The Great Herds of Kenya & Tanzania

En route to Kenya and its capital city, Nairobi.

We arrive in Nairobi and Hemingways, a quietly ravishing haven for lovers of old-style panache mixed with modern amenities and great cuisine, wonderfully set in the lush suburb of Karen.

During our time in Nairobi and environs, we’ll commune with the endangered, but quite friendly Rothschild giraffes at the Giraffe Centre and visit Karen Blixen’s home, now a museum. We’ll lunch at one Nairobi’s cosmopolitan restaurants, and visit Micato-AmericaShare’s Harambee Centre.

And now we fly to the game lands of the Maasai Mara. The Mara and the Serengeti, magic names synonymous with African safari, are the northern and southern regions of a naturally defined ecosystem more than twice the size of Jamaica. Here in the north, the landscapes are greener than in the south, thanks largely to somewhat more seasonal rain. Wildlife teems and thrives in the Mara, and the Big Five rule their respective roosts with regal aplomb. Our camp is Sir Richard Branson’s Mahali Mzuri, situated on one of the Mara’s major migration routes. The camp’s uniquely designed tents are a marvelous introduction to the modern luxuries and timeless excitements of safari life.

A short flight takes us south into Tanzania and the Serengeti. We once wrote rather controversially that the Serengeti’s skies make the Big Sky state of Montana’s skies look like Manhattan’s. But immense and extra-Montanan they are. Morning clouds so alive with sunlight that they’re almost too bright to look at directly. Soaring afternoon cumulus that seem to brush up against the stratosphere. And, of course, the animals, who, when we’re up close and personal with them, seem to be from some fabulous new planet. We’ll reside for a couple of nights at the superb Four Seasons Safari Lodge Serengeti, high on a bouldery ridge, basking in panoptic views of the prodigious, golden-hued plain.*

* As Beryl Markham wrote in her marvelous West with the Night, “In the season of drought the Serengeti Plains are as dry and tawny as the coats of the lion that prowl them, and during the rains they provide the benison of soft grass to all the animals in a child’s picture book. They are endless and they are empty, but they are as warm with life as the waters of a tropic sea.”

Another flight–with textbook views of the Great Rift (more on that in a moment)–brings us to two more natural marvels. We land near one of them, Lake Manyara, and drive to the tranquil Manor at Ngorongoro, set in a coffee estate on the gentle first slopes of the other marvel, the Ngorongoro Crater. In the afternoon, we can enjoy one of safari’s less-celebrated benefits–untroubled rest–or we can hop on one of the Manor’s accommodating horses, do some mountain biking, or take a dip in its lovely pool, followed by traditional afternoon tea and dinner in its private dining room or expansive wine cellar.

On Day 10, we’ll motor our way upslope to the Crater’s 7,900-foot rim, then down 2,000 feet into the halcyon, 100-square mile caldera, the remnant of a once-glaciated volcanic colossus that a planet-trembling blast decapitated millions of years ago. There are no giraffes among the Crater’s 25,000 or so animals; it’s said they’re too gangly to climb the caldera’s steep walls. But that doesn’t explain the presence of the far less nimble hippos who nonchalantly bubble in its pools. We’ll roam the Crater in the morning and afternoon, with a fine al fresco lunch at midday, then head back to the welcoming Manor.

Now, about Africa’s Great Rift, a 4,000-mile-long, ever-widening slash, a slowly dramatic splitting of two tectonic plates that in 50 million years or so will become an ocean. Its highest volcanoes–Kilimanjaro Mount Kenya, Ngorongoro, and others–will become islands, and its epic Rift Lakes–Tanganyika, Malawi, Victoria, and Turkana and many more–are, like Manyara, the first waters of that ocean. But for many, including Ernest Hemingway, the smaller Lake Manyara is the brightest gem of them all.

We’ll indulge in some relaxed (or active) time in the morning before setting out for the lake, where we’ll delight in its famous tree-climbing lions (who lounge on trees in a number of East African places, but Manyara’s seem to make a more satisfying habit of it). Flamingos in their thousands will be in brilliant pink evidence (we may remember the stunning scene of them wafting into the sky in Out of Africa). And after sundowners, we’ll return to the Manor, rich in marvels seen and experienced.

We fly back to Nairobi, where we’ll have full-amenity day rooms at the Four Points at the Nairobi Airport or the Norfolk, and after a quiet dinner, our Safari Director and staff will escort us to the airport for our late-evening flights home.

Connect with your flights home and sweetly dream, perhaps, about your next Micato safari.