When we got off the plane in Nairobi, customs was quick. We then walked to meet our driver. Since our flight was delayed, we expected the driver would come a bit later, however, he told us later in the drive that he had been waiting the whole 4 hours as he had already started his journey from his hometown to pick us up!
One annoying aspect of all the ATMs that we tried (four), is that you can only take out a maximum of 40,000 shillings, which is $300, meaning that we had to do many different transactions to get the money we needed. Which would be more of a problem if we didn’t have our Schwab Debit card that reimburses all ATM fees (#notsponsored).
After a 5 hour drive, we finally made it to our accommodation where they were incredibly flexible, considering we were 4 hours late. They made us dinner, and then we swiftly went to bed since we were our going for our first game drive the following morning. Dinner was very good, and our accommodation was surprisingly even better than the pictures. Instead of staying in a tent, which even the most luxurious camps put you in, we got a luxury hut, which doesn’t sound like much, but having real walls and a thatched roof elevated our experience. The interior was also aesthetically pleasing with animals on all the textiles (giraffe families, elephants, etc!).
Another perk of staying here was that each evening one of the staff would spray our room to eliminate any bugs. We also found out that we were the only ones staying at this camp which meant there was a lot of staff for just us including two general staff, a chef, and a Maasia security person with a spear in case any animals come too close.
We went to bed and woke up for our first game drive. We made sure to get a driver with a land cruiser, which we highly recommend because it can get to more places than a van can. Another thing to note is that typically accommodations will pack you a lunch, so you can stay out for breakfast and lunch.
We were prepared to not see all the animals that we wanted, but our luck was incredible. Thought I don’t think this is typical, we saw every single animal we wanted to see in the first day, including the highly elusive leopard. Not only that, we got an amazing view of the leopard – again, not typical!
We started the drive by seeing a three male lion pride which walked really close to our vehicle. Because it was so close, Jack and I wondered why it didn’t jump into our open-sided safari vehicle. We learned, that lions see safari cars as stationary objects and can’t really recognise the difference between the car and the human unless you stick your arm out of it.
We then drove on and saw a cheetah, which I was very excited about, because that’s my favorite animal! Then, the walkie talkie went crazy (The drivers use walkie talkies to tell each other where significant animals sightings). Our driver drove really quickly and there in a bush surrounded by maybe 20 other safari cars was a leopard! Our driver moved us right in front of all of the other cars, which made him unpopular with all the other drivers, but made us ecstatic.
After a couple of minutes, the leopard went deeper into the bushes. After the leopard, we saw lion prides lazing around and found one pride that attempted to attack a buffalo, but got chased off. During the day we also saw the giraffes walking majestically though the savannah. By the end of the day, we really wanted to see elephants, which our driver told us we’d see tomorrow, but our luck was strong. As we were driving towards the exit, we saw a family of three females, one bull and two babies. We watched them for quite a while, and then went back to our accommodation to prepare for the next day.
We had a nice meal and went to bed early for the 5:45am game drive the following morning. We saw the sunrise as we entered the park, which was beautiful and the driver drove us to where the hyenas were, but I hate hyenas, so that morning was not worth the wake up time.
However, we did spend a good amount of time following a cheetah, she was great! We also came across a mother lioness with her two cubs who were so cute and playful. Next up we saw some elephants including one that slowly made its way though some bushes to get itself into some water to cross the river.
After that, we found a tranquil spot to have lunch, far away from any other vehicles or noises. With the very early start, I was SO tired and the driver asked if we wanted to go back and Jack said she can probably just sleep in the car, which I did. After my hour cat nap – in which the driver joined in! – I was refreshed and ready to see more animals. As we drove we saw a few of the more common animals like gazelles, zebras, warthogs and ibex, and then came across a beautiful family of giraffes. There were three younger ones and two older ones and we watched them chomping down on some trees. After that, we headed to the accommodation for dinner.
We decided not to do a third game drive, mainly because we had already seen everything we wanted to see, and it costs $400 for the park fees and another $200 for the driver which we did not want to spend. We told the staff at our accommodation and semi made up an excuse that we needed a rest day to study for exams.
The next day we woke up very late and had a different kind of animal experience. Husbandry is quite a common profession for the Maasai people and as we were sitting outside on the porch, we got to witness the cute goats and some cows before the staff shooed them away. Considering all our early mornings, it was nice to have a day to sleep in.
We woke up the next day and our driver was there to take us back to Nairobi, where we checked into our gorgeous hotel, the Hilton Curio Collection. It certainly felt very luxurious and almost resort like. We had a relaxing day spent on the property.
The next day our flight was at 6pm. We considered spending the day at the Giraffe Centre, a 40 minute drive outside of Nairobi. The centre is famous because of Giraffe Manor which is located within the same park. However, we decided to just go to a local mall because the Giraffe Centre was too far out of the way and it seemed as it unfortunately did not have a baggage storage facility.
