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 Kenya Tours - Masai Footsteps

Tour Code: MSF001 Departure: Wednesdays and Sundays Minimum: 2 passengers Vehicle: 7 Seater Minibus Starts: Nairobi Ends: Nairobi

FULL ITINERARY

Day 1 - Nairobi On arrival at Jomo Kenyatta Airport you will be met and assisted by our representative. You will be transferred to your hotel.  Rest of the day is spent at leisure in Nairobi. Overnight at Hotel Inter-continental Nairobi or similar
Day 2   - Masai Mara National G.R After breakfast, drive to the Masai Mara National Reserve offering wonderful scenery and plenty of game. It is perhaps the only region left in Kenya where the visitor may see animals in the same super-abundance as existed a century ago. Arrive for lunch at your lodge. Afternoon game drive until sunset.  Meals and overnight at Mara Sopa Lodge.
Day 3 - Masai Mara National G.R Whole day in Masai Mara with morning and afternoon game drives.  Meals and overnight at Mara Sopa Lodge.
Day 4 - L.Nakuru N.P/Naivasha After breakfast, drive to Lake Naivasha for check-in and lunch at your lodge. Afternoon proceed to Lake Nakuru National Park famous as the home to thousands of lesser and greater flamingo. This park also provides sanctuary for Rothschild giraffe, rhino and leopard. Afternoon game drive in the park. Evening drive back to your lodge at Lake Naivasha. Meals and overnight at Kigio Wildlife Camp or Lake Naivasha Sopa Lodge.
Day 5   Amboseli National Park Breakfast at the camp. Departure at 0730hrs, drive to Amboseli National Park lying below the most famous symbol of Africa, Mt Kilimanjaro.  Arrive for lunch at your lodge.  Afternoon game drive until sunset.   Meals and overnight at Amboseli Sopa Lodge
Day 6 - Amboseli National Park Whole day in Amboseli with morning and afternoon game drives.   Meals and overnight at Amboseli Sopa Lodge.
Day 7 - Departure After breakfast, drive to Nairobi, Kenya's colourful capital city. You will be dropped off at your city centre hotel or Jomo Kenyatta Airport for your departure flight back home.  Our representative will re-confirm your onward flight, and assist you at check-in.

Price from £930 per person

The Kenya tour Package Includes:

• Arrival and departure airport transfers
• 1 Night accommodation at Hotel Intercontinental or similar
• 2 Nights accommodation at Mara Sopa Lodge
• 1 Night accommodation at Kigio Wildlife Camp or Lake Naivasha Sopa Lodge
• 2 Nights accommodation at Amboseli Sopa Lodge
• Lunch at lodge in Lake Nakuru on Day 04
• All game drives as per itinerary
• All park entrance fees
• Transport in 1 x 7 Seater Minibus
• Services of a qualified English Speaking Driver Guide
• 1 Litre bottle of mineral water per person per day while on a road safari in safari vehicle 

The Package Excludes:

• All International Flights + Taxes
• Visas
• Travel & Personal accident insurance
• Tips & personal expenses such as telephone calls…etc.
• Excursions not detailed in above program 

ACCOMMODATION INFORMATION

Hotel Inter-continental Nairobi

The popular Inter-continental is an ideal business cum leisure hotel offering high international standards of service and accommodation that are the hallmark of all Inter-continental hotels worldwide. Overlooking the city, the Nairobi Uhuru Gardens and the Kenyan Parliament, it is only 10 minutes walk minutes from the city centre and 20 minutes from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. The hotel offers tastefully decorated rooms, excellent restaurants, conference and meeting rooms, shops, swimming pool, casino and a host of other facilities.

Mara Sopa Lodge

The Masai Mara is one of the most famous game viewing areas in Africa. Large herds of game, including the amazing Great Migration of wildebeest and zebra, are still found here. Masai Mara Sopa Lodge is set in the Oloolaimutia Valley and blends perfectly with the surrounding hillside landscape. The lodge is located 206 km south of the Equator on the eastern boundary of the Masai Mara Game Reserve in south-western Kenya, 2km from the Oloolaimutia Gate. The accent here is on the indigenous Masai people and the fabulous wealth of wildlife, birdlife and natural flora.

Luxuriously appointed bedrooms, a refreshing swimming pool, a boutique and gift shop, wildlife films and CNN all ensure that your stay will be blissfully comfortable. The lodge has 77 rooms, 12 suites and 1 Presidential suite, all of which are ‘rondavel’ style and have en-suite bathroom facilities, which provide shaving sockets and hairdryers. Every room and suite has a private, elevated verandah with splendid views across the valley. Here guests can relax, sunbathe and watch resident birds and wildlife. Mini-bars are also available in each room.

The lodge has direct-dial telephone facilities as well as satellite television and video options. Lodge generators provide 240volts, 50 cycles 24 hours a day. The water supply is from nearby springs but filtered water, provided in flasks in every room, and bottled water is recommended for drinking.

Like all pools at other Sopa lodges, the free-form swimming pool here too has a stunning location, overlooking the Oloolaimutia Valley.

In addition to all these modern facilities there is a well-stocked shop selling curios, clothing, jewellery, general accessories and personal requisites and toiletries. The lodge has spacious conference facilities for up to 120 guests and is an excellent venue for special occasions. It can cater for birthday and anniversary parties, bush breakfasts, lunches or bar-b-ques, sundowner cocktail parties, gala dinners or theme evenings. The Sopa has all the facilities that a modern traveller could wish for and more - a stunning location in one of the greatest wildlife havens in the world.

Lake Naivasha Sopa Lodge

Set on 200 acres of Lake Naivasha’s southern shoreline in Africa’s Great Rift Valley, the resort blends in perfectly with its natural surroundings. Being one of Kenya’s most upmarket destinations, it is the ideal base from which to explore the surrounding countryside and nearby National Parks and wildlife sanctuaries. Double storied cottages offer extremely spacious rooms with en suite bathrooms and either balconies or solariums. Spacious rooms with ensuite bathroom, private lounge and balcony. Each room boasts two queen-size beds with mosquito nets on all windows.

Facilities include: swimming pool, children's pool, nature walks, fitness centre, Telephone, Hairdryers, 3 Bars and babysitting facilities.

Kigio Wildlife Camp

Kigio Wildlife Camp is a superb all-suite camp built within Yellow-fever woodland overlooking the Malewa River. The camp is built from sustainable pinewood, local soil from the conservancy, traditional thatch provided by the surrounding community and canvas panels - there has been minimal usage of cement and steel in the construction of the camp.  Power is provide by solar panels and the environment has been carefully preserved during the construction of the camp. Accommodation is in eleven spacious suites, each 72 sq-metre and one 2-bedroom suite all built on deck and containing a large bedroom, a separate sitting room that opens up at the front and a private bathroom with flush loo and shower. The dining and sitting areas are in an open glade overlooking a cliff that houses a colony of bee-eaters. A most attractive bar sits between two towering indigenous fig trees facing the cliff. Wholesome meals are cooked using gas and eco-bricks and ingredients are sourced daily from local community and farmers. Activities that are possible include nature walks with rangers, day and night game drives, fishing, biking and bush meals. Kigio Wildlife Camp offers some of the highest standards of accommodation in East Africa in glorious surroundings and at the same time instills a genuine concern for the environment and community. A minimum of 2 nights stay is recommended to enjoy the beautiful natural surroundings and the camp.

Amboseli Sopa Lodge

Located at the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, the lodge is set in expansive and mature wooded gardens that face Africa's highest mountain.  Spacious cottage style rooms with en suite bathrooms and verandas. All rooms with mosquito nets on windows. Facilities Available: Swimming Pool, Children’s Pool, Mountain Climbs, Masai Dancing, Board Games, Hairdryers, 3 Bars, Conference Facilities and Babysitting facilities are also available.

PARKS & RESERVES INFORMATION

Masai Mara National G.R

Probably the most famous of the reserves, the Masai Mara, in Kenya's south western corner, boasts an astonishing amount of game. Unfenced, the Mara is bounded in the east by the Ngama Hills and in the west by the Oloololo or Siria Escarpment. Gazelle, wildebeest and zebra graze in large numbers and where prey is found so are predators. Not only is  this a great place in which to find game, but the wide greeny-gold  savannahs spotted with thorn trees make it ideal for photography. The Mara, as it is known in Kenya, is ravishingly beautiful and also offers long, undisturbed views and utterly dramatic panoramas. The weather really means something here. The sun may beat down unforgivingly, huge clouds in fabulous shapes may sweep across the widest of skies, and the wind ripples the grasses as though they are stroked by a giant hand. The landscape is stunning.

The famously black-maned Mara lions are possibly the stars of the Mara show, but cheetah, elephant, kongoni, topi, Thompson's gazelle, waterbuck, hyena, and primates are all here too. As with the rest of Kenya, the birding is good. There is no settlement within the reserve however; the Mara is in theory owned by the Maasai, pastoralists and, in earlier times, renowned lion-killers. Lodges and hotels offer the opportunity to buy their beadwork, checked cloths and copies of their spears. It is said that if lions scent approaching Maasai on the breeze they move swiftly in the opposite direction.

Famously, the Mara is the northerly end of the Great Migration, that great primeval surge of wildebeest, zebra and antelope that sweeps in from Tanzania’s Serengeti to Kenya's Masai Mara as the Tanzanian grass starts to fail. They are tracked by the large predators that pick off the weak, the stragglers and the young. The great herds, nearing their destination by July, mass along the Mara River, pushing, shoving and fantastically noisy, just waiting for the first animal to cross so that they can all follow, lemming-like, on the final leg of the journey. However, crocodiles lie in wait, sluggishly cruising the waters, fully prepared for their best meal of the year. Many fail in the life-and-death struggle - drowned, eaten by the crocodiles or, made careless or weak by their stressful swim, brought down by lions.  The Masai Mara is terrible yet wonderful, and not to be missed.

Kigio Wildlife Conservancy

Kigio Wildlife Conservancy is a noteworthy 3,500-acre wildlife conservancy between Nakuru and Naivasha and only 90 minutes drive from Nairobi. The Conservancy with its wide ranging habitats, from riverine and euphorbia forests to short grass and shrub, holds approximately 3,500 heads of wildlife (including the endangered White Rhino and Rothschild Giraffe, a 200 strong herd of buffalo, impala, Grants and Thomson’s gazelle, Eland, hyena, leopard, hippo) which are protected by an electric fence on three sides and the Malewa River on one side. The Conservancy’s rich bio-diversity which also supports over 200 species of birds and large bee-eater colonies has been recognized internationally by Tusk Trust, Born Free Trust and several individual donors who have provided funds to fence and improve the infrastructure around the conservancy, help local communities and schools in the area and create direct and indirect employment from the area. The Conservancy is at the forefront of Eco-tourism in the Rift Valley lakes area. Accommodation in Kigio wildlife Conservancy is available at 2 stunning properties - Kigio Wildlife Camp and Malewa Wildlife Lodge

Lake Nakuru National Park

Originally declared a national park because of a superbly diverse bird population, which includes many migrants, the park is also a favourite place for travellers to seek the rare black rhino. However, it is for the flamingos that the lake is best known, and it was for their protection that the park was originally created. The level of the blue-green alkaline waters here varies and this, with other accompanying environmental changes, causes considerable variation in the flamingo population, but when they are present, en masse, the whole lake turns a gorgeous rosy pink.

Although protection of the flamingo population on the lake was the original rationale for the inception of the national park, further land was included in the early seventies and it is now about 190 sq m. This expansion, which took in a large grassland area, has allowed the park to protect further species. Buffalo, zebra, antelope and both lion and leopard are to be found. The rather less ubiquitous reedbuck and waterbuck are also here as is the glamorously leggy Rothschild giraffe. Temptingly, the black rhino breeding programme, started in the late eighties, has proved successful and this is an excellent place to view them.

Lake Nakuru is a small national park. There is no need to stay in the area in order to see all that is to be seen. A good day trip may be enough and these can easily be organised from the Lake Naivasha area.

Amboseli National Park

Arid looking as Amboseli is it has, historically, supported both game and the Maasai that kept their herds of cattle here. It is thanks to the waters that run off Africa's greatest mountain that the apparently dry Amboseli, Kenya's first game sanctuary is able to support its wildlife. Mount Kilimanjaro broods high over Amboseli, generally cloaked by clouds but appearing in all its snow-shrouded magnificence from time to time. Kilimanjaro was once part of Kenya, but on the marriage of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany Queen Victoria gifted it to her beloved grand son, whose colony Tanzania then was, as the perfect wedding present. The mountain now provides water for the park, wonderful views and, of course, the most glorious background for animal photography.

There has been serious erosion in the park. Elephant feeding habits combined with light soil have made serious inroads in the Amboseli vegetation. Nonetheless, there are still high numbers of the elephant for which the park is famous, and it is here that much research has been done on the largest land mammal. Indeed, a cursory examination will show that humankind is not the only animal to destroy its own environment.

The grasslands in the park can be undeniably lovely when made verdant by the rains and the three major swamps could star in a dinosaur movie. The swamps on the east of the park attract wildebeest, zebra and antelope with the predators that live off them, chiefly lion which tend to be easy to view here. In the south, Enkongo Narok swamp attracts hippos to the larger pools and plenty of buffalo, buck and teeming birdlife including the jacanas that pick their way elegantly and carefully. Giraffe are here and in areas still sufficiently treed there are leopard. Cheetah, caracal and civet may be seen.

In the west of the park lies Lake Amboseli, a seasonal soda lake, sometimes with flamingos. Amboseli is a fabulous place to visit. The overwhelmingly lovely views and good wildlife sightings are too good to miss.