Friday 2 October'26 - Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe)/Nairobi (Kenya)
[the 3rd is further down this page]
Today was a lazy day, given the transfer for our flight to Nairobi was 1400. After checking out, we sat around the pool bar where we had a pleasant little surprise. A family of mongooses came out to play on the grass. Nice way to finish our stay in Zimbabwe. The people are friendly and helpful and I would definitely come back as there are many sites we didn't get to see. Our Kenya Airlines flight was actually 10 minutes early in leaving and then 2hr45m's later, we were in Nairobi. Kenya. The airport is huge and after clearing Immigration and Customs, we were greeted by Felix from Predator Tours, our hosts for the next 12 days. He took control of our luggage and led us to our driver/guide, Michael. We were then driven our accommodation for the night (Eka Hotel), where we discovered we were the only 3 on the safari. After checking in, it was straight to bed as it was now 2315 local time and we have a 0800 departure tomorrow...
Saturday 3 October'26 - Nairobi/Lake Naivasha (Kenya)
As he left us at the hotel last night, Felix asked us to be ready to go by 0800. That meant just after 0630 for breakfast before closing the bags and heading down to Reception. Right on time, he appeared and proceeded to explain our itinerary for the day and what to expect. The one thing that impressed me was the way he was always ensuring we understood what we were being told. We then headed to our "home way from home" for the next 12 days and was greeted by Michael, our guide for the 1st part of our travels through Kenya. 1st on the agenda was a brief drive through Nairobi (a city of 5 million people), with Felix acting as the tour guide. We were shown the usual important buildings and areas within the city proper and even though it was just after 0830 on Saturday morning, the traffic was unbelievable. I commented that it was so busy but both Felix & Michael quickly responded saying it was so much busy on weekdays... After about an hour, we started to head towards the outskirts and it was here that Felix left us. No pictures of the city itself because in reality, as it was just like any other big metropolis. However, once we started to get out a little it was rather interesting. We passed a local shopping mall, then the local poultry store before passing a sheep transporter.
buildings for a great lunch. We then had a little down time before heading off on a boat cruise of the lake. Lots of pelicans and an eagle grabbed a fish out of the lake, the captain had thrown in. We then came across a "bloat" of hippos (the collective noun for them...) as well as few that were still happy to be in the water. Amazingly, the locals are "happy" to fish a long way from shore despite the presence of the hippos. There is an island in the lake that was used to film Out of Africa. For the film, they had to move some animals off the mainland for "authenticity" as they weren't there before but never removed them after and some giraffes that live on an island, were merrily feeding as we passed. A most enjoyable hour. After that, we headed to the lakeshore to check out the Flamingo flock and as luck would have it, on our way back to the hotel, we stumbled on a white rhino in the decreasing light. The it was on to pre-dinner drinks, dinner and then into bed...
African Safari - 2026
Nairobi is 1100m above sea level but to get to Lake Naivasha , we needed to climb to 23,000m before we started to head down into the volcanic basin, which provides the basis of the lake. After about 1.5 hours driving, we pulled into a curio shop for a comfort stop. There were so many great carvings but alas, luggage limitations, negated any spending spree... The city of Naivasha has a population of just on 350,000 and the major industry is flower growing, with huge numbers of very big green houses scattered throughout the area. They actually work 24/7, with 3 eight hour shifts and the night time work is planting, pollination by hand and pruning. There are 6 companies in total and employ so many people, they have staff buses to ensure the workers can get to and from work each day. Our destination was Lake Naivasha, right on the edge of the lake. The hotel is fantastic with spacious rooms and the view from the room; WOW!!!
When being taken to our rooms, the next surprise of the holiday unfolded. the pathway to the rooms was through a "forest" of amazing plants and once through we were greeted with zebras, waterbucks, monkeys and giraffes. They were literally on the doorstep. Again, WOW!!! So after unpacking back up to main
