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Sunday 2 October 2011

Maasai Mara Safari 2011 Day Zero

 I've just returned from my first (and hopefully not my last) trip to the Maasai Mara, brilliantly organised by C4 Images & Safaris and led by Isak Pretorius and C4's co-founder Shem Compion. While it's still fresh in my mind I thought I'd write up a trip report for posterity.

Friday, 23 September 2011
The trip started with a 4:30am wake-up to get to Cape Town International with David Burstein & his son, Aaron, in time for our 6:15 flight to Johannesburg. There we met up with Mark Dumbleton and the rest of the Gauteng contingent for our 11:15 flight to Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on Kenya Airways. Kenya's an hour ahead of us at GMT+3 so it was 3:15pm when we arrived after our 4 hour flight.

Disembarking from our Boeing 737
At the airport David & I popped in to the Safaricom shop to pick up local SIM cards. If you're not about to travel to Kenya or aren't interested in the state of Kenyan cellular phone coverage, you'll probably want to skip this paragraph. If you are, then it's worth noting that Kenya's cell coverage is great (we had good fast 3G data coverage pretty much everywhere in the Mara) and much cheaper than in South Africa. At the moment on-network (ie Safaricom to Safaricom) calls cost KSh 3 (25 SA cents) per minute. Off-net calls are KSh 4 per minute and calls back to South Africa are 18 Shillings (R1.47) per minute. Data is very cheap by SA standards, especially if convert some of your prepaid credit to a data bundle. I bought a 500MB bundle for KSh 499 (R40.75) but the per MB price drops as you buy bigger bundles. For 8GB and up, you're paying about half a shilling (4c) per MB. Alternatively you can get a week's uncapped data for KSh 1000 (R81.67) or 30 days' uncapped for KSh 3000 (R245). Note that the Safaricom shop didn't take credit cards, so you'll need Shillings or US Dollars to buy a local SIM card. Like most places in Kenya that accept dollars, you'll find that you get your change in Shillings, and the exchange rate won't be great. The Safaricom shop effectively have me KSh 1760 for my US$20 note, which should be worth around KSh 1995 at the current interbank rate, so if you're likely to spending lots of Shillings while you're in Kenya then you might want to shop around the bureaux de change at the airport to find the best rate and convert your dollars or Rands there. I noticed one of them buying Rands at KSh 9 / ZAR, but that's even worse than Safaricom's US$ rate, since the interbank rate is currently 12.2 KSh / ZAR.

David & Mark en route to Nairobi, before we hit heavy traffic
From the airport we were transferred to our hotel in two matatus or mini-bus taxis. This was our first introduction to the chaos & congestion that passes for traffic in Nairobi. At rush hour the main arteries into and out of Nairobi are close to gridlocked, and you find yourself sitting for ages. When traffic does flow drivers think nothing of veering off road to create impromptu extra lanes, and negotiating intersections frequently seems to require forcibly pushing in front of other vehicles to make your turn. The biggest and presumably most important intersections and traffic circles seem to be manned, at least at rush hour, by a traffic cop at each entrance to the intersection. A couple of intersections have traffic lights, but I saw very little correlation between the colour of the lights and the movement of the traffic! In summary, Nairobi traffic is a bit of a nightmare, so it's best to make sure you have a reliable driver and plenty of time if you need to get anywhere on time.

Traffic approaching Nairobi city centre
We got to the Serena Hotel around 5:45pm and after checking in had about an hour to kill before we met for dinner at 7pm.  The Serena is one of Nairobi's top hotels and their dinner buffet was loaded with heaps of great food including pretty good sushi, prawns & lobsters in various forms, roast beef & yorkshire pud that wasn't all dry and boring like so many buffet carveries.  Dinner was also where I drank my first real Tusker, the beer that was to become the taste of Kenya for me.  Technically, I'd already had a Tusker on the flight up, but coming in a can and served in a plastic airline cup it just wasn't the same as the ice cold 500ml bottles of Tusker at the Serena and, later, in the Mara.  Truth be told, Tusker's not outstanding when put up against international competition, but in Kenya, and especially in the bush it's an iconic thirst quencher that can't be beaten.

Camel in the Serena hotel lobby
After dinner there was time to get the local SIM cards activated and tested, and to Skype home using the hotel's free wifi before hitting the sack at a respectable hour.

Ready for more? Next up: Day One.
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