[Kenya] Travel Tips

If you are looking to book a safari tour in Kenya, I highly recommend Explorers Wild Adventures. I discovered them when I did a search for Maasai Mara safaris. I saw that they had many different safari options in Kenya so I checked their online ratings and I saw that they were rated 5 on Safari Bookings and 4.5 on Tripadvisor. I decided to reach out to them and very soon after that, I booked our safari tour with them.

Mara River in Maasai Mara

There are so many things to love about Explorers Wild Adventures. First, it was really easy to communicate with them. Their website includes an email address and an option to contact them via whatsapp number. I started communicating with them via email but as I started to have more questions, I switched to whatsapp so that we would have longer and more real-time chat conversations.

View of Lake Elementaita from Sentrim Elementaita Lodge

They were also pretty flexible with our itinerary, making adjustments either at our request or for our benefit. One of the things I loved the most was that we often stayed out on our game drives longer than planned, sometimes even up to an hour later, which maximized our experience and allowed us to see more animals. For instance, we would have missed seeing the rare and striped hyena in Samburu if we didn't stay out as late as we did. Also, towards the end of our safari, we were getting really tired and it was becoming a challenge heading out at the break of dawn each day so we would request our guide Zachary for a later start and he would agree.

Early morning game drive in Samburu

Also, I made a mistake by applying for our electronic Travel Authorisations (eTA) to Kenya quite late. I reached out to Johann, the person I communicated with (and I think the owner of the company) to ask if we had options to reschedule our trip in case our eTAs weren't approved on time. He told me he could work with the eTA approvers to try and expedite our applications so I gave him our reference numbers. Very soon after I did, I started receiving eTa approval notifications in my email. That was such a huge sigh of relief for me and I was amazed at how Johann was able to get this done for us so quickly and effectively.

Vulturine Guineafowl in Samburu

Finally, I have to give massive props to, and thank, our guide and driver Zachary who was truly awesome. I was continually in awe at how he managed to spot animals that were camouflaged in the trees or behind tall grass or bushes while he was driving. I also have no idea how he knew how to find his way around the game reserves, driving along unmarked and winding paths in search of wildlife without the benefit of GPS and never getting lost. He knew a lot about the animals we saw and he would tell us their names and share information about them. I also felt that he genuinely wanted us to have a great safari adventure and see as many animals as we could.

Photo op with our jeep in Maasai Mara

It was really easy dealing with Explorers Wild Adventures and their packages are relatively affordable compared to some of the other ones I saw. They offer a variety of tours that have different durations and include different game reserves, which means there is bound to be an option that is right for you. They really made sure we had an incredible adventure and I highly recommend them!

Explorers Wild Adventures
https://explorerswild.com/
https://www.facebook.com/explorerswildadventures
Whatsapp: +254 20 7869 663
Email: bookings@explorerswild.com or info@explorerswild.com

Mara River

Kenya doesn't require visas for Filipinos. They do, however, require an electronic travel authorisation, or eTA. You can apply for one here: https://www.etakenya.go.ke/en. Important: the website indicates that eTA application normally takes at least 3 business days to be processed but it may take longer so it is best to apply for this at least a week before your flight.

Mt. Kenya

My family and I also got yellow fever vaccines from the Bureau of Quarantine (BOQ). You need to book your slots and pay in advance through their website https://icv.boq.ph/. This was a bit of a challenge because the website can be slow and not very responsive. The website also works much better on Google Chrome than on Mozilla Firefox so I suggest using Chrome. How to schedule your vaccination:

Step 1 - Create an account
Step 2 - Log in to your account
Step 3 - Click on the services button at the top of the page, click on the vaccination services, and then click on the Yellow Fever option (it indicates the price of the vaccine as well)
Step 4 - Select your location. You will need to select the larger location first (NCR, Luzon, Visayas, or Mindanao) then you have to select the specific BOQ site in which you would like to get vaccinated. Note: when I scheduled our vaccinations, only three of the BOQ sites in NCR offered yellow fever vaccines - the Manila Main Office, SM MOA, and SM North Edsa. We selected SM North Edsa (it is actually in the SM Annex building).
Step 6 - You will then need to make your payment through the website. I think you can pay either via credit card or Gcash (I can't recall if there are other payment options)

A female ostrich and some gazelles

Also, they only offer a maximum number of vaccinations per day. If not enough people schedule an appointment on that same day, your vaccination may need to be rescheduled. I do think that the probability that not enough people schedule appointments on a certain day is low though because slots are hard to come by. In fact, available slots were so tough to book that I was already looking at the option to go to Clark and get vaccinated there. Thankfully, on one Friday afternoon, I saw slots for the following Monday open up, although by the time I did, there were only a few left. Thankfully, we were able to set up appointments just in the nick of time!

 View of Samburu from the main entrance

If your safari tour doesn't includes an option to add a boat safari and nature walk in Lake Naivasha and/or the Maasai Culture Village experience and you still have a budget for it, I strongly suggest that you include these in your trip, even if it costs more. These options added a different dimension to our Kenyan safari experience and provided even more memorable moments. Our tour actually also provided the option for a balloon ride over Maasai Mara and while I thought that it would have been an incredible experience, it was way too expensive, especially for an entire family. If you do have enough funds for it, you may want to take that as well.

Lake Naivasha

The big question: considering how exhausting our trip was and how the travel times between game reserves was anywhere between 5-7 hours, if I had to do it again, would I do a Samburu-Lake Nakuru-Maasai Mara safari or would I just stick to one place, like Maasai Mara? I would probably do just one place, Maasai Mara, because the trip we took meant we spent so much time on the road which could otherwise have been spent in a game reserve. It's also really exhausting to move hotels and game reserves multiple times. That said, it was a bit of a blessing in disguise that I didn't know that Maasai Mara, Samburu, and Lake Nakuru are pretty far from each other because if I did, I may have chosen not to book this tour. In the end, we got to see three different reserves, all with different landscapes. We also got to see animals in each place that we didn't seen in the other places, giving us a richer and fuller safari experience.

The watering hole next to Samburu Sopa Lodge at night

 Next: Final Thoughts