2-f- -THE PLAIN DEALER SUNDAY JANUARY 26. 1986 Kenya sights: bikini, beasts By HORACE SUTTON NAIROBI, Kenya Last winter, friends asked me to list for them the best trips in the world. I came up with an assortment Bali, perhaps; New Guinea for adventure; Morocco for fascination, but, above all, Kenya. With that, the group came alive. "Kenya," they echoed, "we'll go." And much to my amazement, we did but only after considerable planning.
Late. April and early May is the rainy season. Many go on safari in the winter holidays, but summer is especially popular because it is the season of the migrations when the game follows the grass that has sprung up after the rains. Then the horizons turn gray with wildebeests and zebras, followed inevitably by predators who feed on them lions first, then hyenas, wild dogs and, for last licks, vultures. Of an assortment of tour operators, we chose Safariworld with its fleet of 70 vans and its menu of itineraries.
Most of them are two weeks and cost from $2,000 to $3,000, transportation from New York, all meals in game parks and full breakfasts while in Kenya included. We also decided to try Abercrombie and Kent's own camp, Kitchwa Tembo, in the Masai Mara. On safari, most package tours travel in vans six in each with everyone guaranteed a window seat and camera wielders vying for position in the pop-up roof. (Avisory to shutter people: Bring a long lens, preferably a zoom, and a beanbag on which to rest it.) 0 For the tie wearing traveler adrift in Kenya, there are the fine hotels of Nairobi and Mombasa south on the Indian Ocean, but for game viewers safari the options are different. It is either a game lodge with proper rooms, a tent camp with proper plumbing or an ingenious nest in a tree over a salty water hole.
From Nyeri, a morning's ride from Nairobi, most vans. bearing camerawielding game-watchers head for the -TRAVELAtlantic City: TROPICANA Letawaus FREE CASH FOOD: ONE DAY TOURS DEPARTS A.M./RETURN P.M. ONLY INCLUDES $20 CASH $109 Deli Buffet PER PERSON SATURDAY NIGHT SHOW TOUR DEPARTS SAT. P.M SUN. A.M.
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or Fri. Sun. available and are at higher rates. A male baboon photographed safari operated by professional cell. Outspan Hotel, a place to stay for some, but a staging area for most who come for lunch and move onward to one of the forest hideaways.
But before you get to Nyeri, drivers usually pause 80 miles from Nairobi at the enormous open-air Karatina Market. For the native here in Kikuyu country there are pineapples, beans, papaya, spices and rubber sandals cut from used tires. For the traveler from abroad there are animal carvings and straw baskets in many colors that sell for as much as $40 at home. Here the artful bargainer can buy them at $2.50. Nyeri is a garden town that likes to quote Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, who is buried here.
He wrote, "The nearer to Nyeri, the nearer to bliss." Nyeri is the principal town of the Kikuyus, the dominant tribe of Kenya. Pretty as it is, it used to be the main base of the Mau Mau, once thought to be terrorists, later looked on as freedom fighters. Baden-Powell lived and died in a cottage on the lovely, landscaped, flower-laden grounds of the Outspan. This is the last look at gentility before heading to one of the hung-in-the-trees lairs Treetops, where Elizabeth II was staying with Prince Philip when she learned she was queen; The Ark (built along the lines of Noah's) and Mountain Lodge, 7,200 feet above sea level. At Treetops, guests are walked through a forest clearing attended by a gun-bearing guide.
At Mountain Lodge, where we stayed, vans drive up to a parking lot and guests walk up the ramp into the lodge hidden in the heart of a rain forest. There, through a huge picture window, we saw the first game: eight elephants trumpeting, bathing, snuffling up the dirt to chase the parasites, and a lone waterbuck chased to a far corner of the watering hole. Enormous cape buffalo with huge curved horns wallowed in the mud, bush pigs nibbled the ground, Egyptian geese with red splayed feet patrolled the water hole, giant forest hogs appeared. Rooms, too, have pic- -TRAVELDON'T GO ON A CRUISE UNTIL YOU CALL US THE CRUISE SPECIALISTS 749.7459 L-N TRAVEL LAST MINUTE VACATION VALUES 7-Day cruise departing San Juan every Monday including air tickets or Friday from Los Angeles. 3 FLY FREE on our 2-week "Grand Holiday" incl.
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0373 i in Nairobi, Kenya. dock and once the luggage was loaded the boatman pulled us to the opposite bank on a guy rope. An elephant watched from an embankment. We were moving to Governor's Camp. Governor's is owned by an Englishman, a Greek and a Masai chief its manager, Murray Levet, a white Kenyan.
He oversees a row of tents strung handsomely along the river, each with sleeping quarters to be zipped up at night, and behind each is a wash tent with shower, toilet and basin lighted by kerosene lamp. Here we were to witness the river crossing of some of the million migrating wildebeest; here we were to dine in a candlelit tent while the chefs and waiters paraded in with a birthday cake, beating on pans all the way. Here we were to go on early game rides and return for barbecue breakfasts served by the river bank. Here we were to see a two-ton hippo in tront of our tent one night finding our grass greener. NEWS AMERICA SYNDICATE -MOTOR COACHTOURS BY ED HAAK ALASKA June 18-July 19.
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HOTEL NEAR CASINOS CASINO BONUS, QUALITY $130 MARCH 1986 MAR. NEW 14-22 ORLEANS $829 16 MEALS, HOTEL, SIGHTSEEING, PERSONALLY ESCORTED APRIL 1986 WASHINGTON D.C. $275 APRIL NASHVILLE 4-6 1 $195 COLONIAL APRIL 20-24 WILLIAMSBURG $345 APRIL CINCINNATI 26-27 $115 CALL FOR OUR FREE 1986 TRAVEL BROCHURE ALL RATES QUOTED BASED ON DEL. OCC. CLEVELAND SOUTHEASTERN TRAILS 232.4550 535-3030 (CLEVELAND) (AKRON) NEWS AMERICA SYNDICATE Safari wagons in front of the Hilton KARL PURCELL during a Kenyan camera photographer Carl Pur- ture windows and -the laziest game watcher can view the scene at the flood-lit water hole from bed.
Those more curious can descend to a hidden ground-level nook for a toenail look at the The next morning we descended from the chilly heights into wheat-colored fields. The snow-covered peaks of Mount Kenya loomed against the sky. Heading north toward Samburu Game Reserve we were soon at the Equator, a marketplace for merchants selling necklaces, baskets and a must for picture-takers: I am at the By Kenyan standards the Samburu Game Reserve is called small, but the moment we entered it the Africa of great legends unfolded. Twenty reticulated giraffe embossed with a tan pattern common only to this sector appeared like a welcoming committee. Baboons escorted our van, strange birds skittered through the acacia trees.
Samburu Game Lodge, strung along the banks of the Uasao Nyiro River, has to be one of the handsomest in the land. It is a gem of landscaping with its rooms and terraces elevated above the river. Almost side by side are the pool with sunbathers in bikinis, and an enclosure where, each afternoon following lunch, Samburu tribespeople with colorful necklaces and plaited hair perform warrior dances, war songs and songs of love. The game runs with Victor Kimodo, Safariworld's Kikuyu driver, were a fascination herds of Grevy's zebra with their odd pattern of stripes, bluetinted vulturine guinea fowl, yellowneck spur fowl, a maribou stork flying like a winged Boeing over the chocolate-hued river. Here was the -necked gerenuk that stands on its hind legs to nibble on acacia trees, huge elephants 10 feet in front of us, a cheetah feeding on a kill.
Kimodo's trained eyes picked out a leopard dozing high in a tree, its hanging tail swaying in the breeze. When we returned in the late afternoons there were always crocodiles on our side of the river on a cleared tanbark alongside the Crocodile Bar. Back from a game run one afternoon we were sipping a Tusker, the local beer, when Victor said, "I hear the baboons coughing. That means danger. is near." Then as we watched the opposite bank where a tripod of limbs had been baited, the rarely seen leopard appeared, ran up a limb, nibbled at bait and quickly slipped back in the deep thicket.
That's the co*cktail hour in the heart of Africa. 0 We elected to spend our last five days close to the ground in a tent camp, albeit a most comfortable form of camping. Safariworld, our ever-reliable tour operator, urged us to see Masai Mara, the game park in southwestern Kenya that is really an extension of Tanzania's Serengeti Park just over the border. After the rains of early summer, enormous herds, especially wildebeest and zebra, follow the newly green grazing land to the north, crossing the border into the Mara a million of them on the march in thick columns that stretch for seven or eight miles. Friends at Abercrombie and Kent, the outfitters, sent a plane to Samburu for us so we could see their private camp called Kitchwa Tembo, sitting on a vast plain in the Mara, before we moved to the famed tent colony called Governor's Camp, once the preferred out-of-Nairobi nest of the British governor.
The Mara is a triangular preserve owned by the Masai, nomadic cattle breeders who live on blood and milk, but exist in some harmony with the game with whom they share the land. And so we were to pass Masai villages fenced in by thorn tree cuttings to keep out the lions. We were invited not to visit the villages either, and we respected that; there was plenty to see without stirring the natives. From Nairobi to Mountain Lodge across the Equator to Samburu we had been working out of Safariworld's big vans with pop-up roofs; now in the Mara we were in Land Rovers with peel-back tops but equipped with beanbags, virtually an essential on which to rest cameras with long zoom lenses which any picture-taker will need to avoid blurring camera-shake. After lunch in Kitchwa's handsome lodge we crossed the Mara River, past baboons that flock around the bridge and were soon crossing great herds of zebra and wildebeest, running past Thomson's gazelles with their telltale white rumps bouncing on almost rigid legs.
Topi appeared almost the only place in East Africa where they can be seen. Largest of antelopes, they are short-haired, purply brown in color, and pose obediently on raised ant hills. Zebras and wildebeest were everywhere, running to cross the river (the grass is always greener on the other side) but stopped short by a menacing crocodile. Down river we came upon an enormous dead hippo on its back, legs stretched skyward. Perhaps this enormous animal didn't heed the crocs or argued with one of its own.
Soon the vultures would begin circling to start digging at its innards. Lions were in the grass, utterly bored by our presence; waterbuck were stock-still against a broadloom of deep green marsh grass. After that we rolled back to Kitchwa Tembo for drinks and a curry dinner and to bed in our first night under canvas a luxurious sleeping tent with a bath tent alongside. Coffee came at 6 a.m. and we were out for a pre-breakfast game run before moving on to Governor's Camp.
Now there were wood ibis breakfasting, pecking their long beaks into reed-fringed pools. Nearby vultures were cleaning the last tidbits from a wildebeest's ribcage. And then came the stalking lions, the males with great mane, the lionesses sniffing for an early morning kill. Down by the river a mass of hippos, 32 by count, lay half submerged in the river. After breakfast we drove to the river bank to find the most African of scenes.
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