We enjoyed our group tour of Kenya and Tanzania, our first exposure to East Africa. We had a very good tour leader, Edwin Ongori, who in excellent English informed us about the places we were visiting and the wildlife we viewed, and also gave us an overview of Africa as a whole. We had skillful and knowledgeable driver/guides, especially Nickson Monyo in Tanzania. We had the opportunity to see a great variety of African wildlife in their natural surroundings.
We also were fortunate to be traveling with a group of friendly, interesting and well-traveled fellow-tourists who added much to our enjoyment of the tour.
It was a good tour but we would have enjoyed it more if in addition to viewing wildlife we would have been able to also view and experience more of the human side of Kenya and Tanzania.
Except for persons in the tourist business we unfortunately had almost no contact with Kenyans or Tanzanians. We stayed at good hotels but except for Nairobi they were all in isolated rural locations rather in towns or villages where we could have wandered about and perhaps experienced more of the countries to which we had traveled. All meals were in hotel dining rooms or restaurants patronized exclusively by foreign tourists. All travel was in our private vans. Although we enjoyed viewing the wildlife but got little feeling of having really experienced Kenya and Tanzania.
We stayed two nights in each of eight different locations (many much alike), and had to use much time traveling from place to place.. It might have been better to eliminate the six days at our three locations in Kenya and instead stay longer in Tanzania.
It was a good tour but could have been better.
This is the end of our travel journal for our trip to Kenya & Tanzania in October 2005. We invite you to see some of our other travel journals listed in the "Our Travel Journals" Main Menu.