Safari or Not

Author: newforest
Date of Trip: January 2009

Hi everybody. I’d like to start by introducing myself. David a 60+ Male married for 47 years to my beautiful Wife Sue we live in the New Forest, for anybody not conversant with where that is, It’s near Southampton UK. Sue and I have been on 7 Kenyan safaris, and the last one in January 2009 was the most unforgettable.

We booked The Voyager hotel, Mombasa for a three week stay flying to Kenya with First Choice Airways(Brilliant). The Voyager is a very pleasant , well situated hotel not too far away from Mombasa, a very interesting town to visit. We spent the first week chilling out on the beach, in the pool and eating and drinking as we were on an All Inclusive deal. The second week we booked an Air Safari with Julius Safaris of North Mombasa, which took us on a two hour small aircraft flight flight to Governors Camp in The Masai Mara. As the name implies, you sleep in tents, but not the tents you associate with the scouting or guides, these are luxurious tents with their own toilet facilities and large comfortable beds. A short walk from your tent and you can look down at the Crocodiles and Hippos in the river below.

Breakfast and Lunch are served in the open during the day with Dinner served in a large open sided building lit by oil lamps. Very reminiscent of old Africa. The food was wonderful, lots of choices for all diets. Now the important part. The Safaris. You either go out on two or three Safaris per day. One early morning, one early afternoon and the last one early evening. These are taken in open Land Rover type vehicles with 4 passengers up to 8 passengers. You are pretty well guaranteed to see the big five game animals. We did, not once, but twice. The Mara is vast with wall to wall Zebra grazing without a care in the world. The Cheetahs are everywhere as are the Lions and as for Elephants, they can become really quite boring seeing so many. But seriously, you can never tire of seeing these majestic animals. Once you drive to the river, you can sit in awe watching the Crocodiles waiting patiently under the surface of the water, waiting for the Zebra to come and drink, and then all hell breaks loose as frightened noisy Zebra scatter in all directions, except one! Don’t forget if you decide to go, take a good camera and good binoculars.

The third and final week at Voyager was much the same as the first, except now you could boast to your fellow holidaymakers about the animals you’d seen. Give it a go, go on SAFARI.