Kenya & Tanzania Safari

Accommodation & Transport

Starting from Nairobi, fly to Amboseli / Selenkay where you are met and transferred to Porini Amboseli Camp for 2 nights. On Day 3 travel to the border crossing, enter Tanzania and continue to Arusha for drop off at Hammerkop House by Lemala.  The next morning head to the beautiful Tarangire region for 2 nights, then on to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area for 1 night. Then continue to the Serengeti and to Lemala Ewanjan for 3 nights. There is fascinating game-viewing to be seen in the Serengeti then on the last day you fly back to Nairobi (via Arusha). Road transport is by comfortable 4×4 safari vehicle with an expert driver-guide.

NB includes shared game activities using camp’s own vehicle / guides at Porini Amboseli Camp and at Lemala Ewanjan. Other game drives in private 4×4 vehicle.

Accommodation:

• Porini Amboseli Camp (2 nights)
• Hammerkop House by Lemala (1 night)
• Nimali Tarangire (2 nights)
• Lemala Ngorongoro Tented Camp (1 night)
• Lemala Ewanjan, Central Serengeti  (3 nights)

Amboseli & Selenkay

The location of Amboseli National Park is probably its biggest attraction – the whole park is overlooked by the world famous views of Mount Kilimanjaro.

The park’s open landscape is home to large herds of elephants whose population is one of the few in Africa that has been spared the butchery of poachers. Elephant numbers are now well over 1000 and they live in their natural social structures of matriarchal families and bull elephant groups. Predators in the park include hyenas, jackals; lions, leopards and cheetahs. Birdlife in abundance flourishes particularly in the marshes and swamps – over 420 species have been counted within the park as a whole including 6 species of vulture, 12 species of heron and 10 varieties of eagle.

Selenkay Conservancy is just 15km to the north and shares the same eco-system as Amboseli. It is established on lands leased from the local Maasai by Porini with the aim of protecting the wildlife habitat and encouraging wildlife conservation. Porini Amboseli Camp’s remote location off the beaten tourist track means that the local wildlife is unused to vehicle traffic, which it rarely encounters, and therefore behaves in its natural manner.

Tarangire National Park

Ngorongoro Conservation Area

Ngorongoro Crater, one of the wonders of the natural world, is an extinct volcano that collapsed in on itself around 25 million years ago thus forming a vast superbowl where the largest permanent concentration of African game is on display. The central bowl – the caldera – has sides roughly 1,950 feet high and a flattish centre with a diameter of about ten miles. The views from the top of the crater wall are absolutely breathtaking. The crater walls are forested but four wheel drive vehicles will take you down into this primeval paradise of woodland, lake, river, swamp and plain that shelters around 20,000 animals. Many of these are the large grazing animals such as wildebeest, buffalo, gazelle and zebra who depend on the open grasslands in the crater. These attract the attendant predators, the black-maned lion, the leopard and hyena.

Elephants feed on the giant sedges and hippo wallow in the pools. The Fever Tree forests shelter monkeys, bushbuck and waterbuck and the few black rhino that have taken refuge here. A soda lake, fed by the Munge river attracts water birds, including flamingos and is a favourite place for predators to make their kill.

One of the most fascinating attractions in the area is the Olduvai Gorge, where an old river has carved away the rock to expose layer upon layer of volcanic soil.

Serengeti National Park

The vast 14,763 square kilometres of the Serengeti are renowned as being one of the world’s leading safari destinations

Every year the Great Migration of over 1.5 million animals, mostly wildebeest but also zebra and Thompson’s gazelle, moves through the western corridor on its 1000 kilometre journey to the fresh grazing of the Masai Mara. Predators pick off the weak and the young and crocodiles feast as the vast herd crosses the rivers. This is one of the earth’s great sights – but it is by no means all the Serengeti has to offer.

The vast, flat central plains, made fertile by the ashes of the none volcanoes of the Ngorongoro highlands, are places of huge skies, of shimmering heat hazes, yet also of delicate wild flowers blooming after the rains. The savannah, sprinkled with Acacia Tortilis, has majestic termite mounds and rock formations called kopjes which make great vantage points for predators. The lion are abundant, the leopard are plentiful (yet still secretive) and black rhino and cheetah both breed here.

There are more than 500 species of bird and, interestingly, 100 sub-species of dung beetle – a sign of a varied animal population! Ndutu, in the south, has small lakes where you may see hippo and water birds. Perhaps one of the best ways to see the Serengeti is a hot air balloon ride when, in the cool of the early morning, you may admire the grandeur, the vastness and the stunning landscape.