OUR AFRICAN SAFARI

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INTRODUCTION TO
From London to Kenya in 2002

LONDON       NAIROBI AT LAST        SAMBURU        MOUNTAIN LODGE

LAKE NAKURU      MASAI MARA      RETURN TO NAIROBI

        The Safari we took lasted seven days, in the beginning of 2002, most of which were exhaustively driven on rough roads, across rocky pathways to find the animals. Even the normal roads were bumpy experiences.
Taking photographs under these conditions is difficult at best, and we ended up with some 4500 of them, with a huge number (almost 3000) offered up on this CD.
        Many pictures were shot out the window of the moving Safari Van; snapped almost blindly. We wanted to capture the visual images of Kenya's landscape.  During the safari drives themselves, the driver would stop when animals were in view, sometimes right next to them. They totally ignored the vans. But we were warned that if a human being stepped out of a van the animals would be quite dangerous.
        These pages display small versions of the pictures, called thumbnails, which need to be clicked on to view them full size.  I have managed to keep all written comments to a minimum.  There are many minor and even slightly out of focus pictures; but they gave some information that seemed valid.  Just click on the thumbnails which seem most interesting to you.  Some will surprise you; some will be ho-hum; can't be helped.  But the totality, hopefully, offers up an exhaustive photo essay of the Safari the Somak Tours offered us.

        The safari road was a rough rocky-road for the most part.  But our beginnings were in Los Angeles, a delayed flight to London by some 6 hours. Luckily we discovered this before being taken to LAX by Roadrunner.  We simply had to wait at home those extra hours – hours lost in London [instead of having an extra afternoon to see the town we arrived in the early evening – after dark].
        The two night stay in London gave us just enough time to catch up on the “jet lag” and to see a little of the surrounding town, including Hyde Park, just a few blocks from our hotel, The Regency.
        The flight to Kenya started around 7PM and we arrived in Nairobi in the early morning after some 8 hours flight time.  That was just the beginning!  We had a day in the town, and could have taken a tour, but were too tired to consider such luxury.   [On our return, at the end of our stay, we never got around to seeing the city on foot, merely settling for a drive-through under the guidance of our driver.]  Instead we relaxed and enjoyed.
        Considering what was to follow it was a good thing, too.  We'd need all the rest we could manage.
        The next days were for the most part traveling on rocky roads.  Other than the main super “freeway” the roads were, at best, pot-holed, with edges like jagged teeth, "painted" over rocky ground.  Once inside the different parks we were on naked dirt roads, which meant being jumped and juggled every minute of driving.  Out driver Peter was the only other person in our tour “bus”; so we had a private guide during the next days.
        The tour included the following: Samburu [for two nights - after many hours of rapid driving through pot-holed roads], then Mountain Lodge, Lake Nakuru, and finally Masai Mara [for two nights]. Plus every day we’d be taken out on a “safari” drive to see the local animals, mornings and evenings for a couple (or more) hours at a time.  Barely any time left to relax and recover!
        The first night at Samburu we met a man named Alan Johnson who had a birthday celebration.  We had been invited to join him and his nephew.  Another couple joined us the next day; newly-weds from Scotland.  These four became our eating companions during the safari week. The trip ended on Brigitte’s birthday, and in the morning we took a balloon flight, and in the evening had a celebration at dinner.  
        Our return flights started with an 5AM wakeup, a long 8 hour drive through rough roads to Nairobi where we waited at the Somak building until 7, then taken to the airport where we waited until 11 for our 8 hour flight to London. Once in England we had to wait around 5 hours for our 12 hour flight to LAX.  To say it simply: this was one double flight we would never want to make again. A real killer on top of the days on the Safari.  But it was all worth it as can be seen in the following pages.