life of the local people who rely on fishing. In fact, you can try your hand at fishing, as many times visitors can catch up to a 100-pound Nile perch. If fishing is not your thing, there’s a paleoanthropological site to be visited, and the area is lovely. Duties permitting, a Maasai warden will discuss current conservation issues faced in the Mara. If you wish, for a nominal fee, you can also visit a Maasai Village to experience this nomadic tribe’s way of life and see their colorful culture.

Days 7/8~Tuesday/Wednesday~June 2/3 Lake Nakuru National Park
You now explore the Great Rift Valley, a huge geological fault-line that stretches round one-sixth of the Earth’s circumference and is visible from far out in space. At 2,000 feet deep and 30 miles wide, it runs as far as the eye can see. Its walls are sheer and high and along its length, there are many volcanoes, most now dormant. With bubbling springs and geysers, the landscape is spectacular. Lake Nakuru National Park is a shallow alkaline lake that is world-renowned for its huge concentration of flamingos. At times, hundreds of thousands of these birds give the lake a pink shimmering glow. The park boasts a huge variety of animals, including leopards which are often found snoozing on the branches of the magnificent yellow-barked acacia, lion, buffalo, hippo, waterbuck, warthog, baboon, the endangered

Rothschild’s giraffe (only found in this park in Kenya), white rhino and the rare black rhino which is protected and guarded here. For the bird-watching enthusiast there are 450 species found in the park vicinity, with a vast concentration of water birds including Marabou stork, pelican, and, of course, the world-famous flocks of flamingo. Your wildlife drives will allow ample wildlife viewing and you’ll also get a chance for a bird and wildlife walk at nearby Soysambu and Lake Elmenteita.

Days 9/10~Thursday/Friday~June 4/5 Samburu Reserve
Resume your drive north, through rich farm land, en route to Samburu Reserve, which lies 200 miles north of Nairobi on the hot and arid fringes of the vast northern region of Kenya. Lunch will be at the Trout Tree Inn at Nanyuki. The reserve is within the lands of the colorful Samburu people, close relatives of the Maasai. It is home to a number of wildlife species rarely seen elsewhere in Kenya: Grevy's zebra, reticulated giraffe, and Beisa oryx, all found only north of the equator. The graceful gerenuk, an antelope with a characteristic long neck, spends much of its time in the sparse scrub that grows in this harsh terrain. This dramatic landscape is blanketed by the hot equatorial sun for most of the year. Relief comes from the cool waters of the Uaso Nyiro ("Brown") River, which rise to the west on the foothills of the Aberdares and which vanish beyond Samburu in the soggy expanse known as the Lorian Swamp. The scenery in Samburu is magnificent and the birdlife, awesome.

Day 11~Saturday~June 6 Samburu Reserve / Nairobi / En Route
A last chance to photograph that awesome sunrise before flying back to Nairobi. A day room will be supplied for you at the NAIROBI SAFARI PARK HOTEL. This afternoon, you may opt to shop in town, or at the African marketplace, or bask in the sun at the lovely pool of your hotel. Soon you are escorted to the airport for your flight to London. As your journey comes to a close, you say a fond farewell to your driver/guides and naturalist and promise to come back in the not too distant future.

Day 12~Sunday~June 7 London /San Diego
This morning your jet lands in London where you connect with your flights home, bringing with you the memories of all the wonderful sights of East Africa.

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