Diane & Garry

Trip start: Nairobi, Kenya
Arrival: Sep 19, 2013
Duration: 14 days (13 nights)
Trip End: Nairobi, Kenya
Group size: 2 people

ITINERARY

Day 1: Nairobi
While you are in the care of Kensington Tours, your safety and security are our number one priority. As such, in the unlikely event of serious illness or injury, all Kensington Tours clients are covered by “Flying Doctors” Insurance policy. This emergency evacuation insurance covers the cost of the evacuation flight back to Nairobi for treatment. This insurance policy however DOES NOT cover the cost of any medical treatment received. We highly recommend travel insurance for full coverage.
A privately driven vehicle will provide you with a transfer between the hotel and airport. After your guide has loaded up your luggage you will be driven through Nairobi admiring some of the sights (time permitting). Your guide will brief you on your itinerary en-route.
Accommodation: Town Lodge

Day 2: Nairobi – Amboseli
While you are in the care of Kensington Tours, your safety and security are our number one priority. As such, in the unlikely event of serious illness or injury, all Kensington Tours clients are covered by “Flying Doctors” Insurance policy. This emergency evacuation insurance covers the cost of the evacuation flight back to Nairobi for treatment. This insurance policy however DOES NOT cover the cost of any medical treatment received. We highly recommend travel insurance for full coverage.
A privately driven vehicle will provide you with a transfer between the hotel and airport. After your guide has loaded up your luggage you will be driven through Nairobi admiring some of the sights (time permitting). Your guide will brief you on your itinerary en-route.
Accommodation: Town Lodge

Day 3: Amboseli
This morning you will meet up with your guide for your game drive through Amboseli. Famous for its great herds of Elephants. The African elephants are distinguished from Asian elephants in several ways, the most noticeable being their ears which are much larger. The African elephant is typically larger than the Asian elephant and has a concave back. Both African males and females have external tusks and are usually less hairy than their Asian cousins. The elephant’s gestation period is 22 months, the longest of any land animal. At birth it is common for an elephant calf to weigh 120 kilograms (260 lb).
This afternoon you will meet up with your guide and head out into Amboseli National Park. Along with the great herds of elephants, the park is also home to cheetahs, lions, baboons, wildebeest and buffalo to name a few.
Accommodation: Serena Amboseli

Day 4: Amboseli – Tarangire
Your guide will drive you from Amboseli to Tarangire area.Visas can be purchased at the border. Please be sure to have your Yellow Fever certificate handy. You will continue your journey in the shadow of Mt-Kilimanjaro and make a brief stop in Arusha, where you will be able to do some souvenir shopping, and grab lunch and continue on to Tarangire. The drive takes about 7 hours.
Enjoy a box lunch while you travel (included in tour price).
On this afternoon drive keep your eyes open for termite mounds. Disused mounds are often frequented by colonies of endearing dwarf mongoose and pairs of red-and-yellow barbet, which draw attention to themselves by their loud, clockwork-like duetting.
Accommodation: Tarangire Sopa Lodge

Day 5: Tarangire
In the early morning hours, your skilled guide will pick you up and take you for a game viewing drive through Tarangire National Park. The main highlight here is elephants, which mass in enormous numbers during the dry season June to December. General game is also good, although predators tend to be quite difficult to find. From January to May the park is beautiful and offers a more private experience with very low visitor numbers. Year round this is a unique safari experience.
Enjoy a box lunch while you travel (included in tour price).
On this afternoon drive you will notice the unusually shaped baobab trees, also known as the “upside-down tree”. Look up and you might find the tree climbing African pythons. This is one of the world’s largest species of snakes, but do not worry, it is also a non-venomous species. Tarangire’s pythons climb trees, as do its lions and leopards, lounging in the branches.
Accommodation: Tarangire Sopa Lodge

Day 6: Tarangire – Ngorongoro
Your guide will pick you up from the Tarangire National Park and drive you to the massive Ngorongoro crater. This drive will take approximately 3 1/2 hours.
Enjoy a box lunch while you travel (included in tour price).
Time permitting, there are many optional activities available to you. Depending on which lodge you’re staying at, activities may include: nature walks, cultural village visits, a hike to Endoro waterfalls, bike tours, coffee plantation tours and more. Some of these can be prebooked through your destination specialist while others can be booked directly with the lodge upon arrival.
Accommodation: Exploreans Ngorongoro Lodge

Day 7: Ngorongoro
You are provided with a personalized, experienced tracker-guide and private transportation today whilst exploring around the Ngorongoro National Park grounds.
Explore one of the most recognized wildlife conservation areas in Tanzania today. Depart your camp or lodge in a privately driven vehicle, along with a local expert guide, for approximately a 20 to 30 minute drive towards the Ngorongoro Park Gate. It will then take you another 20 minutes to reach the crater rim itself. The Ngorongoro Crater is the world’s largest inactive, intact, and unfilled volcanic caldera. This geological masterpiece was formed as a result of an extremely large volcanic explosion which caused the volcano to collapse in on itself, thus creating a crater. The crater is roughly 20 kilometers wide and some 2000 feet deep, making the trip from crater floor to rim around 45 minutes by 4×4. The extremely fertile crater floor is the reason why there is such a highly concentrated amount of wildlife here. Over 20000 mammals call the crater home, including some of the only remaining black rhinos in the world. The crater floor also boasts one of the highest carnivore densities in the world including large prides of lions, packs of hyenas and solitary predators like cheetahs and jackals. A keen eye and expertly recommended search patterns from your guide may help you spot some of the less common species like leopards, servals, and bat-eared foxes.
Accommodation: Exploreans Ngorongoro Lodge

Day 8: Ngorongoro – Serengeti
Your guide will pick you up from the Ngorongoro Conservation area and drive you to the famous plains of the Serengeti. On this drive you have the option of stopping at Olduvlai Gorge, the Serengeti welcome centre and lookout point, or stop for lunch at a picnic spot. After entering Serengeti Park you will have the chance to enjoy game viewing as you drive through the park to your next accommodation. This drive takes 5 to 6 hours depending on the number of stops you make and how much game viewing you enjoy along the way. Expect longer trip times during the rainy seasons.
The massive Olduvai Gorge or Oldupai Gorge is often referred to as “The Cradle of Mankind.” Beginning in the eastern Serengeti plains, the gorge is roughly some 48 kilometers long. Resulting from millions of years of natural erosion, this gorge boasts a steep-sided ravine that cuts and stretches its way through the Great Rift Valley along eastern Africa. The gorge is named after a commonly used plant by the Masai people with the scientific name of Sansevieria-Ehrenbergii, or Oldupai for short.
Accommodation: Serena

Day 9: Serengeti
This morning’s African adventure begins with an exploratory game drive through Tanzania’s oldest and most recognized National Park, the Serengeti. This location offers the most expansive game viewing in Tanzania. From predators to prey, great herds of grazing herbivores to tactically cunning packs of carnivores, life on the plains of the Serengeti can best be defined as a complete “circle of life.” A photographic dream unfolds before your eyes as giraffes and elephants feast on tasty shrubbery, whilst impalas, gazelles and buffalos dance carefully through the plains as to not become the latest meal for on-looking lions, cheetahs and hyenas.
Spend today searching out Impala, one of Africa’s most beautiful and graceful animals. Previously thought to be part of the gazelle tribe, Impalas have been found to be so different that they are now classified as their own sub-family status. When frightened or startled the whole impala herd starts randomly leaping to confuse their predator. They can jump distances more than 10 meters (33 ft.) and 3 meters (9 ft.) high. Leopards, cheetah, lions and wild dogs prey on impala. Impala can reach running speeds of approximately 50 to 55 mph (80 to 90 km/h) to escape its predators. See if you can track these incredible animals!
Accommodation: Serena

Day 10: Serengeti – Masai Mara
Your guide will pick you up from the plains of the Serengeti and drive you to the beautiful Masai Mara region of Kenya. This trip includes game viewing as you leave the Serengeti. You will drive 4 hours before reaching the Tanzanian-Kenyan border. A picnic lunch can be arranged at the spectacular Lake Victoria, if time allows. There is also an option for a brief tour through a local fishing village, once again if time permits. Be aware that this is a LONG drive, across some unfinished patches of road. This journey takes an estimated 6-9 hours depending on traffic, weather and road conditions.
Accommodation: Serena

Day 11: Masai Mara
Just like the local wildlife, you’ll head out bright and early this morning, alongside an experienced tracker-guide for the day’s first game drive. The eco-diversity and sheer size of the Masai Mara Game Reserve provides the necessary requirements to house a wide range of animal species. The most recognized are known worldwide as the African Big 5, which includes the African Elephant, Cape Buffalo, Rhinoceros, Leopard, and the King of the beasts, the Lion. The term Big 5 was coined by big-game hunters, as these species were the most difficult and dangerous to track and hunt. Subsequently the term was adopted by the tourism industry for marketing purpose, spinning a web of positivity opposed to the negative effect portrait by the original terminology. Numerous other species of bird and wildlife inhabit this dynamic location including Hyenas, Gazelles, Impalas, Giraffes, Zebras, Vultures, Cranes, Eagles, Falcons, and Ostriches.
Head out this afternoon, accompanied by an experience tracker-guide, on an exciting game viewing adventure. Search some of the area`s wildlife hot-spots determined by your guide, as they`ve learned and now understand the games daily routines through tracking. Some wildlife is more difficult than others to spot, for instance the Leopard. These spotted cats blends almost seamlessly into the tall grass and shrubbery, and are even more challenging to spot up in their favorite hangout, the trees. Your guide will take you to nearby watering holes, where on a hot day, you`ll spot many bird and wildlife species, including the elusive Leopard.
Accommodation: Serena

Day 12: Masai Mara
The famed Masai Mara Game Reserve was named after the indigenous inhabitants of this land, the Maasai, and the provider of life to the area, the Mara River. Game viewing is almost guaranteed at some point along the Mara River, and your experienced tracker-guide will know all the best spots to go to maximize this chance to see some of the many bird and wildlife species here. Have your camera handy, as some amazing photo opportunities will present themselves from elephants on the riverbanks to hippos in shallow water.
Enjoy a walking safari with your guide down the escarpment to where your vehicle awaits. This is a rare chance to spot game on foot and take in some of the most magnificent views of Masai Mara.
On today’s afternoon game drive, the choice is up to you: search for the Big 5 or expand your horizons to discover something different. Masai Mara not only has a rich mix of animals – it also has an incredible array of bird life with almost 450 different species.
Accommodation: Serena

Day 13: Masai Mara – Nakuru
Your guide will drive you from Masai Mara to Nakuru, which will include short stop-overs for refreshments and souvenir’s. This drive will take approximately 5 hours and 30 minutes.
One of the most notable of the Rift Valley soda lakes is Lake Nakuru. This lake was renowned for its abundance of algae, which would attract the vast quantity of flamingos lining the shore. In 2013, the lake received an alarming increase in water levels, leading to the migration of large portions of the flamingos flocks to nearby Lake Bogoria. Many other species of birds also flourish here, as do some other mammals including baboons, warthogs and the newly introduced white and black rhinos. Also of note, this is sanctuary location for the Rothschild’s Giraffe, one of the most endangered giraffe sub-species.
Accommodation: Sarova Lion Hill

Day 14: Nakuru – Laikipia
From Nakuru, your guide will drive you through the scenic rift valley to Laikipia. This commute wil take approximately 4 hours.
Time permitting, there are many optional activities. Depending on which lodge you’re staying at, activities range from nature walks to cultural village visits. Some of these can be prebooked through your destination specialist while others can be booked directly with the lodge upon arrival.
Accommodation: Sweetwaters Serena

Day 15: Laikipia
Game viewing in Laikipia private reserve with your skilled guide. You can stop for a visit at the chimp sanctuary. Drives are typically done in the morning at 6:30am for a few hours, and 3pm for a few hours, since the animals are most active at dawn and dusk.
You will have the option of visiting the Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary today. The sanctuary is the only place in Kenya where this highly endangered and remarkably intelligent species can be seen.
The Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary opened in 1993 in a negotiated agreement between the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and the Jane Goodall Institute. Here the animals are carefully nursed back to health and integrated into families. The chimpanzees live in two large groups separated by the Ewaso Nyiro River. Watch them romp and play, visit the local shop, or even sponsor a chimp!
Accommodation: Sweetwaters Serena

Day 16: Laikipia – Nairobi
Your guide will dirve you from Laikipia to Nairobi, along newly paved roads. This drive will take approximately 3 hours.
The opportunity to explore the local markets and shops presents itself today as so you can interact with the local vendors in search for the perfect handicraft or souvenir for yourself or your loved ones.
Before leaving that night, stop by the Kensington office for free use of Internet and lounge. If you like, we can make reservations for dinner at a local restaurant as well. Please let us know in advance and if you are vegetarian.
Accommodation: Depart (Int`l Airport)