1 DAY: LAKESIDE ROAD SAFARI

After an early breakfast, we pick you up from your Nairobi hotel and it’s a leisurely two-hour drive to Lake Naivasha, one of the picturesque Great Rift Valley lakes. Fist we visit Hell’s Gate National Park, which is located between the lake and the dramatic peaks of the Longonot and Suswa volcanoes, and is named after the narrow break in the park’s tall red basaltic cliffs. As it has no large predators, the undulating grasslands provide one of the few places in Kenya where you can walk or cycle (bikes can be arranged) among herds of plains game. Zebra, eland, hartebeest and Grant’s and Thomson’s gazelles are usually seen, while klipspringers, baboons and rock hyrax maybe spotted scuttling among the rocks. The birdlife is also good, and on the valley floor secretary birds and ostriches are easily identified, and look out for vultures and eagles on the higher cliffs. You can also hike into the park’s rocky gorges and sandstone ravines and splash in their streams fed by hot-water springs.

We then go for a relaxing lunch at a lodge on the shores of Lake Naivasha, which is surrounded by grassy forests of impressive giant yellow-barked acacia trees, full of birds and black-and-white colobus monkeys. The name is a corruption of a local Maasai name, E-na-iposha, meaning ‘rough water’, although the lake is placid most of the time and hugely picturesque, with its purple mountain backdrop and floating islands of papyrus and water hyacinth. In the afternoon we enjoy a boat ride to spot Naivasha’s many hippos and water birds including pelicans, cormorants, kingfishers, herons, jacanas, and fish eagles with their haunting cry. Then we take a guided walking safari in Crescent Island Game Sanctuary to stroll among impala, waterbuck, wildebeest, zebra and giraffe—the terrain is flat and open so you can get surprisingly close to the animals. After our lovely lakeside safari, we drive back to Nairobi and arrive in the early evening.