05 Days Best of Maasai Mara N.G. R and Lake Nakuru N.P

Tour Code : TIA010

Validity : Throughout the year

Minimum : 02 pax

Departure : Any day

Vehicle : 1 x 7 Seater 4×4 vehicle

Starts : Nairobi

Ends : Nairobi

Meals : as indicated on itinerary at a glance

ITINERARY AT A GLANCE

Day Location Accommodation Board Activity

1 Nairobi Safari Club, Nairobi BB Arr Trsf

2 Masai Mara National G.R Mara Sopa Lodge LDBB P

3 Masai Mara National G.R Mara Sopa Lodge LDBB AP

4 Lake Nakuru Nat Park Lake Nakuru Sopa Lodge LDBB P

5 Nairobi Safari Club BB DppTrsf

L-Lunch, D-Dinner, BB-Bed and breakfast, LDBB-Lunch, dinner, bed and breakfast, Trsf-Transfer, E-Early morning game drive, A-Morning game drive, P-Afternoon game drive, HDS-Half Day sightseeing, FDS-Full Day Sightseeing

FULL ITINERARY 

Day 1 – Nairobi 

Arrival at Jomo Kenyatta Airport met and assisted by VINTAGE AFRICA representative.  Transfer to your hotel.  Rest of the day is spent at leisure in Nairobi (Optional tour of Karen Blixen and Giraffe center available at extra cost).  Overnight at Hotel Nairobi Safari Club or Eka hotel (BB)

Day 2   – Nairobi-Masai Mara National G.R 

After breakfast, drive to the Masai Mara National Reserve offering wonderful scenery and plenty of game. It is perhaps the only region left in Kenya where the visitor may see animals in the same super-abundance as existed a century ago. Arrive for lunch at your lodge. Afternoon game drives until sunset.   Meals and overnight at Mara Sopa Lodge (LDBB)

Day 3 – Masai Mara National G.R  Full Day

Whole day in Masai Mara with morning and afternoon game drives.  Mid morning you will visit a Masai village to experience first  hand the masai culture. Meals and overnight at Mara Sopa Lodge (LDBB)

Day 4   Lake Nakuru National Park 

After breakfast you will be collected for the day’s drive taking you to Lake Nakuru National Park. Lunch at your lodge. After Lunch you will proceed on an afternoon game drive in Lake Nakuru National Park. The Lake has good density of game and it is one Park that within few minutes of game drive, you will achieve quite a lot in terms of sightings. It is also a bird watchers haven. After the game drive proceed back to your lodge. Dinner and overnight stay at Lake Nakuru Sopa Lodge LDBB

Day 5 – Departure

After breakfast, drive to Nairobi, Kenya’s colorful capital city. You will be dropped off at your city centre hotel or Jomo Kenyatta Airport for your departure flight back home

The Package Includes:

• Arrival and departure airport transfers
• 1 Night accommodation at Nairobi Safari Club, Nairobi on bed & breakfast
• 2 Nights accommodation at Mara Sopa Lodge on full board basis
• 1 Night accommodation at Lake Nakuru Sopa Lodge on full board basis
• Boat ride in Lake Naivasha
• Masai village
• All game drives as per itinerary
• All park entrance fees
• Transport in 1 x 7 Seater 4×4 vehicle
• Services of a qualified English Speaking Driver Guide
• 1 Litre bottle of mineral water per person per day while on a road safari in an Orange Adventures vehicle

The Package Excludes:

• All International Flights + Taxes
• Visas
• Travel & Personal accident insurance
• Tips & personal expenses such as telephone calls…etc.
• Excursions not detailed in above program

Included flights:

No flights included

NATIONAL PARKS & RESERVES INFORMATION

Masai Mara National G.R

Probably the most famous of the reserves, the Masai Mara, in Kenya’s south western corner, boasts an astonishing amount of game. Unfenced, the Mara is bounded in the east by the Ngama Hills and in the west by the Oloololo or Siria Escarpment. Gazelle, wildebeest and zebra graze in large numbers and where prey is found so are predators. Not only is  this a great place in which to find game, but the wide greenly-gold  savannahs spotted with thorn trees make it ideal for photography. The Mara, as it is known in Kenya, is ravishingly beautiful and also offers long, undisturbed views and utterly dramatic panoramas. The weather really means something here. The sun may beat down unforgiving, huge clouds in fabulous shapes may sweep across the widest of skies, and the wind ripples the grasses as though they are stroked by a giant hand. The landscape is stunning.

The famously black-manned Mara lions are possibly the stars of the Mara show, but cheetah, elephant, kongoni, topi, Thompson’s gazelle, waterbuck, hyena, and primates are all here too. As with the rest of Kenya, the birding is good. There is no settlement within the reserve however; the Mara is in theory owned by the Maasai, pastoralists and, in earlier times, renowned lion-killers. Lodges and hotels offer the opportunity to buy their beadwork, checked cloths and copies of their spears. It is said that if lions scent approaching Maasai on the breeze they move swiftly in the opposite direction.

Famously, the Mara is the northerly end of the Great Migration, that great primeval surge of wildebeest, zebra and antelope that sweeps in from Tanzania’s Serengeti to Kenya’s Masai Mara as the Tanzanian grass starts to fail. The large predators that pick off the weak, the stragglers and the young track them. The great herds, nearing their destination by July, mass along the Mara River, pushing, shoving and fantastically noisy, just waiting for the first animal to cross so that they can all follow, lemming-like, on the final leg of the journey. However, crocodiles lie in wait, sluggishly cruising the waters, fully prepared for their best meal of the year. Many fail in the life-and-death struggle – drowned, eaten by the crocodiles or, made careless or weak by their stressful swim, brought down by lions.  The Masai Mara is terrible yet wonderful, and not to be missed.

Lake Nakuru National Park

Originally declared a national park because of a superbly diverse bird population, which includes many migrants, the park is also a favorite place for travelers to seek the rare black rhino. However, it is for the flamingos that the lake is best known, and it was for their protection that the park was originally created. The level of the blue-green alkaline waters here varies and this, with other accompanying environmental changes, causes considerable variation in the flamingo population, but when they are present, en masse, the whole lake turns a gorgeous rosy pink.

Although protection of the flamingo population on the lake was the original rationale for the inception of the national park, further land was included in the early seventies and it is now about 190 sq m. This expansion, which took in a large grassland area, has allowed the park to protect further species. Buffalo, zebra, antelope and both lion and leopard are to be found. The rather less ubiquitous reedbuck and waterbuck are also here as is the glamorously leggy Rothschild giraffe. Temptingly, the black rhino breeding program, started in the late eighties, has proved successful and this is an excellent place to view them.

Lake Nakuru is a small national park. There is no need to stay in the area in order to see all that is to be seen. A good day trip may be enough and these can easily be organized from the Lake Naivasha area.