Safari in Amboseli National Park

I had booked my flights to Kenya and Tanzania long before I met Dave, but after being together only 6 weeks I was destined to fly to Nairobi for 10 days over New Years. I invited him to come with me, and amazingly, he said yes! So this ended up being our first holiday together.

We flew into Nairobi, Kenya and were to fly out of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. I had a list of places I wanted to visit, and managed to stitch together some safari tours before leaving the UK.

The first place I really wanted to visit was Amboseli National Park, which is in Kenya, but on the border with Tanzania and under the shadow of mount Kilimanjaro. This park is also home to the famous big-tusker elephants. It was an amazing place to start an 8-day safari adventure!

We landed in the evening in Nairobi, and after a ridiculous queue and wait to get through immigration (omg it was chaos), we finally checked into our hotel after midnight. We were picked up early the next morning by Olengugih Safari for the transfer to Amboseli. I had booked a shared safari trip to save some money, but we seemed to be the only ones here, so it ended up being a private car the whole time! Winner!

A few hours later we arrived at a beautiful lodge and were treated to a tasty lunch…

After a quick freshen up after lunch, we went out into the national park for the afternoon until sunset. It was amazing and we saw elephants, baboons, lions (at dusk), buffalo, hyena and loads of birds. And right at the end, when we were leaving the park, we saw giraffes too!

Unfortunately, what we didn’t really see was Kilimanjaro, as it was covered in cloud…

It was new years eve that night, but we were seemingly the only people staying in our guesthouse, and the staff seemed put out about us being there, they were not very nice to us at all actually, we just always felt a burden to them. Even asking for a water (which we paid for) mostly got us a “tut” and sigh to go and get one. So nothing happened on new years eve, the kitchen area closed at 9pm, we weren’t even offered drinks lol (which again, we would have gladly paid for), and we were in bed by 10:30pm lol. Rock and roll!!

But it was OK as we were up early the next day and in the park when it opened. The sky was a little clearer today and we could see the peak of Kilimanjaro above the clouds, but there was still a lot of it hidden. Today we saw almost everything again, with the addition of a cheetah (although I didn’t manage to take a good photo as it was hiding well, quite far away). We had lunch in the park at a great view point on the top of a hill.

After lunch we continued and saw zebra, many more elephants, there were so many in the park, and HUUUUUGE tusks!! And then we saw nacreous clouds on the way out of the park at dusk, which Dave told me are common in northern latitudes but not usually on the equator, so it was pretty cool to see. What a great way to spend the first day of a new year!

We left the park and went back for our evening meal, which seemed fine, but then later that night about 3am both Dave and I woke up feeling terrible. I rushed to the toilet and was violently sick. From this point on, neither of us felt well at all. Especially Dave, who didn’t vomit this first night, we think this might have made it worse. Symptoms actually continued long after we got home from the trip, and in the end after a few doctors appointments and a course of antibiotics for both of us, it was diagnosed as Campylobactor, which is quite a nasty bug you can get from infected water and uncooked foods. Suffice to say, from day 1 our whole trip was pretty much ruined because of it. We tried to make the most of the rest of our days, but as you’ll read in our next few posts, it did hinder us a little.

So unfortunately, being up all night ill, we didn’t end up going to the park on the final day. The plan was to go out for dawn then come back to check out, have lunch and then take the journey to the border where we were going to be dropped to cross on foot into Tanzania. Then, hopefully, the next safari company would pick us up for transfer to Arusha.

So in the end, we cancelled the final safari drive, and just set off straight for the border. The fastest way to the border would have been to drive through the park, but for some unknown reason (we asked several times and were just given some wishy washy reasons, which were different each time…) we took a different and much longer route which didn’t take us through the park.

So after a long drive, feeling very ill and highly dosed-up on Immodiums, we finally made it to the Kenya/Tanzania border. Crossing was relatively easy. But we had the anxiety of whether we’d get picked up on the other side or not. I arranged it from home, for the Kenya safari to drop me here, and the Tanzania safari to pick me up from it. It only cost about $60 extra to do this, so it was well worth it.

But we didn’t need to worry, as when we came out of the border building into Tanzania, we were immediately greeted by a representative from the next safari company. Everything seemed to be going as planned… Or was it…??