Christmas 1995 in Kenya

Our holiday started on Wednesday December 20th, when we left London behind us in quite cold weather conditions.

Our flight out to Nairobi went quite smoothly, apart from the hold-up for the extra baggage identification and the overbooked seats at Frankfurt. The movie shown was the remake of ‘Miracle on 34th Street’. However, I was too tired to watch it in full and anyway, my sound system was not in complete working order. Since I was quite tired, I suppose I must have dozed off a few times during the night.

We arrived safely in a sunny and warm Nairobi on Thursday December 21st, where we were meet by the representative of the Kuoni Tour Operators. We were transferred by minibus to the Mayfair Court Hotel in Nairobi, where we were registered in our rooms for the one night we were to spend in Nairobi.

It was arranged that the representative would return to the hotel later in the morning to brief us about the further details of our stay in Kenya.

After our debriefing in which we learned that we would be collected by our driver the following morning at 08.30, the afternoon was ours to do with as we pleased - either visit Nairobi town or relax by the pool/in the room.

We all enjoyed a delightful buffet lunch at poolside after which we went our separate ways to the pool/rooms.

We had a fairly light supper and then decided to call it a night, since we would have quite an early start the next morning and of course we had not really had a good night’s sleep the night before, due to traveling.

Friday morning, December 22nd, we were collected at 08.30 after having had a most wonderful breakfast at poolside again.

We were introduced to our driver, Kenneth, who would be our guide and accompany us during the complete safari tour.

And so we set out on our way to ‘the Outspan’, the former home of Sir Baden Powell, the founder of the Scout’s Movement.

Lunch was, as we had become accustomed to: delightful. After lunch there was the opportunity to witness some tribal dancing by the tribe. These dancers ‘found’ me in the curiosity shop and asked me to join them as they made their way to the arena where they perform their dances.

As we were waiting for the show to begin, it suddenly started to pour, but as we discovered during the course of our stay, when it does rain, it is usually a heavy bout for a short time. Our dancers went away to keep dry, but returned quite soon to perform their ritual tribal dances. As it turned out, the Kikuyu tribe has the most interesting dance routine of the tribes we saw at later dates, such as the Samburu and the Masai.

We were then told to pack an overnight bag with just the bare necessities for our visit to ‘Treetops’ in the Aberdare National Park, where we would spend the following night. This hotel is very spartan and the rooms are very small, it is really only suitable for one overnight stay.

We were left at the bottom of the hill below Treetops in order to follow our guide through the wilderness, past the elephants and into the Treetops hotel, which is a wooden building placed on poles and around a tree. This was the location where the then Princess Elizabeth of England spent a night during her honeymoon, only to be told that her father, the King, had died and that she was now the Queen of England.

We were served tea/coffee, cakes and scones, biscuits on the roof garden, amidst the monkeys and birds and this was where we got our first taste of the African wildlife as many species arrived at the watering hole. Elephants, buffalo, warthogs, baboons, gazelle. All in all very impressive.

Dinner was served on long tables in the dining room, so this was a good way to break the ice with our fellow travelers in the group.

After dinner we spent some more time watching the bush babies and then we had an early night, since we would have to leave again at 06.30, which meant waking up at 06.00.

Saturday morning, December 23rd, we left Treetops to have breakfast back at the Outspan and collect the rest of our luggage again and also to meet up with Kenneth our guide.

We had a long, dusty drive and at a certain point crossed the equator. At this point our driver stopped to let us witness the phenomenon that if you pour water through a funnel when you are standing at a spot above the equator, it will spiral down in a clockwise direction. However, if you happen to move 20 paces to the other side of the equator the water spirals down in an anti-clockwise direction. When you are exactly on top of the equator it goes down in a straight line. Very interesting.

We continued our journey along dreadful ‘roads’ and suddenly were confronted with the problem of having the gear lever of our van let loose from the axle. We all got out to stretch our legs and Kenneth managed to get the whole thing back together temporarily (with a piece of string maybe?) until our next stop at the Samburu Lodge in the Samburu National Reserve. An oasis in the midst of a wilderness.

This is where we would be staying for two nights, so it was a good opportunity to unpack the bags and do a little bit of washing. The baboons roam freely through the Lodge grounds and you are explicitly warned not to leave your balcony doors and windows open, since they are completely fearless and enter your rooms if you are not careful.

Our neighbours on the opposite side of the river were crocodiles, by the way!

Lunch was served, as usual a delight, and we were left with a few free hours before our driver would return at 16.00 with the repaired van for our first ‘official’ game drive. Naturally, we had already seen many animals on our way to the hotel, but we had been driving quite fast and not been very close to them.

This was immediately remedied in the afternoon - we saw many herds of elephant, gazelle, impala, giraffe, guinea fowl. We even came across a leopard, basking in the sun on a tree branch. It is amazing how the animals do not take any notice of the many safari busses which pass their way. It is quite obvious that they are completely used to these vehicles being around in their domain.

We drove through a specific area of the park until dusk and then returned to our lodge for dinner, coffee and early to bed, since we would be collected at 06.30 again the next morning for an early morning game drive.

In the meantime, the weather was constantly delightful and any free time was spent at poolside.

December 24th and we saw the sun rising over the park, just unbelievable. Again, many animals were visible and all are so close by!

Christmas Eve Dinner was served as a special treat next to the pool and everybody was in a festive mood with party hats, crackers and other Christmas trappings. We were entertained by the Samburu tribal dancers, who as I mentioned previously were not as spectacular as the Kikuyu tribe.

The next morning we would leave at around 07.00 to move to a different location, so a reasonably early night was had by all.

We had a long drive to Lake Nakuru, which has become a salt flats inhabited by many flamingos, water buck and some gigantic rhinoceros. Ami managed to frighten poor Kenneth, when he said he wanted to get out of the van and take closer pictures!

Christmas Day lunch was served at Lake Nakuru Lodge, where we were also given about an hour to rest up in the open air after our long drive through the Great Rift Valley.

We moved on after lunch to the Lake Naivasha Country Club, where we spent one night and were even allowed to sleep until late, since our driver would not be back for us until after lunch.

We took a boat ride out on the lake, to see eagles, flamingos and hippopotamus - it is quite frightening when these enormous creatures decide to ‘go under’ - where are they going to surface? Under your boat?

Boxing Day lunch had been planned out on the lawn, however, it decided to pour down for about 45 minutes, so all the furniture had to be brought inside again. We were treated to some Christmas carol singing by a Kenyan school choir. Very sweet.

After lunch we continued on our way to the Masai Mara National Reserve past Thomson’s Falls, a spectacular waterfall, where we managed to do some souvenir shopping.

The Masai Mara is a much ‘greener’ park than the one at Samburu.

It is in this part that many of the nature films are shot, especially since it is so abundant in elephant, zebra, giraffe, lions, etc.

We arrived in time for dinner and were left to our own devices.

Once again we were expected to be awake at an early hour on December 27th to be able to watch the animals. Our hopes were rewarded with a most beautiful sight of 5 lionesses stalking a herd of giraffe, who managed to get away safely. However, our bus managed to fall into a little pothole, so it needed all the male strength in the area (the two other buses belonging to our group came to our rescue immediately) to lift the bus out of its predicament.

It was wonderful to watch the balloon floating over the park - we had declined the opportunity of joining that part of the safari adventure.

Later that afternoon we were pleasantly surprised with the view of a mother cheetah nursing her four cubs and a lioness playing with her two cubs. At a certain point, Mummy decided it was getting late and picked up one of the cubs in her mouth to carry it to their next location, while the other cub trailed behind its mother. Quite amazing!

This was in fact the last night of our safari trip and we were entertained once again by tribal dancers of the Masai - they are a tribe of very skinny and tall men.

Our driver picked us up the next morning, December 28th, at 08.30 for the drive back to Nairobi.

We stopped for a break once we had come out of the Great Rift Valley and were upon a mountain again - the view is breath-taking.

Our guide Kenneth was kind-hearted enough to take us the Nairobi market for our last-minute souvenir purchases and then he took us back to the Mayfair Court Hotel in Nairobi where we were given a room to freshen up and change before we would be collected at 19.00 for the airport. Since the weather was still delightful, a final few hours were spent at the pool .

Our flight back home went via Frankfurt again, where we were advised of the very cold weather conditions in Europe - -9º - quite horrifying when you have just come from approximately 30º!

Our luggage arrived safely too and we can only say that it has been a most wonderful experience, not to be forgotten lightly.