After a week in the Seychelles, we flew into Nairobi to meet our tour group for a week on Safari in Kenya.Our flight out of Mahé left around 5pm and landed in Nairobi around 8pm. We got an official airport taxi that took us across town to our hotel. We spent the night at the Southern Sun Mayfair, a beautiful colonial hotel that’s been around since the 1940’s. We decided to do this trip with our trusted travel company, Gate1. This was our third trip with Gate1 (we also traveled with them to South America and Iceland - which, we’d recommend just renting a car and doing Iceland on your own, very feasible) and we plan to continue using them in countries we know American tourists have a hard time getting around without a local guide. We trust Gate1 because they are great with choosing lovely accommodations, their staff is friendly and always hospitable, and we’ve never had a hiccup on their tours. We met up with our group (we were the youngest couple by easily 15 years) for a morning brief before splitting up into three groups to fit into our Land Cruisers. Chase and I got super lucky because not only did we share our vehicle with just one other couple, we got the oldest couple and they were the sweetest people! Harvey and Jane were a retired couple from Oklahoma and they were calm, reflective souls. After a couple of days we heard grumblings from the other groups that people in their cruisers were abrasive and some personalities were clashing... our experience was quite the opposite. After our luggage was loaded and everyone was settled into their cruisers, we set off for the Great Rift Valley. We made a couple stops for shopping and taking in the views. We got to the Sunbird Lodge, overlooking Lake Elmentaita right at noon and the resort had our lunch prepared in their open air dining room. We finished our meal and then headed to our hut to relax for a bit. The entire resort was beautiful. Our hut was called the Crowned Crane and we actually saw one while we were in the Masai Mara! We had fantastic views of the property and absolutely loved our visit here. Truth be told, we wish we could have had one more night here to really absorb and relax. It was so peaceful there. We enjoyed a walk around the complex and a hike out to the edge of the lake. We could see the Sleeping Warrior, the rock formation in the previous photo... do you see him? We also had a great view of the flamingos. Fun fact, the lake is actually nicknamed pink lake due to the amount of flamingos that visit. Then, we had an evening game drive through the Soysambu Conservancy; we saw our first of the big five here, the Cape Buffalo. We also saw the yellow fever trees (not a carrier of the disease) and a ton of zebra, impala, gazelle, dik-diks, a cute waterbuck and so many birds. Our guide loved birds so we learned a lot about Kenyan avifauna. Roughly half way through the drive, we made it to the edge of the lake. Because we were there during the dry season, our cruisers actually drove on portions of the lake that would be filled during the wet season. We continued our drive around the lake and back into the wooded area. That's where we saw the cape buffalo. We explored until nearly dusk and our guides called it a day. We headed back to the Sunbird Lodge for cocktails and dinner. The next morning, we grabbed some breakfast, turned in our keys and said goodbye to Lake Elmentaita before heading off to the Masai Mara. So much more to come!
Until next time, C + D
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