After many happy visits, we’re dropping Kenya from our Africa itinerary. I’ve sung the praises of the Mara and the crossing, Amboseli and the Ol Donyo lodge, and we have many fond memories of Kenya overall, but we’ve been confronting some issues from the first, and it’s time to move on. I want to outline our thinking here for the benefit of other senior travelers.
Our first point is that it’s difficult under the best circumstances to do an Africa trip that involves multiple countries. The way that safari camps work is that you typically try to arrive mid-day and catch the afternoon safari, then leave after the morning safari on your day of departure. When you’re changing countries between camps, there are fewer flights you can catch and you often find that you’ll end up missing some of one or both your “arrival-day” and “departure-day” safaris. Since you pay a lot for these camps, that’s not a good thing.
Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda are all places we’ve visited, but all of them are unusually difficult to link in with the rest of an African trip. Kenya in particular is a problem because almost every flight to every safari camp has to originate and terminate in Nairobi. If you want to do a camp in southern Kenya, literally in sight of the border with Tanzania, you have to fly back to Nairobi then fly on to a Tanzania destination. Because of flight schedules, you’ll probably end up having to stay overnight near the airport in Nairobi and again in Tanzania. Even flying from South Africa to Kenya means you have to stay a night in Nairobi, then fly on to the camps.
The flights to the camps are another issue. The Safarilink airline that serves most camps is among the most restrictive on weight of any airline we’ve ever flown anywhere. We’ve had to leave material in a locker in the airport to pick up on our return, when we had a camera bag and a duffle each. I couldn’t take two cameras, always a smart move in case one breaks, because the second would put me over the weight limit.
The next problem is that because of the transportation issues, you almost have to do Kenya either at the end of an Africa trip or at the beginning, because you lose time and add intermediate hotel stays if you try to fit it into the middle. That means, for people like us who like to fly SAA from New York to Johannesburg, you end up stringing a 15-hour and five-hour flight together. For my wife, who has some joint issues, that combination leaves her hurting for days.
The final problem is the visa process. Kenya uses an online e-visa program, and we applied one year and got our visas, and took the documents with us. Thinking that was all we needed, we went to the immigration desk and handed them in, and were told we needed to go to the tables and fill out another card. We left the visas with the agent, filled out the cards, and returned. Nobody else was in line, we went to the same agent, and he claimed we had not given him the visas. If I’d not kept an electronic copy on my phone, we’d have had to buy another visa.
Another time, we applied about three months prior to the trip, and my wife got her clearance very quickly. I heard nothing on mine, and I was unable to contact anyone using any of the email addresses or phone numbers available. Time was passing and we would have had to cancel the Kenya portion of the trip, when finally my calls to the Kenyan Embassy in Washington paid off and my visa came through.
So, we’ve decided to focus on travel elsewhere in southern Africa…and with two cameras!