On Safari in Kenya: did Guido answer your question?

Welcome to a new episode of Africa with André, where we celebrate Africa - One Story at a Time.

Hi there. And welcome back to our discussion on Kenya, where our focus will be on safaris and animals. Guido Bürger is back with us today. In the last episode, we touched on some of the questions that people ask while they're planning their trip to Kenya. I postponed Guido’s answer and want to start right there now.

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[00:00:35] André: hmm.

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[00:00:46] André: Yeah.

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And you see thousands of animals. The whole landscape is full of animals. That's as exciting as the river crossing everybody knows from the BBC documentaries.

And these film-makers, they wait for hours, for days to get these shots of these crossings. So, you need to take your time and let the situations evolve.

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But for me, yeah, the, you know, the river crossing with the herds going through the river is, is super exciting. But it's just as wonderful to sit in my lodge and to just look at the endless vista. And when that is filled with thousands upon thousands of buffalo grazing there together, that is, just beautiful and peaceful to watch in its own right.

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This is not always easy because you have a certain time for your itinerary and you want to visit certain regions. And of course, the more regions you want to visit, the less time you have to stand there and just tell your driver, oh, no, let's wait for another 15 minutes. It's so exciting here let's see what happens.

This definitely makes the difference in experiencing the wildlife and the landscape and nature.

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[00:04:05] Guido: Yeah. I think this is one of the of the fears of many people, I'm traveling now to Kenya for 25 years, among other African countries. And actually, I am a guy who wants to see snakes. So, whenever I go on a walking safari, I ask “if you know something or a place where we could see a snake, let us try”.

And I only managed it to see three times a snake. And none of them were venomous. So, it's really difficult to see them.

I went to Kakamega, which is a small rainforest. And because of the small size, it has one of the highest snake densities in the world. And we did not manage to see one.

So it's really rare to meet them, and similar to spiders, we do have them in our houses as well, especially nowadays when autumn comes into winter, they're coming into the warm rooms; but only a few are really dangerous, and you just bring them out, and that's it.

So, even in the tents, it's rare to see the small spiders somewhere in the corners, because it's cleaned and they're not interested in that.

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Many of the operators offer safari round trips in what we call safari minibuses, where there's space for six guests. And on average, these safari round trips in Kenya last anything between two days and 10 days.

The main parks, everyone will have heard of them - the Masai Mara in the southwest of Nairobi on the border to Tanzania or Amboseli or the Tsavo East and Tsavo West, which are located quite near the coast of Kenya. Which are your favourite parks Guido and why?

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When you approach the north of Mount Kenya, it gets semi-arid and dry and dusty. It's a rustic area and, you have these doum palms who have more than one main pillar. And, we have large elephant herds and lions over there. This is a really special atmosphere, and I really love it there. And on the way, almost, at the half, there is a second conservancy I really love.

The name is Solio. It's, probably the most important rhino sanctuary in Eastern Africa with 450 rhinos. And, uh, because of the limited size, you see the rhinos, especially white rhinos, like a herd on the grass areas and grazing, so like it used to be 200 years ago. That's like a travel in time, and it's so impressive. Of course, Solio has giraffes and lions and buffaloes and different landscapes and ecosystems, but it's mainly about the rhinos and it's so impressive.

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One of the other things that I love about Samburu is that the animals there are quite different to what you could see in the Masai Mara. Yeah, you have zebras in the Masai Mara and you have zebras in Samburu, but they're very different. When I first saw the zebra in Samburu, I was a little bit surprised. Tell me about that - you're the geography expert. Tell me why that is.

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[00:09:00] André: So, a good reason to combine Samburu with the Masai Mara, if you have a trip going through various parks that you can see the two, different types of biospheres.

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[00:09:47] André: One question that we received quite a lot, and I can understand it is: why are the park fees so high in Kenya? When you visit a national park, you have a daily fee per person of anywhere between $50 and $80 that need to be paid for the time that you spend in the park. Explain to us why we have fees of that magnitude.

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They train, on their own academies, the rangers. They have veterinary units you for injured animals, but they also do have an anti-poaching unit. They need specific equipment, they need special training. And, over the years they were really, really successful. So, this is a lot of cost, which needs to be covered through these park fees.

And in Kenya, poaching is reduced to a minimum compared to other destinations in Southern and Eastern Africa, where you have maybe between a thousand or 15’000 elephants killed each year. And when we have 50 in Kenya, that's really much. So, you see, this is really a massive difference. And the second type of parks are the National Reserves, like Samburu and Masai Mara.

They are managed and coordinated through the counties and the communities, so they need to do the same like the KWS, because KWS is bringing in the rangers and doing a lot of maintenance there as well, and securing the national parks. But they also need to engage the communities around, that they can benefit from tourism. Over the last year there was a lot of discussion about the stronger increase about the park fees in Masai Mara, which is understandable because in peak season, guests now have to pay $200 per day for visiting the park plus a community fee. That's really massive, but a lot of visitors come only between July and August, so it's overcrowded at that time.

And this is a lot of pressure on the ecosystem, on the infrastructure. And the price, as we all know, is a tool to steer flows of guests. And this was something they tried out to direct guests out of the peak seasons around the migration into other parks.

Because Kenya has more than 50 national parks. There's so much to see. You need to protect these animals and these ecosystems. Limitation of guests and increasing the price - these were the tools which were the most successful in the past.

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Let’s not forget about the beaches and the coast in Kenya. I know that for a lot of our North American listeners, their main reason for visiting Kenya is the wildlife and maybe even Nairobi, because they have beautiful beaches in the Caribbean, or other beaches that are nearby, but the coast in Kenya is particularly beautiful.

I'm thinking of the 17-kilometre-long Diani beach, south of Mombasa. And there's a couple of sections of beach north of the coast as well, which is your favourite part of the Kenyan coast.

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But you also have, more quiet, intimate places, like Tiwi, which is only five kilometres away from Diani, there are literally only a handful of hotels, you have your quiet beach for yourself.

Or Watamu Malindi, which is, one and a half to two hours north of Mombasa. A, really, nice stretch and intimate, still authentic like in a small fisher village, but you have amazing hotels there in all different segments and bars where you just can hang out on the net over the water. So relaxing.

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[00:14:51] Guido: I can't really say which is my favourite.

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[00:15:08] Guido: I feared that one.

I talked about, Tiwi and there is one of the smaller hotels, the name is Coconut Beach Lodge. This is a really special place because it's quiet, it's not so big and they have one of the rare palm beaches. The owner started to plant palms on the beach 50 years ago and you really can lie in your sunbed under the palms and put your feet into the sand and this is so relaxing. And, but being on the beach and being on safari is a different feeling, it's a different atmosphere.

Being on safari, I really like a special camp around the Amboseli region because it's also very diverse. You have the majestic Mount Kilimanjaro, you have big elephant herds, swamp areas, dry areas, and, there's the Tortilis Camp. You have spacious tents, view usually to the mountain, but trees and bushes around, so that's also a really, really nice location.

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[00:16:19] Guido: I love animals since I was a little kid. My first job was supposed to be zoo director because I was so deep into animals. Now it's similar somehow, but also different.

I have two special animals. One of them are the black rhinos, because you need to protect these animals and a lot of, conservation efforts ongoing, but the animals have a very interesting character.

They are shy, they can be aggressive, they can have a big, good standing. But in the end, they are friendly. And the second animal is really, which touched my heart because I was, happy to see turtles hatching.

And this is such a special event to see these smaller turtles digging out of the sand and then going to the water. It's, it always gives me goosebumps even when I talk about it. It's so special and so emotional.

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Thank you again Guido, and till the next time.

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[00:17:48] André: In this episode, we talked not only about spiders, snakes, and turtles, but also about the Great Migration. We talked about Samburu and Solio and explained why the fees for the national parks are higher than you might first think. And what amazing work is done with these park fees.

Finally, we talked about coconut beach lodge, Tiwi beach, and Kenya's coast with its various different stretches.

I have again saved some links in the show notes for you.

Let your dreaming begin - see you next time!