Join SuperLiving guest travel writer Ron Berryman on his incredible east African adventure, as he journeys through Kenya and gets up close and personal with both the two and four-legged locals.

The African continent is similar to Australia in many ways. It has the extremes of temperature and the vast open spaces so familiar to us. Having been to Africa previously on business, I was looking forward to a holiday there and the opportunity to visit game reserves, see some of the cities, meet the people and travel the countryside.

Our safari was organised by touring company Global Gypsies and was confined to a tidy group of about 20 travellers. We flew Emirates to and from Nairobi, Kenya, via Dubai, although some of the group left earlier to take in a side trip to Victoria Falls and others took the opportunity to stay a few days for some “hot” shopping in Dubai.

Being August, a stay in the United Arab Emirates coincided with the hottest weather and Ramadan, but some shoppers can’t be deterred by anything.

But on to Kenya. Our first night was spent in Nairobi before setting off for the Samburu National Reserve early on the second day in three safari vehicles, travelling about 350 kilometres through some of the country’s richest coffee plantation, crossing the equator near Nanyuki and into the Samburu Serena Lodge alongside the Uaso Nyiro River.

Unfortunately, the river wasn’t flowing due to drought in the area, but there was an abundance of baboons and monkeys pleased with this outcome as they could cross the sandy riverbed to the lodge grounds and look for any morsels whenever they liked.

That afternoon we took our first game drive and received the first hint of what was going to be a very eventful two weeks. We had seen a small herd of elephants on our way into the reserve, but our drive that afternoon introduced us to a range of animals, as we saw Grevy’s zebra, Thomson’s gazelle, the tiny Damara dik-dik, warthogs, water buck, oryx, the reticulated giraffe, impala, gerenuk, Cape buffalo and a pride of lions lazing in the sun after dining on the carcass of a buffalo nearby.

The types of antelope vary from region to region, although the water buck and Thomson’s gazelle were fairly common, with the gazelle a favoured dish for leopards and the Cape buffalo a prime target for lion prides due to the lack of water, which forces the animals onto dry ground.

The following day started somewhat sadly with the discovery of a young elephant that had died, but lay untouched by predators, scavengers or the many birds which forage on carcasses, indicating it may have died of a disease.

But the day soon changed from sadness to excitement with the news that there was a leopard in the vicinity, our guide alerted by a sudden flurry of birds taking off from bushland for the safety of clearer territory.

Parked on a track scanning the bushes for said animal, I was politely informed that the leopard was no longer in the bushes, but was in fact walking directly behind us. It sauntered casually past the safari vehicle and started to wend its way up a rocky hillside, nonchalantly marking its territory as it went and paying no attention to the tourists or the vehicle.

We soon found out that the animals in all the safari reserves we visited paid little or no attention to the vehicles or tourists that were there every day and were of no threat to them. As long as tourists obey the instructions to wear passively coloured clothing, don’t speak too loudly and keep their arms and bodies inside the confines of the vehicle, they cause a minimum of disturbance to animals or birdlife.

With safaris each morning at 8am and each afternoon at 4pm, we were kept fairly busy.

The morning safari, like most days, took us through neverending low scrub countryside that was home to a range of birdlife, antelopes, giraffes and elephants.

The afternoon session focused on a herd of elephant with calves including one newborn calf, only hours old and still wet from the birth, clinging uncertainly to its mother.

The afternoon was interrupted by the lion pride we had seen the previous day hunting a Cape buffalo near the riverbed. Today’s chase and kill was an amazing, but somewhat strange, experience causing a mix of emotions.

We were told the kill had been orchestrated by the pride lionesses to train three youngsters in the group. There was sufficient food from the previous kill, but they were keen to hone the skills of the half-grown females in the group.

The highlight of the day was seeing a cheetah in full flight chasing a dik-dik, which was fortunate enough – being tiny – to seek the refuge of one of the safari vehicles, causing the cheetah to call off the chase as the tiny antelope disappeared under the vehicle and out the other side.

The cheetah’s reaction was to look disdainfully at the vehicle, twitch its tail and saunter off into the grass to lie down under a tree with its back to the tourists.

Our next stop was Mt Kenya and the Serena Mountain Lodge in Aberdare Forest – a three-hour drive. This was Mau Mau country – for those who are familiar with the 1952-60 uprising against European settlers – which is home to an array of animals, including buffalo, baboons, elephants, leopards, servals, a range of antelope and badgers.

The unique characteristic of this lodge is that it is built on the side of a hill near Mt Kenya and over a large waterhole, which is floodlit at night with all guests’ rooms facing the waterhole.

If interested, you can sit all day and night watching the various animals take their turn to visit the waterhole, careful to avoid clashing with the predators’ timetable.

A forest walk was a very pleasant change to the schedule, although the accompanying guards with AK47 automatic weapons made the heart race a little. The trip ended with an afternoon tea sitting on logs in a clearing, with brandy as well as tea and an assortment of biscuits and cakes served by the lodge staff.

Our third lodge was at Lake Nakuru National Park, which we arrived at after another three-hour drive, this time through the magnificent Rift Valley, where European settlers established plantations in one of Africa’s richest food bowls.

We stayed at the Flamingo Hill tented safari camp and on our first safari trip went to Lake Nakuru to see the hundreds of thousands of flamingos in all their glory. For many, this was the highlight of the trip, watching the pink birds trawl through the shallows in a continual rotation, flying back to the start of the mass after reaching the end.

Staying in large tents, complete with en suite, was an enjoyable experience, but more enjoyable was the number of white rhino we saw, and even a confrontation between a giant male and two smaller rhinos over rights to a sand pit. No blood was spilt in the seemingly neverending Mexican standoff. You need endless patience to wait for a resolution, which I am told can take hours.

Other highlights included our only sighting of ostriches, but we were treated to all the bells and whistles, as the male went through a courting dance before mating and then stared at the safari vehicle and the voyeurs within.

The only hyena we saw on the trip was spotted on the outer edges of Lake Nakuru. They scavenge for dead flamingos, a range of birdlife and the inevitable baboon colonies.

From Lake Nakuru we drove back through the Rift Valley to stay the night at Nairobi, fitting in some sightseeing at the museum of Karen Blixen’s (Out of Africa) home.

The final safari leg of our holiday entailed a flight from Nairobi to the Masai Mara game park, the Kenya end of the animal migration to the Serengeti, where we stayed in the beautiful Keekorok Lodge, located alongside a waterhole in the centre of the vast Masai Mara plains.

Masai Mara capped off what proved to be an exceptional safari.

During our three days we saw a leopard kill – a poor old Thomson’s gazelle dragged into the seclusion of a tree fork for breakfast, lunch and dinner – numerous cheetahs, a black rhino, baby warthogs the size of rats, miles upon miles of zebra and wildebeest, and lions.

On a full-day safari we had lunch on an open plain watched by giraffes and zebras, which were fascinated by the beings that emerged from the vehicles and stared at us for what seemed an eternity. I thought we were supposed to be watching them.

We visited the Mara River, also affected by the lack of rain, and watched wildebeest make the world-renowned crossing, this time untroubled by the crocodiles, which were lazing in the sun on a sand bank further downstream.

Another high point was seeing the hippo colony ensconced in the waterhole at the lodge. We were told there were 22 babies in the group and I had the good fortune to watch three of them playing on the grass alongside the waterhole late one afternoon – without a camera.

We were often woken at night by the hippos grazing, and bellowing, outside our accommodation. On the final night, after attending an outdoor dinner behind the lodge complete with a performance by the local Masai warriors, we wandered back to our bungalow to be greeted by an armed guard.

He told us five lions had ventured onto the grass in front of the lodge earlier that evening before being asked to leave.

One of the notable features of our stay in the four lodges was the exceptional food. Many people had suggested to me before the trip that the food could be stodgy and unpalatable after a while. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

The food was outstanding, although I would pass on the lamb after an initial test, and was limitless.

We journeyed back to Nairobi and stayed another night in the city. We visited a shopping centre and had lunch before sightseeing and, later, dinner at the very popular tourist restaurant Carnivores, where they serve a range of native animals. Whatever turns you on.

The following day we flew to Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania for some R&R.

This has to be one of the most delightful stopovers I have ever enjoyed in the many world trips I have taken. We stayed in a hotel on the beach, toured a spice farm, sailed on a dhow around the harbour at Stone Town and explored the fascinating markets and narrow streets.

This exotic island with its Muslim, Indian and European influences, its distressing association with the slave trade and its beautiful beaches was a terrific climax to the tour. The architecture and the world-famous doors can only be described as a mixture of cultures, with an unmistakeable Arabian influence. A perfect way to end a truly amazing tour.

My wish to see African native animals in their natural environment, meet the local people and see the African countryside was more than fulfilled.

Where to find out more

For anyone interested in knowing more about this unique independent tour, visit Global Gypsies at www.globalgypsies.com.au .

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