We arrived in Nairobi on Saturday afternoon and were delivered to our hotel. The first pictures of Nairobi looking down from the hotel, and also looking straight down at the Port Cochere. We got a good night's rest and were ready to go at 5:00 a.m. the next morning. It was a nice drive from Nairobi to Samburu except the roads were pretty bad.
The country is very agricultural. We saw many small to medium farms and a few large commercial growers. In places their farms were vertical like in Peru. We could see Mount Kenya for a long time before we got close to it. It is the second largest mountain in Africa. We crossed the equator on our way to Samburu Game Reserve and made it there in time for lunch. At 4 p.m., we went on the first game drive. We had a great time there although they have had no rain for two years and it was sad to see some of the animals suffering. The elephants have it all figured out. They can drill water with their trunks; quite amazing.
We spent two nights at Samburu and were ready to move on, even though it meant another rough ride. The game drives were not excactly a piece of cake. The land on Samburu reminded us a lot of our 20 acres on Kokernot Ranch just outside Alpine, Texas, and also the sunsets were a lot like Alpine.
We were very excited about going to the Treetops Lodge. First we stopped in town at the Outspan hotel for lunch and to store our luggage. You are only allowed a small backpack or ruck sack. We said goodbye to our driver for our overnight outing. It wasn’t too far from town on a mountain top. The Treetops Lodge is built on stilts in the middle of water holes for the animals so you stay inside or out on the viewing decks and watch the animals come for water or sometimes for dinner. The Treetops Lodge was originally built in 1932, but was famous for being a favorite of then Princess Elizabeth, and she was at the Treetops in 1952 when she received the news of her father, King George VI’s, death. They actually had to postpone her coronation for a day or two because of rain in Kenya. She last visited the Treetops in 1986. We stayed next door to her Suite.
In the afternoon, we checked out the observation decks and sat in the bar munching on biscuits and drinking coffee and tea. Our room had a large viewing window as well. We had a lovely dinner with two gentlemen who were friends, one from Spain and one from Argentina. We slept well the entire trip, but at Treetops, you have a special switch in your room that turns on a red light meaning you want to be notified of animal sightings at the water hole. If your switch is on, you get on buzz for a hyena, two buzzes for a lion, three buzzes for a leopard or cheetah or four buzzes for a large mammal. We decided to start with the switch on and if it got too obnoxious, we would turn it off. We slept peacefully until 3 a.m. when we were buzzed for a large elephant. We sat up in our respective twin beds (didn’t even have to get up) and saw the elephant. Chris took a picture, turned off the light and the switch and we returned to a peaceful sleep. It was a charming and memorable place with a lot of history and trees growing up through the building.
From there, we returned to the Outpost Hotel in town, had a nice lunch, picked up our bags and headed for Lake Nakuru. We stayed in the Lake Nakuru Lodge, also a well known older place, and mostly know for having the largest population of pink flamingos in the world, although they do come and go. They also have a wonderful sanctuary for both white and black rhino. The black rhino was the only animal that we didn’t see for the second time on safari, but we saw plenty of whites. My favorite part of the trip was seeing the huge numbers of pink flamingos although most we couldn’t get that close to. We also enjoyed seeing several white rhinos. One night there and then we were off to Maasai Mara for the last two days of our safari.
The last two days of the safari were spent at Maasai Mara and what a treat that was! The people were just wonderful and every game drive was a new and very special experience. The Lodge was lovely and the grounds were beautifully maintained. We saw new and different trees and flowers. We saw 20' poinsettia tree; unbelievable! There were no hungry or thirsty animals on Maasai Mara. The lions were alternately lazy and also very playful. (No we didn’t play with them!) One day, we saw three cheetahs sleeping under a tree, a most unusual find.
We arrived on May 3 so we had two days at Maasai Mara, through the gates and climbing up to Mara Sopa Lodge where we stayed. We saw many elephants and lots of babies as well as giraffes. Since it was migration time, we saw great numbers of wildebeest and zebra. The land was mostly high desert but also had a lot of water and green trees and bushes, beautiful fields of grasses as well. Our best lion sighting was a pride of 9 lions! They seemed to be posing for us, having a lazy afternoon. Another big surprise, we had never seen a spotted leopard and we saw one in Maasai Mara up in a tree devouring a full grown zebra several times his size. YUK! It was rather amazing though!
On our last game drive, we saw 8 to 10 hippos in the water with at least two babies. We learned that they stay in and mostly underwater all day and go out and eat grasses at night. At the same stop, we also saw a young crocodile, and on the drive back to the lodge we saw an ostritch. Wow! At lunch the last day, one of the servers told me they would be dressing in their Native dress that night so Chris and I decided to join them. We went down to an old village and bought Maasai cloth, bracelets, neckbands, anklets and a lion’s tooth for Chris and a decorative belt for me. They don’t sew, snap or button their cloth but rather wrap pieces around them. Some of the men just wrap like a blanket. It book us 1 ½ hrs to get dressed but was worth every minute of it. When we walked into the full restaurant, all eyes were on us. We were pleasantly surprised that so many of the Maasai people complimented our dress and told us how honored they were that we chose to observe their tradition. We had a combination of Maasai and regular food. There was also a party of about 40 or so Indian people in attendance that night who kept coming over and wanting their pictures made with us. What a wonderful and fun celebration!
After a leisurely breakfast on Saturday morning, we headed back to Nairobi where we spent our last night before returning to Lagos. What a memorable trip!
Five stars for Maasai Mara
Four stars for Treetops
Three stars for Lake Nakuru
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