Results tagged “Safari” from Intelligent Travel Blog

Senior editor Norie Quintos, just back from an African safari with her teenage sons, filed this report. Previous blogs in this series include taking care of paperwork, staying healthy, and packing.

Norie's teenage sons swim in the Ewaso N'giro River

Teenagers act as if they've seen it all, and in many ways they have--most have been subjected to a 24-hour, hundred-channel television loop; they have viewed every viral YouTube video that titillates, shocks, saddens, tickles, or pulls heartstrings; they've done everything from fly jets to race cars to shoot bad guys in hyper-real videogames; they've seen the wonders of nature in HD-clarity on Planet Earth DVDs.

And yet. Real life trumps virtual reality every single time. And our recent trip to Kenya blew them away like no Playstation, Xbox, Blu-Ray, Imax, surround sound, or new-tech substitute-reality invention ever could. Turns out the travel experience just can't be pixelated.

The trick to traveling with teens is to go beyond the visual and engage all their senses. (I worked with my outfitter, Micato Safaris, to plan such an itinerary.) Thus in the scrubland of Kenya's Laikipia Plateau, Sabuk Lodge was such a hit. Run by Kenyan Verity Williams (that Africans can be white was one preconception busted for the kids), the eight-room ecolodge offers every fun activity and more listed in the popular The Dangerous Book for Boys; in fact the book, as well as its counterpart volume for girls, is displayed prominently on the coffee table.

There's fishing with a stick, string, and bread-dough bait in the Ewaso N'giro River; jumping off boulders into same river; playing outdoor table-tennis with a red-robed Samburu; looking for game on foot and on camel; learning to read scat and animal tracks; and listening to Verity's fireside bush tales (she worked on movie sets, including Out of Africa and The Ghost and the Darkness). Who knows what more we could have done had we stayed for more than a night? While it's hard to say no to all the activity, the languorous lure of the lodge is strong, with its uniquely handcrafted local furniture, open-sided suites overlooking the river, hearty meals served family-style, and quiet library nook.

Want to know more about something in the magazine? Have a burning travel question that needs an answer? Just Ask IT! Today's question comes from a reader wanting to replicate our columnist's African safari -- on horseback.

Q: I read the article "Africa From the Saddle" by Boyd Matson, in the July/August issue of Traveler. How do I learn more about this trip?  -- Ramona

A: Micato Safaris arranged the trip for me. They are one of the best for custom Africa trips or package tours in east and southern Africa. Their main U.S. office is in New York City, and the couple who started the company and are still very active in the operation live in Kenya. Their son, Dan Pinto, is the main guy in New York who can arrange for the trips. Happy travels! -- Boyd Matson

Want more Africa advice? Check out our Africa Travel Planner for more resources on arranging your own safari.

Photo: Demetrio Carrasco/Jon Arnold Images Ltd/Alamy

It's less than a week until senior editor Norie Quintos's trip to Kenya with her teen sons. In this posting, the third in a series of blogs on her trip, she covers vaccinations/medicines. Find the first and second posts here.

The glossy catalogs filled with pages of majestic elephants, lions in mid-roar, or huggable baby cheetahs rarely, if ever, mention the vaccinations or medications you'll need for an African safari. The catalogs' job is to romance and seduce, and not until you have fallen hard for Africa do you receive the get-down-to-business, no-more-cute-animal-photos information packet with "optional, recommended" travel health precautions against the scary tropical diseases you could catch.

The list of vaccinations is daunting, and includes Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Meningitis, Typhoid, Rabies, and Yellow Fever. The vaccines are also eye-poppingly expensive and not generally covered by insurance. The good news is you may not need every single one; it depends on your specific itinerary, your length of stay, your planned activities, and your health. To suss this out, you'll need the help of an experienced travel clinician. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website details recommended vaccines and links to an external clearinghouse of travel clinics.

It's less than a month to senior editor Norie Quintos's trip to Kenya (her third) with her teenage sons (their first). Here's how she's been prepping. This is the second in a series of blogs on the trip. Click here to see the first.

Kenya currently remains under a U.S. State Department travel warning due to "threats of terrorism and the high rate of violent crime." (Many on-the-ground experts say this designation is unfair, undeserved, and politically motivated, but that's another story). I consulted the travel intelligence folks at iJet, who said that if I avoided the northwestern border areas, as all safari itineraries do, and practiced basic personal precautions, there was no reason to stay away. As with any trip to a developing country, or any trip really, I wanted a tour operator that would be able to respond effectively should the unexpected and unlikely happen. There are many established safari companies that fit the bill. The one I selected--New York-based Micato Safaris--maintains deep ties to Kenya; its Kenyan founders still reside in Nairobi. The company also uses the services of a group of aircraft-supported physicians if medical treatment is necessary.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

If you want to know the three most important factors that will likely determine the quality of your experience on an African safari, here they are:

1.    Skilled guides/trackers
2.    Location & time of year
3.    LUCK!

After spending almost two consecutive months touring the southern half of the continent, I actually feel pretty qualified on the subject.  And if you don't want to take my word for it, my wife and sons would be more than happy to offer their insights on African wildlife viewing, having now become quite knowledgeable in their own right.

We landed in Nairobi having notched about 30 game drives in our belts in the six weeks leading up to our arrival. Back when we finalized our plans for this trip, there was some legitimate concern that maybe we were overdoing it with all the back-to-back safaris and that fatigue might become an issue, particularly with the kids. No problem! As it turned out, we were probably even more jazzed about our upcoming final week in the bush then we were when this whole whirlwind began back in South Africa. Sure, a little R&R after two weeks of camping in Tanzania might have been nice, but we were booked on a Micato Safari, considered to be one of the finest tour operators and safari outfitters in the world, so there would be no downtime. Lucky us, indeed!

What also made this week so potentially exciting was the fact that we'd already spotted almost every possible mammal, bird, and reptile one could reasonably expect to find in this part of the world, so everything from here would be gravy. For us, all the natural beauty and drama we had already seen only increased our appetites and we were hungry for more, especially for the one thing that remained elusive: a kill. We watched cheetahs as they stalked gazelle in Tanzania, saw lions chasing zebra in Botswana, and tracked down wild dogs hunting impala in South Africa, but seeing a predator actually take down its prey had remained unseen. This was the challenge we presented to our guide shortly after he picked us up from the airport, an invitation he gladly accepted.

Friend of IT Tala Katner is traveling around Asia. After stops in the Himalayas and Kathmandu, she visited India's state of Rajasthan, and took a camel ride in the Thar Desert.

My number one recommendation after a tour of Rajasthan: spend one night under the stars in the desert dunes of western India. Less than an hour from the golden city of Jaisalmer, near the Pakistan border lays a little desert village called Khuri. Here, my Arabian Night fantasies came alive as a red-turbanned and blanket-clad camel driver took me to watch the sun set over the wind-rippled dunes from the back of the huge animal.
 
After watching the sunset, I took a two-hour camel ride back to the campfire and bungalow area. Rajasthani dances and live music with a traditional dinner provided entertainment for the night. Forced to join in with the women and dance, I was somewhat relieved when the performance was finished. Then as the sultry day turned into a bitter night we made our way to a secluded stretch of desert on camel-pulled carts to set up camp. The complete silence of the desert was interrupted only by the huffing of the camels.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Talk to anyone who's been on a safari, and you're sure to get a detailed commentary on their amazing animal sightings and hear vivid stories behind the hundreds of photos and hours of video they shot. If you have followed my recent postings (note: the peregrine falcon is the world fastest animal), I intentionally tried to stay away from too much narrative about the specific animals we've seen on our safaris and avoided drawing comparisons between our experiences in the different countries visited. That might change with this report, however, now that we've successfully completed the two-week camping portion of our two-month circuit around southern and eastern Africa.   

To put this in some context, our first game drives were in South Africa's Sabi Sabi ultra-deluxe private game reserve, where we were spoiled in the lap of luxury. From there, we went to three different 'semi-luxury' Kwando Camps in Botswana, staying in cabins with running water, solar power and plush beds. Although we were well protected, the grunting sounds of resident hippos and nearby roaring lions could be heard throughout the night, reminding us that we were now firmly in the wild. In Tanzania, our accommodations were definitely more in line with what most people envision a camping safari to be, with little protecting us from the wildlife of the African bush at night other than the lining of our tents.

We planned this latter portion of our trip with another family of four from Long Island who we go camping with every summer. When they found out we were breaking this tradition to go on an around-the-world trip, we figured this was the perfect opportunity to take our outdoor adventures to the next level, and booked a mobile safari in Tanzania.  We chose this spot because it was where the massive wildebeest migration would be this time of year and a mobile safari would be our best bet to find it.

We rendezvoused with our friends near the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro, where we met our guides/drivers Raymond and Onesmo from Wild Frontiers. They explained that our itinerary would take us to Tarangire National Park, Lake Manyara, Lake Eyasi, the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti over the course of the next twelve days, and we were raring to go.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids. This is the second of a three-part blog post. You can catch the first installment here.

Almost two weeks after saying our farewells to the Coates and Lorenz families in Zimbabwe, we found ourselves on the eve of joining up with some more friends from back home who had children around our sons' ages. We had just arrived in Tanzania after having completely immersed ourselves in African wildlife during our visits to Botswana and Namibia, so at this point, the boys were getting quite proficient in their knowledge of the bush and understanding of the animals found in it. Because this had become the center of their universes over the last few weeks, I was curious to see how they would carry on with their friends who were coming from a world of homework, organized sports and American Idol.   

It's certainly not difficult to get caught up with all the amazing wildlife found in southern and eastern Africa. For Tyler and Stefan, the bush became their classroom, the guides and trackers their teachers. And just like going to school, their days started early - 5 a.m. to be exact! Granted, all they had to do was get themselves out of bed and into a jeep, but still, it would be a full day of immersion in zoology, biology, geology, and photography - with a little bit of sociology and sex ed thrown in for good measure. That's right, because Stefan (age 9) kept hearing about (and in some cases witnessing) animals mating, I thought it was an opportune time for our father-son chat about the birds and the bees, which actually seemed to resonate in this environment. Now we just needed to come across some mating lions.

In addition to learning that lions mate about every fifteen minutes for two to three straight days, our designated ranger Charles, who guided us around Botswana's Linyanti swamps and Okavango Delta, kept the boys engaged during the eight or so hours we spent bouncing around in the jeep each day.  Because he knew we were home-schooling the boys for the year, we took full advantage and allowed him to substitute for us to his heart's content.  Besides just observing the likes of lion, cheetah, hyena, baboons and a plethora of other mammals, birds and reptiles, Charles taught us all how to recognize certain behaviors and what they meant. He also made it entertaining by injecting some fun facts like baby elephants having milk tusks which fall out when they are about one year old or that a group of zebra is called a "dazzle," while a herd of rhinos is referred to as a "crash."

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

What does going to a Grateful Dead concert and a safari game drive have in common? You never know what you are going to get and each one is different. This may seem like a strange analogy, especially to those who have not been to Africa or care very much about psychedelic rock music, but as someone who attended over 100 Dead shows and was about to embark on his fourth safari, it seems like a very fitting description.

Something else I can tell you about going on safari is that it's life-changing. That may sound a bit dramatic, but I can assure you that most people who have had the privilege of viewing wildlife in Africa would rank it among the greatest experiences of their lives. It certainly was for me and Carol, and for more reasons than one. We actually got engaged on our first game drive over 16 years ago during "sundowners" (I'll explain what those are in a moment). I was so overcome with what we had just seen (a leopard stalking an impala) and the magnificent beauty of the bush, that I proposed right then and there, with little care that our ranger and two other couples were there with us.  

The tanking international economy has led to a tourism downturn throughout the world, with the notable exception of Kenya, where safari operators are reporting brisk bookings following the November election of Barack Obama, whose father hailed from the town of Kogelo in the western part of the country.

"We've seen a 12 percent increase since November over the same period last year and our Web traffic is up 17 percent," says Dennis Pinto of Micato Safaris. "Given the prevailing economic conditions, we can only attribute this to the Obama factor." The Kenya Tourist Board also reports large increases in recent arrivals numbers.