East Africa for Wildlife Aficionados July through October 2011 17921 W. 59 th Ave, Golden, CO 80403 720-497-1250 bgiven@thewildsource.com www.thewildsource.com
Itinerary with The Wild Source Day 01 Arrive in Nairobi. Met at the airport and transferred to Ole Sereni Hotel Day 02 Picked up after breakfast and transferred to Wilson Airport for your 10 a.m. flight to the Masai Mara. Met on arrival by your guide and taken to Offbeat Mara Camp. Day 03 Offbeat Mara Camp Day 04 Offbeat Mara Camp Day 05 Offbeat Mara Camp Day 06 Offbeat Mara Camp Day 07 Flight from Mara to Tanzania border. One hour driving transfer, including going through customs. Flight in to Northern Serengeti. Met by your guide from Serengeti Mara Camp. Day 08 Serengeti Mara Camp Day 09 Serengeti Mara Camp Day 10 Serengeti Mara Camp Day 11 Serengeti Mara Camp Day 12 Serengeti Mara Camp Day 13 Serengeti Mara Camp Day 14 Last game drive followed by a flight at 10:30 to Kilimanjaro. Day room at KIA Lodge until your flight for home. Cost $7,000 per person sharing Note: this is high season pricing July through October. November through March is less, contact for price quote. *Cost includes Kenya & Tanzania internal flights, accommodation, meals & drinks (except in Nairobi), and park fees.
Not Included Out of Pocket Costs to Consider International Air between home and Nairobi with return from Kilimanjaro Tips On safari I recommend $15 per person per day -- $10 to your guide, and $5 to the camp staff. In city hotels $1 a bag. Dinner and drinks in Nairobi Entry Visa for Kenya ($50 per person) and Tanzania ($100 per person) Travel Insurance and Health Preparation Costs
Ole Sereni Hotel, Nairobi 1 Night The title of the hotel is taken from the Maasai name for the area, meaning place of tranquility offering its guests the comforts and services of a city hotel while bordering the wilds of the Nairobi National Park. Ole - Sereni Hotel captures the essence of Nairobi, which is the only city in the world that boasts a natural game park within its precincts. This is evident as guests view animals at the waterhole in the park from the restaurants, bars, swimming pool, selected rooms and parts of the hotel. For those who want the best of both worlds, Ole Sereni is the perfect answer. As the city hotel by the game park, it offers guests a chance to view game while convenient to the airport. The Hotel offers 134 tastefully decorated rooms. All the rooms have a twin or double bed and are equipped with private bath/ shower, air conditioning, safe, minibar, tea/coffee making facilities, hairdryer, satellite TV, internet and direct dial telephone. Also provided in all rooms are bathrobes and bedroom slippers as all guests are VIP. On the 4th floor, overlooking the waterhole and skyline of Nairobi is the high-class Eagles Bar & Grillroom with its own Club Bar and evening entertainment. The main restaurant, the Big Five, also with its own bar, boasts an open show kitchen offering five types of cuisine: Chinese, Indian, Italian, Mongolian and Grills.
Offbeat Mara Camp 5 Nights Offbeat Mara Camp delivers the ultimate Masai Mara experience because it is located in the private Mara North Conservancy immediately adjacent to the Masai Mara Reserve providing the exclusivity and additional activities of a private area and yet has close access into the public Masai Mara Reserve. The Masai Mara is famed for its enormous animal concentrations and especially renowned for big cats. Lion and cheetah are particularly plentiful and leopard are often sighted as well. The conservancy is a fabulous wildlife reserve of 74,000 acres and a limited few safari camps providing for an exclusive Mara game viewing experience often leaving you completely alone for your wildlife observation. The Mara North Conservancy is made up of land leased from Maasai landowners. These landowners directly benefit by earning guaranteed monthly income for converting their land back to wildlife, and moving their livestock & homesteads outside the core conservation area. The high density of predators here is definitely a direct result of this conservation model and that makes this a priority area for The Wild Source to promote. You may visit a Maasai community from this camp as well and the camp staff and guides are local Maasai. A huge advantage of being outside the Reserve in a private area is a much fuller range of activities are possible, including night drives and walks that cannot be done when staying inside the Reserve. Game drives are in open sided 4x4 Landcruisers and off
road driving is allowed ensuring increased manoeuvrability for better game viewing and photography, as well as a more intimate experience. Cultural visits to a nearby Masaai village ( Enkang as it is locally known) are a highlight. Night drives provide a fantastic opportunity to see the lesser-known nocturnal mammals, including the smaller cats, caracals and servals. After dark the predators typically become active and often with patience lion and hyena hunts and kills may be observed.
Offbeat Mara Camp is a six tent semi-permanent camp. Each tent has its own en-suite bathroom with hot bucket showers, wash basins and flush loos. The spacious tents are all furnished with large, hand made cedar beds, 24 hour solar lighting and the finest linen. Informal dining is hosted in the mess tent or around the campfire. Delicious English breakfasts, lighter lunches and three course dinners are served each evening. Guests can also relax in the bar and living room tent, which is furnished with comfortable sofas, a writing desk, and library and fully stocked bar.
Serengeti-Mara Camp, Lamai Wedge, Northern Serengeti 7 Nights The most beautiful and remote area of the Serengeti is the far North where only a few seasonal camps operate and thus vehicle traffic is very light and you can drive offroad here. Typically around mid-july the great migration will be entering into this area and the first crossings of the Mara River might begin. Depending on weather, the herds actually spend a good deal of time crossing the Mara back and forth in search of the best grazing. It's an impressive sight to see thousands of animals plunging into fast flowing water and braving some very large crocodiles in the process. Actually finding a crossing takes some patience as a herd may look as though they're about to cross, only to decide to head off the other way. This is also known as big cat country with excellent densities lion, cheetah, and leopard. A stunning region of kopjes, open plains, sporadic woodland and riverine vegetation, this part of the Serengeti is very similar and absolutely contiguous with Kenya's Masai Mara found a few kilometres to the North. The area retains a frontier like feel whilst offering a wonderful varied game experience throughout the year. In many ways it is like visiting the Masai Mara without the heavy traffic congestion, discovering how the Masai Mara must have been 40 years ago.
The Lamai Wedge is the portion of the Serengeti north of the Mara River up to the border with Kenya s Masai Mara. Here lies an enormous swath of short grass plains that teems with animals and supports large numbers of the great migration herds. Amazingly this magical slice of Africa has just one camp: Serengeti Mara.
Serengeti Mara provides an exclusive mobile camp experience - quiet, beautiful, remote. Nowhere else in the Serengeti/Mara Ecosystem can you be in such a prime location and have it all to yourself. This is particularly advantageous to seek out the herds crossing the Mara River with a real chance that you could be the only ones there to witness one of nature s most dramatic spectacles. In addition to exclusivity and offroading photographers also have the advantage of using the only truly open vehicles that I ve seen in the Serengeti those that have the windshield down in addition to the open sides providing the ideal game viewing and photo vehicle. Serengeti Mara is a small, discreet, classic luxury mobile camp that operates in a socially and environmentally responsible way, placing a minimal human footprint. It is their vision to see African natural environments protected and local communities develop through good stewardship and revenues generated by responsible tourism. Serengeti Mara offers just six double large walk-in tents, with en suite toilets and showers. The ultimate luxury camping experience.
KIA Lodge Dayroom With most international flights departing Kilimanjaro International Airport in the late evening nowhere is more convenient to have a day room than the comfortable The KIA Lodge, just a three minute drive from Kilimanjaro International Airport and reachable by a complimentary shuttle. Set in the midst of wonderful scenery KIA Lodge has 40 en-suite air conditioned rooms. Designed to complement the setting, each cottage is built in traditional style using thatch and Tanzanian arts and crafts, such as Tinga tinga paintings and Makunde carvings, giving it a distinctly African feeling. The swimming pool area located on top of a hill affords a breathtaking 360 panoramic view of Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Meru, the Maasai steppe and onwards to the Blue mountains. A wonderful setting for your last view of Tanzania while you relax, re-organize, and dine before your long flight home.