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Irene

Kenya & Zanzibar in 12 days

Updated: Mar 7, 2021


Best time to go: June to September. During these months it's considered to be the dry season (their winter) but the temperatures are very mild, and definitely not a European winter. Early in the morning and at night you definitely need a fairly warm jacket but during the day it can get quite warm. In summary it was a wonderful temperature that lets you sleep during the night and enjoy the day. There are less mosquitos during the dry season so that is a plus.

What to wear: layers, layers and more layers as the weather changes throughout the day. Comfy and fresh clothes like linen are recommended. Also light colours for the safari as these distract the animals less.

General advice: this trip has to be booked through an agency as it's complicated and almost impossible to organise it on your own. Anyhow you can suggest the itinerary that you want to follow and the hotels that you want to stay at. For the safari car you always have 2 options, share the vehicle or have one for yourself which is obviously more expensive.

Day 1: Aberdare National Park

We arrived to Nairobi in the morning and our driver picked us up to go to our first national park, which was a 3.5 hour drive from Nairobi. That day we arrived at the hotel and just enjoyed a walk around the hotel surroundings and observed the wildlife near by the hotel lake, after the long trip.


Hotel: "The Ark Lodge". Incredible hotel in the middle of the nature where the elephants come to the lake to drink water next to the hotel. The hotel has an observatory deck where you can see them. Rooms are quite small but comfortable.




Day2: Lake Nakuru

We started the day driving (3.5 hours) to lake Nakuru for a safari. Lake Nakuru is a beautiful place where you can see rhinos and flamingos. Seeing rhinos is very difficult as there are not many left in the world but we were lucky and had the opportunity to see them. Also we were allowed to leave the jeep to take wonderful pictures at the lake with the flamingos. At the same time we could see giraffes, zebras and gazelles.

Afterwards, we drove (2 hours) to Lake Naivasha where we spent the night.


Hotel: "Lake Naivasha Sopa Lodge". Incredible surroundings in front of Naivasha Lake. The animals where everywhere around the hotel! The hypos during the night leave the lake to eat de hotel's grass! It is unreal! It was quite amazing to leave your room and find a giraffe standing outside your room!





Day 3: Lake Naivasha National Park

We woke up very early to do one of my favourite activities of the trip. A boat safari at Lake Naivasha. It was incredible it was super early in the morning and the lake was super quiet and we could see hippos, zebras, buffalos, antelopes from the boat…

After the boat trip we were on our way to Masai Mara. This is a very long journey, around 6 hours by car. We realised later that other tourist use light aircrafts to get to Masai Mara, so this could be a good option too.


Hotel: "Olare Mara Kempinski". This hotel has luxury and very spacious tents with panoramic views of the savannah. Beautiful!





Day 4: Masai Mara

The full day was dedicated to doing safari in Masai Mara and I must say this is a one life time experience. You literally feel like you're in the middle of nowhere and we had the chance to see every single animal that we were expecting to see! Lions, elephants, giraffes, ostriches, leopards, wildebeest, zebras… everything! And we had a proper picnic lunch in the savannah as well.


I must say that it is important to carefully check the month when you are planning to go in advance. We chose August. In July and August the animals (in particular wildebeests) cross from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Masai Mara in Kenya so we were basically at the right place at the right time!


Hotel: "Olare Mara Kempinski".




Day 5: Masai Mara

We spent the morning in Masai Mara doing the last safari of the trip and around lunch time we head back to Nairobi.

I must say that, for us, 5 days of safari was enough, it was incredible and we really loved it but it's quite exhausting as well. You have to wake up every day around 6 am and spend the day in the Jeep on extremely bumpy roads that kill your back. Also in 5 days we saw literally everything so in our opinion it was sufficient.


That night in Nairobi we went to one of the most touristic restaurants called "The carnivore restaurant" were you can try all type of meats. The restaurant was ok but we didn’t feel that it was really authentic.


Hotel: "Hilton Nairobi".


Day 6 to 10: Zanzibar

We flew in the morning to this beautiful Tanzanian island that is less than 2 hours flight from Nairobi. We stayed there 4 more nights, relaxing on the beach.


Hotel: "Melia Zanzibar". The hotel was beautiful and the rooms were just amazing. The food was great as well. The only minor inconvenience was that the beach had seaweeds as all the beaches on the east coast of the island, despite of this, I would definitely come back to this hotel.





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