A Taste of Kenya • Amboseli, Lake Naivasha/Nakuru and Masai Mara
duration
6 nights – 6 1.2 days
point of departure
city hotels
itinerary code
RT164
days of departure
tuesdays
transport
landcruiser 4x4
 


  • itinerary
  • tariff
  • lodges
  • parks

Day 1 Nairobi - Amboseli - 260 km / 5h approximately
Depart for Amboseli. Lunch on arrival followed by an afternoon game drive. Dinner and overnight stay at Amboseli Sopa Lodge FB.

Day 2 Amboseli
Morning and afternoon game drives in Amboseli. Dinner and overnight stay at Amboseli Sopa Lodge FB.

Day 3 Nairobi - Lake Naivasha - 260 km /5h approximately + 90 km /2h30 approximately
After breakfast the safari continues to Lake Naivasha, stopping for lunch in Nairobi at the famous Carnivore Restaurant. Continue to Lake Naivasha. Reminder of afternoon at leisure to enjoy the gardens of this lake side lodge. Dinner and overnight stay at Lake Naivasha Sopa Lodge HB.

Day 4 Lake Naivasha - 140 km / 3h approximately
Depart after breakfast and drive to Lake Nakuru National Park. Morning game drive. Lunch at Lake Nakuru lodge overlooking the lake, before returning to Lake Naivasha for a 1 hour boat trip on the Lake. Great opportunities for spotting hippo, Giraffe, buffalo and the abundant birdlife that inhabits the lake shore. Dinner and overnight stay at Lake Naivasha Sopa Lodge FB.

Day 5 Lake Naivasha - Maasai Mara Reserve - 240 km / 5h approximately
After breakfast continue to the Masai Mara. Lunch at Mara Sopa lodge followed by an afternoon game drive. Dinner and overnight stay at Mara Sopa Lodge FB.

Day 6 Maasai Mara Reserve
Morning and afternoon game drives in the Masai Mara. Dinner and overnight stay at Mara Sopa Lodge FB.

Day 7 Maasai Mara Reserve - Nairobi - 280 km / 5h30 approximately
After breakfast the safari return to Nairobi.

Prices quoted are per person and are for the specified itinerary and dates

from 16 december 2014 to 15 december 2015
Prices from US$ 1.835 per person in a double room

Safaris are guaranteed to operate with a minimum of 2 persons from 16/12/2014 to 31/03/2015 and 01/07/2015 to 31/10/2015 with a minimum of 4 persons from 07/04/2015 to 30/06/2015 and from 01/11/2015 to 15/12/2015. The guarantee to operate is subject to availability of space in the vehicle and in accommodation at the lodges and hotels indicated in the itinerary. The itinerary may operate by reversing the order of the itinerary without changing its quality.

Amboseli Sopa lodge
Set in 200 acres of private land, and with a rustic charm all of its own, the lodge nestles in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro which, at almost six thousand metres, is Africa’s highest and most famous snowcapped mountain. It was this region of Kenya that, in the 1930’s, inspired Ernest Hemingway’s unforgettable stories ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ and ‘The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber’ which were turned into more than successful feature films in the late 1940’s due to their renowned actors. All forms of wildlife still abound in this wilderness which continues all the way to the Amboseli National Park, an easy twenty minute drive away from the lodge. While the park conserves over six hundred breeding species of birds as well a host of rare and wonderful wildlife, this is also home to the Maasai people, perhaps the world’s most renowned African tribe. The Amboseli National Park’s ecosystem is mainly savannah grassland spread across the Kenya-Tanzania border, and also comprises of forested areas around some of its rivers and lakes. The park is famous for being the best place in Africa to get close to free-ranging elephants among other wildlife species, and its other attractions include opportunities to meet the Maasai tribe’s people, and its spectacular views of Mount Kilimanjaro. With all this and more to see in the park, you might decide to spend a full day there instead of returning to our lodge for lunch. Should this be the case, and for your convenience, we have a tented luncheon and bar venue within a five minute drive from the park gates.

Lake Naivasha Sopa Lodge
Set in one hundred and fifty acres of grassland studded with Acacia bushes and trees, the resort is not only home to our resident giraffe, waterbuck and both Vervet and Colobus monkeys, but it is also a night stop for the hippos when they leave the lake every night to come and trim the grass on our expansive lawns. With Sopa’s traditional and conscientious care for the environment, we carefully positioned all the buildings on our property so we did not have to fell any of the many trees there. As a result of this, we had to come up with a radically innovative and artistic design for the main public area building which now snakes its way between the trees with long and graceful curves. Lake Naivasha is a freshwater lake in the Kenya section of Africa’s Great Rift Valley, and is located north west of Nairobi with the town of Naivasha on its north eastern shore. At 1,890 meters (6,200 ft) above sea level, the lake is at the highest point in the Kenyan rift, and is set in a complex geological combination of volcanic rocks and sedimentary deposits from a much larger Pleistocene era lake. Because the outlet for this ancient lake, now called Njorwa Gorge, is today much higher than the lake, the original Lake Naivasha must have indeed been a truly vast expanse of water. The gorge now forms the entrance to the Hell’s Gate National Park which, for obvious reasons, today contains some spectacular examples of water and weather-worn rock formations as well as an abundance of flora and fauna to include some extremely rare, resident breeding pairs of Lammergeyers, otherwise known as Bearded vultures. Apart from transient streams, Lake Naivasha is fed by the perennial Malewa and Gilgil rivers and, most unusually, it now has no visible outlet. However, it must be assumed that such a large body of water has to have an underground outflow through a volcanic fissure or similar somewhere beneath the expanse of its lake bed, and it has been suggested that the water emerges through the fresh but hot water springs at Lake Magadi, an otherwise brackish and pinkish coloured soda lake 120kms to the south. Because this is a volcanic area, as witnessed by Mount Longonot, an extinct nearby volcano to the south east, and ancient fumaroles – including the tiny but spectacular Crater Lake – to the west, Kenya is blessed with the presence of the Olkarria Geothermal electrical generating complex – high in the hills just to the south – which feeds massive amounts of much needed power into the national grid. halls with their four differently sized meeting areas, and our stables are so widely set apart.

Mara Sopa Lodge
Located high on the slopes of the Oloolaimutia Hills, Masai Mara Sopa Lodge was one of the first safari lodges to be built in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve, a reason why its gardens and trees are so lush and mature. All the buildings follow the design of traditional African round houses with conical roofs, and these stretch along the line of the hills with the impressively large public area buildings and the swimming pool at their centre. With its rolling hills, dense riverine forests, hills and a high, flat-topped escarpment that forms its western boundary, this wildlife conservation area takes up an area of 1,510sq.kms in south western Kenya and shares an international border with Tanzania’s fabled Serengeti National Park. It is owned and managed by the Maasai people who, because of their traditional respect for wildlife during the course of hundreds of years of their continued co-existence, they have ensured that the wildlife splendour of the Maasai Mara exists today. While this reserve is home to over 410 species of birds and 60 species of raptors, it is also one of the world’s finest game viewing destinations. This is because it plays host to an abundance of every form of wildlife possible except for those few species which can only be seen north of the Equator, and from our Samburu Sopa Lodge Not only this, but the reserve is also world famous for its annual migration of literally millions of wildebeest – not to mention tens of thousands of zebras and gazelles – when they annually migrate north from the Serengeti, usually between July/early August to October, to find food. To access the reserve’s lush grazing they first have to cross the Mara River with its battalions of enormous and hungry crocodiles and, if you are lucky enough to watch one of these crossings, it is an event you will never forget.

 

Amboseli National Park
Amboseli National Park is located on the border with Tanzania, Kajiado District, South Kenya; Amboseli lies immediately North West of Mt. Kilimanjaro, on the border with Tanzania. The Park covers 392 km2, and forms part of the much larger 3,000 Km2 Amboseli ecosystem. Large concentrations of wildlife occur here in the dry season, making Amboseli a popular tourist destination. It is surrounded by 6 communally owned group ranches. The National Park embodies 5 main wildlife habitats (open plains, acacia woodland, rocky thorn bush country, swamps and marshland) and covers part of a pleistocene lake basin, now dry. Within this basin is a temporary lake, Lake Amboseli, that floods during years of heavy rainfall. Amboseli is famous for its big game and its great scenic beauty - the landscape is dominated by Mt. Kilimanjaro. The climate is mainly hot and dry. Amboseli is in the rain shadow of Mt.Kilimanjaro. The maximum average temperature of the warmest month is 33°C during the day, while that of the coldest is 27-28°C.

Altitude: between 1.100 to 1.300 metres
Size: 392 km²
Distance from Nairobi: 240 km
Opening: April 1948
Major attractions: Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mt. Meru, Observation Hill which allows an overall view of the whole park especially the swamps and elephants, Contemporary Maasai culture and indigenous lifestyle.


Lake Nakuru National Park

The park lies in Central Kenya, 140km north-west of Nairobi, in Nakuru district of the Rift Valley Province. The ecosystem comprises of the lake, surrounded by mainly wooded and bushy grasslands. The park supports a wide ecological diversity with Flamingos (Greater and Lesser) and other water birds being the major attractions of the area. The ecosystem provides for about 56 different species of mammals including the white rhino and buffaloes and a variety of terrestrial birds numbering nearly 450 species.

Altitude: 1800 metres
Size: 188 km²
Distance from Nairobi: 160 km
Opening: June 1968
Animals: more than 400 species of birds (water and terrestrial), Flamingo (Greater and Lesser), leopard and rhinoceros (black and white), waterbuck , Colobus monkey.
Major attractions: Unique vegetation: About 550 different plant species including the unique and biggest euphorbia forest in Africa, Picturesque landscape and yellow acacia woodlands.


Maasai Mara Game Reserve

Maasai Mara is situated in south-west Kenya and is one of Africa’s Greatest Wildlife Reserves. Together with the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania it forms Africa’s most diverse, incredible and most spectacular eco-systems and possibly the world’s top safari big game viewing eco-system. Made famous by the abundance of the big cats, Lion, Leopard, Cheetah and the Great Wildebeest Migration and the Maasai people, well known for their distinctive custom and dress. There is a wide selection of places to stay in and around the Maasai Mara and the conservancies surrounding it . The conservancies surrounding the Maasai Mara have restricted number of vehicles allowing a more private game viewing of wildlife. The Maasai Mara Ecosystem (see our map) holds one of the highest lion densities in world and this is where over TWO MILLION Wildebeest, Zebra and Thomsons Gazelle migrate annually. Maasai Mara National Reserve stretches 1,510 sq km (580 sq miles) and raises 1,500-2,170 meters above sea level. It hosts over 95 species of mammals and 570 recorded species of birds. With the wildebeest migration in JULY – OCTOBER, this is the best time to see this incredible movement of animals. The Maasai Mara is an all year round destination with the big cats, and all the big game still in the Maasai Mara Ecosystem. .

Altitude: between 1.500 to 2.200 metres
Size: 1530 km²
Distance from Nairobi: 265/310 km
Opening: November 1975
Major attractions:Theatre of the traditional migration of animals from the Serengeti to Masai Mara. Numerous lions, leopard, cheetah and elephant and the Wildebeeste, topi Thomsons gazelle Traditional Maasai culture. Exceptional scenery from the escarpment overlooking the plains.