Anytime someone asks me what my favorite destination is I almost always pick Africa. It blows every other destination away and I think anyone that has been there would agree. It is full of excitement and adventure.

Since we loved our tour with Gate 1 Travel in China we decided to use them again for this safari. We flew into Nairobi and met up with our travel group. There were 14 of us split up in 3 safari vans. Tim and I were paired up with Candy and her mom Elaine. We had a lot of laughs through the week in that van.

The rest of the group consisted of Tracy and her two sons Massimo and Giacomo from New Jersey (don’t tell the others but these two boys were my favorite travel companions). We spent hours talking and laughing. Their van also had Shannon, a super fun woman from Atlanta who I will be traveling to Antarctica with in January 2021, and Vivian, a teacher in her 80’s who has been all over the world. The third van had a family of four from Delaware who were fun to get to know, and Juan, an older gentleman from Peru who has been everywhere and had some of the best stories. He also doesn’t use email but gave me his physical address for letters. We have even shared some snail mail over the years.

Our trip had began and we made the long drive out to Lake Elementaita where we would stay for the night at the Sunbird Lodge. The lake is referred to the pink lake as it fills up with pink flamingos during migration.

That evening we headed off to our first game drive. We drove through Soysambu Conservancy Reserve where it felt like we had the place to ourselves. We drove to the side of the lake with the flamingos and saw so many zebra eating and running through the reserve.

On our way out we spotted a female and two male teenage lions relaxing in the grass. The teenage lions were just starting to get their mane in. They couldn’t care any less that we were parked in front of them watching.

The next day we moved on to the Masai Mara. Francis, or tour manager and driver, warned us the ride was going to be about six hours of which half of that would be on dirt roads full of large pot holes. He wasn’t joking. I think we all got out the van sore and exhausted from holding on for three hours. Regardless, we made it.

We had three full days of game drives ahead of us. The vans have a top that lifted up so that you could stand up in the van and see over the top. As Francis drove we stood up and tried to spot the animals from vantage point.

The best part of this tour was how well everyone communicated in the game reserve. The vans had a CB radios where the drivers could communicate an animal spotting to the others. It was so exciting to hear something (granted we couldn’t understand Swahili) on the radio and Francis would tell us to sit down and he would rush off. He would never tell us what we were headed to but we always knew it was going to be great. He never disappointed.

We saw more zebra, gazelle, and heartbeest that I lost count. We were also introduced to Kudu (antelope family). They look like they have blue jeans and yellow socks on….or at least that’s how we were taught to recognize them.

I think the first big animal sighting was an elephant and a baby. This would only be one of many in Kenya.

It was the start of the migration season so we had plenty of wildebeest roaming around. We were told that in just a few weeks all the tall grass would be down to nothing because of the amount of wildebeest coming through the area.

We had some epic lion sightings. Our first big lion sighting was a few mom lions with a half a dozen cubs. We got to enjoy watching the moms guard their cubs, feed them and have play time.

Our second lion sighting was in the bush. There was a lion hanging in the grass. He had a full mane and was just hanging out in the shade. Francis made a few typical “lion” noises to get his attention to look up at us. After a few good pictures we drove off to let him enjoy the rest of his afternoon.

One of the coolest things we saw was up in a tree. Francis got a call on the radio and quickly headed off. We arrived at this large tree. Francis made us hunt for it. After finally figuring out we needed to look up in the tree we all spotted it: a leopard on one of the top branches with an extremely full belly. A few branches down was his dinner…or a hooves and hind legs of what was left of it. What an awesome sighting.

So how do you top the leopard in a tree? You find cheetahs roaming around. They were out for their afternoon stroll and hill sitting.

We also had a bunch of giraffe sightings. We were able to get close to two moms and a little one. We even saw the little one run around awkwardly.

Our trip to Kenya was so amazing. Africa changes you. Of the big five we saw four- lion, buffalo, leopard, and elephant. We didn’t get to see the rhino as much as our eyes tried to. Towards the end everything we saw was a rhino. Wishful thinking. I still had the best time and can’t believe everything we did in such a short time.

Contact us today if you are interested in going on an African Safari. We would love to help plan this once in a lifetime trip for you and your family.