DESTINATION – SAFARI
Definitely one of my dream vacations is to experience a Safari in deepest Africa. I’d only do it by using an honest to goodness company specializing in Safaris! While there are several such companies, I’m going to detail the Micato Grand Safari, 15 days. You can simply sign up to do this tour or make it a private safari bringing your own family and friends. Everything is included: tips, porterage, hotels/camps, all meals, and flights between locations. The goal is for it to be simple for you to do this.
Day 1 Traveling, sleeping, eating, sleeping…
Day 2-3 Nairobi: Stay in the Fairmont Norfolk Hotel where royals have dined and chummed around before setting out on safari. You’ll tour the National Museum, visit the Giraffe Center, and stop at the home of Karen Blixen who wrote Out of Africa.
Day 4-5 Amboseli: Mount Kilimanjaro presides over all, three miles high. You’ll be staying at Tortilis Camp in a luxurious thatched hut, which is your base for visiting Maasai villages and game drives in this animal rich kingdom. Watch a parade of elephants from your veranda!
Day 6-7 Lewa Safari Camp offers views of the amazing Mount Kenya, 17,000 feet high. From this base you’ll see a full cast of predators and prey including: Grevy’s zebra and black and white rhinos.
Your “room” for the night is lavish, impeccable, perfectly appointed and ideally designed. You look around in awe—this is a tent? Not to mention your private deck for viewing the action. Enjoy the luxury of your four-poster bed, colorful Swahili fabrics, old chests, ethnic artefacts, Chesterfield sofas and Victorian antiques. And don’t forget the en suite!
Day 8-9 The Maasai Mara: You’ll fly over the Great Rift Valley which makes the Grand Canyon look like a scratch in the ground. The Maasai Mara is the earth’s greatest haven for large mammals and you’ll see over 70 species going about their daily business in these grasslands. You’ll be staying in either the Bateleur Camp or Governor’s Il Moran Camp and make side trips to the Mara River for a peek at leviathan crocodiles and hippos. At night, watch Africa’s showy stars to dazzle you as they might have 10,000 years ago. On the second day, ride in a hot air balloon to see all the land and end your experience with a champagne breakfast!
Day 10-11 The Serengeti: This is it! The place to see three million or more large mammals including elephants, cheetahs, a gazillion gazelles, wildebeest, zebras, giraffes, lions, rhinos, and even more! You’ll spend two nights here, either in the Four Seasons Safari Lodge Serengeti where the sunrise skies are banded colors of yellow, rose, and the pink of flamingoes. Or you might be staying in Grumeti Serengeti Tented Camp on the bank of a lake bustling with stunningly sizable crocs and hippos. Micato Safaris wants to seduce you into slowing down.
Day 12-13 Ngorongoro Crater: Today you’ll visit the Olduvai Gorge (now called the Oldupai Gorge) which is touted to be the “jumping off point for humankinds colonization of the earth”. How did hippos find their way up into the crater’s highlands to come to the waters of Ngorongoro?
Day 14 Depart Nairobi: for connecting flights in Europe.
You also have the option to extend your safari by jetting off to Cape Town or Zanzibar for a few days, or visit the mountain gorillas of Rwanda.
Ok so you love it, right? But what’s it gonna cost me? Figure $15500 per person for the least expensive safaris in May, going up to $19500 for the rest of the year. Plus your internal flights which will add about $2500 per person. My best friends listened to my dream of taking a safari, and they did it, twice!!!
