East Africa Safari 2025

We arrived in Nairobi after a grueling 14 hour flight that saw us accidentally leave our neck pillows in our checked bags. We were also disappointed to see that we wouldn’t be in a row by ourselves. I had been bird-dogging the websites for weeks to make sure our center seat was empty, but it ended up not being that way once we took off. Since our flight took off a 1:30 pm, we were served lunch, a mid-flight snack, and then breakfast. Getting through customs was unusually slow, there were several lines, they just weren’t moving very fast. Once through, we got our bags, and met our driver Robert. We had asked about things to do in the area to try to make sure we stay awake. The flight landed at 10:45 am, so we needed to stay up until at least 6 pm to try to shake the jet lag for the rest of the trip.

Robert took us to the Nairobi Walking Safari, a reserve for injured and rehabilitating animals right on the edge of Nairobi National Park. We were able to see all of the big five at the reserve, so we were able to get on the flight and head home the next day, just kidding. The facility did have an impressive assortment of residents, two juvenile giraffe’s that allowed us to walk right up to them and pet them, a three-pawed leopard, and even a rhino among others. Our favorite part was getting to walk through the woodland area and pet Murphy the giraffe.

Our second stop was the Giraffe Center, which houses a small family of giraffe’s and a walk up enclosure that allowed us to feed them with pellets. We were instructed to place the pellets on their tongues, which allowed us to feel how dry and coarse they were. It was mostly civil, until the one big giraffe bull would decide he wanted someone else’s spot and run them all off.

Our final stop was a craft market. Miranda wanted to see one of the local markets, but either Robert decided that wasn’t a good idea, or he wasn’t quite sure what we were asking for. Regardless, we ended up at one of the many tourist trap markets that we would see in Kenya. Every one of these markets typically had some canvas artwork, metal animal sculptures, wooden animals, and dishware made of soap stone, bone, and wood. Armed with an idea of what we’d find on the rest of the trip, we left to go to dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse and then to our hotel, the Ole Sereni, for the night.

rwanda

We landed in Kigali, got our bags and met our guide for the next few days, Paul. Apparently you need a special license to do pickups at the airport, so Paul gave us information about the city while our hired driver took us to our hotel for the night, the Heaven Boutique Hotel Villa. Paul gave us some options if we wanted to wander around that afternoon, but it being a Sunday, there wouldn’t be many places open. We took a short walk and then returned and signed up for a cocktail making class at the bar. This ended up being an awesome experience as we got to apron-up and make three local drinks behind the bar with Alphonse, the hotel bartender. We spent the rest of the evening enjoying our creations, visiting with some of the other guests, and then we had dinner before heading back to our room. The next morning we woke for breakfast and then got our first glimpse of something that would be a constant in our lives for the next two weeks, the Toyota Land Cruiser. These vehicles were pretty cool, raised top for viewing, handles everywhere for standing while moving, slide windows for easy picture taking up close, power outlets, and a small refrigerator. It only took about 20 minutes to get out of the city as we drove south into the countryside. The roads were very well maintained and have been used for the Tour de Rwanda bike race for the last 25 years. Paul told us that citizens who do not have regular jobs earn their healthcare and a government stipend in exchange for keeping section of the road clean and orderly near their home. Another highlight of the drive was the large amount of school children in their color coded uniforms all walking to school. Thousands of children in blue or green outfits walked along the roads with the community keeping an eye out for their well being. Paul told us that in their culture, anyone can discipline a child for misbehaving and this seemed to keep kids in line, even when their parents weren’t present. As the drive went on, Paul shared a lot of information about Rwanda, everything from how the genocide against the Tutsi’s is viewed 30 years later to the fact that 70% of Rwandan’s are vegetarians. We eventually turned west and after another a couple of hours, we entered into Nyungwe Forest National Park.

Nyungwe Forest National Park

Entering into the park didn’t include a big flashy sign or anything else, Paul just told us we arrived. We were greeted by a troupe of Black and White Colobus Monkeys that were way up in a tree and made picture taking a bit difficult. These were followed by the under-sized Black Fronted Diuker’s and then a group of L’Hoest’s Monkeys on the side of the road. Eventually we pulled up to the Uwinka Visitor Center and met our guide for the canopy walk to the suspension bridge. The hike in was all downhill, which didn’t bode well for the hike back up. The bridge is about 500 ft long and is suspended about 230 ft above the forest floor. Our guide took a bunch of pictures of us and then we got a few from the bridge. As we started to make our way back up, the canopy began to move and make noises. We looked up and saw a troupe of silver monkeys coming our way. After about 10 minutes of getting pictures and videos, we started back to the visitor center. Paul dropped us off at the Nyungwe Top View Hill Hotel and let us know that we’d need to be up early and ready to leave at 5 am. Right out behind our room there was a large area of flowers and several types of sunbirds feasting away. We mistook these for hummingbirds but were corrected the next day when we told Paul about them. We spent nearly an hour taking pictures and watching these little guys. It started raining as we walked up to the main building for a beer before dinner, but like all storms we’d run across here, it was done in less than 30 minutes. As we sat at the bar listening to the rain, I caught site of a rat scampering in and behind the bar, not the most appetizing of sites right before we eat.

The next morning we were up at 4 to check out, grab our box breakfast, and hit the road for chimpanzee trekking. We had to get up early because the chimps get up early too, eat, and move on. There are trackers out there following them, so we always knew what direction to go in, but they don’t stick around for very long. It was still pretty muddy out from the rain the night before which made the hike a little interesting. About 30 minutes in we ran across a colony of large red ants that would be the bane of our existence for the rest of the morning. Each time we ran across a colony of these we had to pick them off of our boots and socks. Our porters helped us out a lot with these annoying little creatures. Our first encounter with this family of chimps started with most of them already on the move. We saw four of them climbing down a tree to the ground and walking away. These little guys are very smart, fast, and aren’t terribly interested in us. That means catching up to them is pretty hard and we were lucky to get glimpses of them and come away with the one or two decent photos we got. We caught up to them two more times, but that first one was our best shot at pictures, other than pictures of chimp butts crawling down trees and walking away. After the third one, our guides took a vote, and we decided to call it. We weren’t out there on defined trails towards the end, it was a lot of hacking through densely forested area, several inclines, and lots of red ants at over 5,000 ft in elevation. The walk back got better as we got closer to defined trails, eventually we came out near some farmland and followed the property lines back to the road. Paul met us on the side of the road, we said goodbye to our guides and fellow hikers and then were off on our five-hour drive to the Five Volcanoes region.

Nyungwe Forest National Park Gallery

The drive was long but also very beautiful. Rwanda is the country of a thousand hills and that might be an understatement. We were headed north along Lake Kivu, one of the African great lakes and rich in methane. There are a number of methane platforms on the lake that harvest the gas for energy. The extraction process is also to alleviate pressure that could cause a methane bubble that could kill thousands of people along the shoreline, or an explosion that could kill millions in the region. As we drove through the hills we saw several construction projects going on as the country continues to add services and infrastructure to the more rural regions. As we got towards the end of our drive, the ground started going from the red clay we had become accustomed to a volcanic grey. The houses and walls were all made of the material, we even went by a concrete factory making concrete from the volcanic rock.  We arrived at our hotel for the night and were amazed to learn that laundry was only $2 a shirt or pair of pants. We had all of our hiking gear we’d worn so far washed, they even cleaned our boots. We couldn’t bring ourselves to hand over the small stuff so we washed undergarments, socks, and shorts in one of our waterproof bags and hung them in the shower. This turned out to be more of an effort than we bargained for with the high humidity in the area. Most of our clothes were dryish after two days, but some we had to pack and then unpack in Kenya to finish the job. As we were eating dinner a thunderstorm rolled through and took the power out. Neither the storm nor the power outage lasted long, but it was a reminder that we were still right on the edge of the wet season here.

Once we were done with breakfast and a show, we were back in the land cruisers and on our way to the highlight of our time in Rwanda. Our first stop was to visit the park where the naming ceremonies take place. Every year in September they host an event where all of the gorillas born during the previous season are named. There is a massive statue of a gorilla family and it was a good place to get a picture at the beginning of our adventure.

We checked in at the center and waited to be assigned to a group. We ended up renting gloves for $5 a person from the park because the area is full of thorny bushes. Our guide was named Eugene and our group ended up only being five other people. Our hike would be on Karisimbi volcano, which was a long drive away, but a relatively level hike. The family we’d be looking for was called Isimbi and it had 20+ members. The last hour of the drive ended up being pretty rough across dirt and rocky roads through a village area. The hike was amazingly easy, some incline and some ducking through fallen and leaning bamboo stalks, but all-in-all, far easier than we expected. We found out that we were pretty lucky to be doing this as early in the season as we were. The gorillas come down from the mountains in the winter and go back up in the summer, making the hikes longer and steeper. This time we got a porter so we could try to enjoy our time as much as possible. Once we arrived at the rally point with the trackers we got our camera gear ready and were given masks for the last five minutes in. The park staff noticed a spike in illness-related gorilla deaths after mask mandates were loosened, so for the foreseeable future, masks will be required.

Golden Monkey Trekking

Our next day started similarly to the previous, with the exception of dragging our luggage out to the land cruiser before breakfast. It’s always a game to see if we can get our stuff to the vehicle before porters catch us and this time we won. Our golden money trekking began in the same place as the previous day as well, and once again, our guide travelled with us to the trailhead. We realized that Paul was a very popular guy with the guides. We’d find him chatting them up every chance he got and they travelled in our vehicle for all three of our treks. This benefited us because we (Miranda) got to pepper them with questions before and after the treks. Once we got walking, the guides warned us that it would be about a 3-hour hike to get to the trackers, but after 20 minutes we were there. I think they’re used to having fun with the tourists who have already done the multi-hour gorilla hikes.

The trackers led us through a small grove where we could see glimpses of the monkeys keeping their distance. The overgrowth made pictures a little tricky with out cameras auto-focus bouncing around. There were about a half dozen of them in three different areas, we all took turns going from area to area waiting for decent openings. The trackers suddenly told us we’d be heading back out and to a different location. A short walk out and down the stone wall later, we came across the rest of the troupe feeding in the fields. Our guides told us that they weren’t being harmful to any of the crops yet, but once harvest got closer, they became a real nuisance that warranted overnight guards to run them off. Just hanging out in the field, they made great subjects for our pictures before heading over the rock wall and back into the brush. We did learn an interesting fact about them. The troupes would be made up entirely of females and babies for most of the year. Males only came around for about two months to mate and then back into the wild.

Once our experience had ended, we went back to the land cruiser for our four-hour drive back to Kigali. We were getting our last looks at the beautifully terraced hills, smooth highways, and brick kilns. We quickly left the black/grey landscape of the volcanoes and were back in the red clay landscape that seemed to have a brick making site every few miles. If the Rwandan’s keep making bricks at the rate they were, they might have to change their nickname to the land of hundreds of hills. We were also treated to the sight of several wedding parties travelling along the road. Thursday is the day for civil ceremonies at the courthouse and the beginning of an entire wedding weekend for couples.

Back in Nairobi we were up for breakfast and a view of some gazelles outside our window, we had high hopes that this was a sign of good things to come. Breakfast behind us, we went downstairs to meet our new guide for the next few days, George. We left the city and made our way west along a well paved highway. George wasn’t a very talkative fella, so we spent the time watching some zebras, baboons, and cows along the way. Our first stop on the road trip was an overlook where we could see The Great Rift Valley, which runs from South Africa to the Red Sea. This valley is slowly splitting East Africa from the rest of the continent and could be a shallow sea in a few million years. Once we left, we noticed traffic starting to pick up. The semi-trucks in the region seemed to be underpowered for the loads they were hauling, and they were creating long lines behind them. The folks that were taking the most advantage of this were the locals grilling corn along the side of the road and selling it to drivers. The only other landmark was an Italian church built by WWII POWs here in 1942.

We turned off the main road at Ewaso Ngiro and had about two hours of dirt and rocky roads ahead of us. The highlights ended up being a few birds and cows until we arrived at our lodge called Basecamp Masai Mara. We checked in and were given the ground rules of the place like don’t travel alone at night and keep the padlocks on your tent because the monkeys have learned to work zippers.

We loaded back into the land cruiser for an afternoon game ride in Masai Mara before the park closed at 6:30. As we waited at the gate, we met the Massai people for the first time. They were persistently trying to sell stuff to people in the tourist vehicles or trying to sell pictures with them. As we were waiting it started to rain pretty heavily, but game drives are rain or shine, so we carried on. We ran across a hyena, warthog, and a very large herd of cape buffalo. We noticed there were a lot of vehicles around the herd, more than seems like there should have been for buffalo. As we got closer to the back of the herd, we noticed a couple of heads slowly moving through the grass. A pride of lions was following them, four females and a male.

The lions were stalking the buffalo, the land cruisers were stalking the lions, and one more male was trailing behind everyone. We all waited patiently for an attack, but it never came. Not sure if it was the conditions or the crowd but eventually we ran out of daylight and had to start heading back. We got back to our tent and were greeted by cold showers courtesy of the overcast afternoon not providing enough sunlight for our solar water heater. We also found that the WiFi in our tent wasn’t working so we we’d be offline for the next couple of days. Once we were ready for dinner, we used our flashlight to summon someone to walk us in the dark, this would be a pretty common occurrence for us over the next week.

Masai Mara Evening Game Drive

Our only full day in Masi Mara started early, as they all seem to have recently. The previous night was full of weird noises outside, monkeys playing around, something scratching on the tent and what I felt like was a hippo splashing around in the river behind us. Miranda was skeptical until we went to breakfast and saw the massive tracks on the sandbar in the river. Breakfast was good and then we were off for a game drive. We heard a call on the radio that someone had spotted a coalition of three male cheetahs stalking a herd of gazelles, so we made our way in that direction. Not only did we get there in time to watch the initial stalk, the chase, and then the take down. Pictures of the chase were hard to come by with the world fastest land animal, but once our vehicle made it to the kill site, we were able to watch the three share the spoils. The crowd of vehicles that had joined the show was very large but also respectful. Once the cheetahs had their fill, the vultures moved in. We waited a while longer to see if the hyenas would show but they never did. Our guide told us that the cheetahs don’t open the stomach of their kill until the very end, because they know the smell will attract unwanted attention. We’re all led to believe by cartoons that hyenas are clumsy pack animals, but all it would take is for two of them to force the three cheetahs to retreat.

Cheetah Hunt Gallery

Our next stop was near the river to see a large family of hippos cooling off. These massive creatures are very dangerous, so this overlook was ideal with its 10 ft cliffs. After our river encounter, we stumbled across a small family of elephants in a grove and then moved on to keep looking for other new animals. Our guide took us to an area that’s frequented by a large giraffe family but that ended up being a bust.

On the way back we ran across a different lion pride with one male and seven females sleeping under a tree. We stopped for lunch but unfortunately our driver hadn’t kept our box lunches warm or put them in the cooler, so we had to pass on the chicken that had been sitting at room temperature for 8 hours. We had some beef jerky and the peanuts and apple from the box lunch to hold us over for the rest of the afternoon. We did have a small troupe of monkeys coming in and out of the picnic area. Guides would shoo them away but then they’d just be right back. We were able to go on a short hike along the river with one of the rangers to see crocodiles and a few more hippos before heading back on the road again with George. The drive around the backside of the reserve was mostly uneventful with a few animals here and there.

Once we passed the airfield we were on the home stretch, and we caught chatter on the radio of cheetahs. We saw a few vehicles on the road, but nothing caught our attention until we spotted a group of vehicles huddled around something. We approached and saw a cheetah laying next to its fresh kill. We can only assume it was waiting for the rest of its group to catch up before digging in. When we got back to our tent, we got hot showers and sat out on the deck watching for birds. The lodge had provided us a bottle of wine, so we were finishing that off before heading to dinner.

Masai Mara Full Day Game Drive Gallery

Tanzania

The drive the next day would be long and boring, we only saw a handful of different animals along the way, mongoose, zebras, and a handful of birds. We spent three hours on pretty rough roads until we made it to the Tanzanian border. The border crossing was a bit of a circus, but we’re told it used to be a lot worse. Both countries share a space used by border control where bags are checked once and customs windows are right next to each other, but it’s still not a very efficient process. We started to spot some interesting apparel as well, conference shirts, letterman jackets, vendor shirts, basically anything with writing on it that you sent to Goodwill in the last 30 years probably made its way here. Once across the border we had high hopes for the roads being smooth and the trip going by pretty quickly. Unfortunately, about 30 minutes from the border the roads turned to hard pack and that gave way to dirt. Another five hours of driving and we were finally to the Serengeti buffer zone. The drive could have been just a few hours if the Serengeti border crossing was open, but no one we talked to really knew why it wasn’t. The buffer zone is still park land, but lodges and towns are here as well.

Norbert took us out of the park and towards the Simba Lodge but he sure had a weird way of getting there. He told us that he hadn’t been to that lodge in a couple of years, and apparently they had closed off the road he knew about. For about 15 minutes he took us down roads that barely deserved the name, then off-roading to another road and so on. He knew which hill the lodge was on, and he just kept looking for open space that would get him closer to it. We finally made it to the base of the hill and found the entrance as it got dark. We checked in and were given the same briefing about walking around alone at night. We were also given the power schedule for when outlets would be working off of solar or generator power. We also had WiFi again for the first time in a few days, we checked in online, had dinner, and were off to bed.

Western Serengeti Game Drive Gallery

Eastern Serengeti

The next day we got a little bit of a reprieve with a later start time. We had told Norbert that we’d been up in the 5 o’clock hour for a week now and just needed a break. We got an 8 am start time and then we were on our way to the eastern Serengeti. Only a few minutes into the park we came across a Martial Eagle eating breakfast in a tree. Its prey was a Guineafowl, these strange little birds we’d been seeing all over the place with their bright blue heads. These are the largest eagles in the world and can take down animals as large as young antelope. As we continued east, it felt like it was going to be a bird day, we got great shots of Superb Starlings, White-headed Buffalo-Weaver, and Lilac-Breasted Roller. We did see a couple of lionesses sleeping under a tree, and then a herd of elephants playing around in a mud bath with their little ones. Our day kept getting more exciting as we ran across a couple of cheetahs lounging under a tree and a Hartebeest wandering around. Once we’d gotten our pictures, Norbert continued on and the number of vehicles we were seeing started dropping off significantly until it felt like we were in the park by ourselves.

We’d finally gotten our leopard. We spent an hour just watching her up in the tree, listening to her breathe (Miranda clocked it as 120 breathes a minutes!), and taking all the pictures and videos we wanted. Her previous meal was still up in the tree with her, a gazelle whose two legs were still visible dangling behind her. We also noticed her size, Norbert said she was very pregnant and could give birth any day now. We were told that people who came looking for her the following days didn’t find her, I like to think she found a nice dark den somewhere to have her cub. I’m still shocked how close we were able to get, she opened her eyes a couple of times but really didn’t seem to care we were there. As we drove off, several more vehicle were making their way to the area. Norbert was on the CB guiding people in, we couldn’t understand what he was saying in Swahili, but I’ll bet he was the most popular guy on the Serengeti that day. After lunch, served on the hood of our cruiser, we carried on and came across another group of cheetahs, a hyena, and a Southern Ground Hornbill which looks like it flew there straight from hell. Our day would end on a curious note during the drive back to the lodge as we came across a common box turtle in the middle of the road.

Eastern Serengeti Game Drive Gallery

Speaking of offspring, we continued our hunt for lion cubs but were continually distracted by other little ones. First was a group of zebras and their one curious little foal that kept staring us down. Then came the big ones, a giant herd of elephants with half a dozen calves being protected by some pretty big guys. We even got the close inspection by one of the larger bulls before he moved on. It was pretty surreal to be sitting on this huge grassy plain and watching these massive animals making their way across. It’s like what you see in the documentaries where the grass seems to go on until it runs into the sky. The watering hole turned out to be a bust, lots of water, no animals. We continued on through a low-lying grassy area, spotting groups of elephants tracing the same path as the one we saw earlier. As we came around a bend, we noticed two vehicles parked under a tree, this is always a sure sign of something interesting trying to escape the heat of the sun. We rolled up to see one lioness just short of the tree and another one starting to walk behind the vehicle in front of us. As we got closer we started to see movement in the tree and in the grass and then little lion cub heads popping up everywhere. Once we got our excitement under control, we started counting and came up with three lionesses and eleven lion cubs. We could not believe our luck, there were only two other vehicles there so we were able to park in a great spot and got some great shots. We watched as some of them would climb trees and then struggle to get down, sometimes scooting backwards back down. It also didn’t seem like any one of them made a move without the intention of harassing one of their siblings. We heard several cute growl attempts that sometimes got a response from one of the mothers or the other cubs. Eventually they all started making their way to a second tree that we moved to as well. Here the cubs started to get hungry and were nursing from all three lionesses. Norbert said that the cubs weren’t picky and would nurse from any available nipple, this insured that the cubs would not go hungry if one of the mothers wasn’t there.

Central Serengeti

Our final day in the Serengeti also doubled as a travel day. We’d get a game drive in across the central Serengeti before turning south to Ngorongoro Crater. We ate breakfast, loaded our bags, and got going into the park one last time. Our first big animal encounter was some of the smallest animals we were looking for, mongoose. Miranda spotted a dwarf mongoose colony with four little guys keeping watch of us. We moved on to the visitors center and a short walk around to see some hyrax and looked for more mongoose but they didn’t feel like showing up. We did see two juvenile male lions resting on a rock overlooking the center. They had been more visible earlier in the day so the area they were occupying had to be roped off. We saw an amazing amount of animals on the way out of the park, some new, and some were ones we’d seen but hadn’t gotten great pictures of.

Central Serengeti Game Drive Gallery

After lunch, we continued on towards the Naabi Hill Gate, but it would be a couple of hours before we were out of the park. The second hour was over completely flat land where you could see one individual animal standing miles away. Our next couple of hours would also be pretty flat and dry. We could see why animals would be migrating away from this area, dry creek beds, browning foliage, and very little protection from the elements and predators. As we approached the crater, the landscape became far greener and we started seeing Maasai herding their animals again. The climb to the top of the crater took a little more than an hour and once we got to the top we got a little glimpse of what we’d be seeing tomorrow before the road took us to the far edge of the rim and then to our accommodations for the night, the Ang'ata Ngorongoro Camp. Once we were checked in, the porters took us to our tent. As far as tents go, this one won the award for the best of the trip. They felt very new, there was a full shower, and even the floorboards were filled in to make sure critters didn’t get through. The walking path was a little treacherous since apparently cape buffalo and zebra come through the camp regularly and they don’t use the assigned bathroom areas.

Ngorongoro Crater

We learned the day before that this isn’t technically a crater, it’s actually the caldera of a massive ancient volcano that erupted and then collapsed in on itself over two million years ago. We got a very early start to get ahead of the crowd, there are two entry times and vehicles don’t usually spend longer than four hours in the crater. We thought this was going to be hugely disappointing as Ngorongoro looked like it would be the highlight of the last part of our trip, but as we found out, four hours is plenty. Norbert joined us for breakfast and then we got on the road back towards the entrance. We got a couple of pictures from the overlook as the fog began to break. We were encouraged to see that there were only a handful of vehicles at the gate, the high season was beginning, and as we got closer to the cities, we knew the crowds would pick up. The descent into the crater was slow, and that gave us lots of time to look around and take in the views. It was still a pretty overcast morning but there were beams of sunlight breaking through across the lake on the far side of the crater.

We got word really early of a rhino sighting so we made a b-line to that spot. We scanned the hill for every small lump that might move until we saw it. We got a few pictures of the black rhino, but by the time we made it there, he was a long way off. We could see it through the binoculars and the long lens, but that’s about it. Our next location was the lake with its abundant flamingo population. We saw both lesser and greater flamingos, along with a handful of other birds. We saw Grey Crowned Cranes for the first time with their saintly-looking heads. We’d see them all over the crater, usually in pairs but one time with a chick. We spotted plenty of other birds along the way, a small group of jackals, and large herds of zebras, wildebeests, and other migrating animals. The only animals that weren’t wandering around were giraffes, who can’t get into the crater. The crater is far bigger than we were expecting it to be, like having an entire savannah surrounded by walls and glassy lake that the land just seems to become.

After lunch we started working our way up the crater’s exit, passing a cape buffalo and a large troupe of baboons along the way. We got a few pictures at one of the crater edge lookouts before making our way to the gate. As we left, Miranda witnessed a baboon approach a vehicle, jump in through a window onto a woman’s lap, grab a bag and take off. Unfortunately for the baboon, the bag didn’t appear to have any food in it, so it took off back into the woods. There were signs everywhere warning of this, but that vehicle had just arrived. Our drive to the Sangaiwe Tented Lodge took about 4 hours along Lake Vurunge. The next few days would be game drives and driving to the next location, so we re-situated our bags and went to dinner.

Ngorongoro Crater Game Drive Gallery

Tarangire National Park

We were up at another reasonable 6:30 am and off to breakfast. Our morning entertainment was a troupe of monkeys fighting over an orange and a birthday serenade by the staff to one of the guests. The first hour in the park was a little lackluster. It was basically a long straight road with some birds, these huge Baobo trees that look like they were straight out of Harry Potter, and some sprinkles. We caught a few glimpses of waterbucks and then came across a large group of banded mongoose. We’d been looking forward to finding these because they were the stars of one of the shows we watched to prepare ourselves for this trip. The second highlight of the day was a very large family of elephants. We managed to get the vehicle far enough up the road before stopping that they traveled around us to cross. We spotted several babies and there was one big male acting as a road guard. Literally this guy sat in the road until the whole family crossed and then he continued on. Just before lunch we stopped at a hollowed out Baobo tree for pictures. This tree had been used in the past to store elephant carcasses during the day so poachers could return at night to claim them.

We made our escape from the large group of vehicles but there was a fallen tree on our escape path, Norbert took a different route and managed to get the cruiser stuck. I got out and looked and one wheel was high in the air and another deep in the mud. The first guide to drive by in our same direction stopped and towed us out.

The drive to Arusha didn’t feel as long as some of the previous ones, and it was mostly on blacktop. We checked into our amazing, if not a bit out of the way, Olerai lodge. Our room was the nicest one we’d had yet, and this was also after spending the last seven nights in tents. We bid farewell to Norbert, our guide for the last week and met David, who will drive us to the border in the morning.

Amboseli, Kenya

The drive to the border was pretty smooth after the first little bit. We realized we’d forgotten to hand over the key to our room but David gave it to a tok-tok driver who was bringing workers to the lodge. This was our first time not being in a land cruiser in two weeks. We made a stop on the way out of Arusha for some coffee and soap stone souvenirs. After about two hours we arrived at the Kenya border and passed through customs. We were harassed by an individual that was angling for a tip, but after some prodding, David finally got him to leave us alone. Once through customs we met Martin and were back in a land cruiser for the last two days of the trip. We drove another couple of hours and entered Amboseli National Park. The first little while we saw giraffes, wild camels, and some ostriches before shifting out onto the dry lakebed. During certain times of the year, part of Amboseli Lake is dry and a path is opened that provides a nice short cut and a Martian like landscape of cracked dry land and dust devils. We arrived at Ol Tukai Lodge, had lunch, and got checked in before heading out on a game drive until sunset. We saw a handful of animals out as the sun started to go down, but the highlights were the large herds of elephants. Martin mentioned that there were estimated to be nearly 2,000 of them.

Amboseli National Park Evening Game Drive Gallery

Our last day was a bit of a marathon. We were up at 5:30 to get out for some sunrise pictures of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The clouds had cleared up from the previous day and we got some really good shots of the mountain with a herd of elephants in the foreground. We drove around for a bit more following different herds until we heard about a lion. The lion was long gone by the time we got to the location, so we took some pictures of the zebras in the area before calling it for the morning. Back at the lodge we got breakfast and hung out in our room for a little while longer. We had arranged for a late checkout because we knew we had a very long time to kill that day. We began our 5 hour drive back to Nairobi with one last look at the old Amboseli Lodge that we’d driven by a couple of times now. An eerie leftover of a previous era of hunting in the park. The site was flooded during an El Nino in the 1990’s and hasn’t been torn down yet due to tax court proceedings. Our bathroom break at the halfway point was another souvenir shop and we attempted to complete our set. We’d been building a set of soap stone bowls of the big five but were still missing a leopard. We didn’t find that, but we did find a larger bowl with gazelles on it, these poor little guys are always overlooked and we wanted to make sure they were represented in our collection. Back on the road we found ourselves in a lot of traffic as we got closer to Nairobi with some hair rising passing going on around semi trucks. We finally got back to the city but still had 9 hours to kill. Martin asked us if there was anything we wanted to do and we told him coffee, a Tusker shirt, and maybe another soap stone bowl was on our wish list. He took us to one of the little roadside shops just southwest of the city. There we found both and a chicken strip and fries dinner. Our next stop was a grocery store to get some Kenyan coffee and chocolate. We now had absolutely zero space left in our luggage and we’d all run out of ideas, so Martin dropped us off, only about five hours early now. We were able to check-in for our flight earlier than we thought, our bags both came in a hair shy of 50 lbs. and even one of our carry-ons earned us a warning from the agent. We settled in for the long wait in the terminal.

Amboseli National Park Morning Game Drive Gallery

Trip of a lifetime gets used a lot to describe what we did during these two weeks and it’s not a bad way to describe it. To write this post, I regularly had to go back to the itinerary that Shadows of Africa provided for names of places, and when I see a stock picture that they use it makes me smile. We were so nervous that we wouldn’t see the things we wanted to see but we got amazingly lucky to see it all and more! We’ve been asked if we’d do it again and the answer is no, not because we didn’t have an amazing time, but what else would we do? We saw everything we wanted to see and we learned a lot about the places, people, and animals along the way. This experience was amazing; we’d recommend it to anyone who enjoyed reading this and looking at the pictures and videos.