Safari 2013

Well, we definitely had a once in a lifetime trip in October. Our friends had planned many details and worked with a great travel agent, so invited us along back in February! There was many months of anticipation for this fantastic trip and we are so lucky to have friends that can do all the research to find the absolute best places to stay!! Not only were our resorts top-notch, but we were able to charter private planes for our group of 8 and that made the travel so nice. A girl can get used to this :)

We first took a morning flight from Lagos to Nairobi on Saturday the 12th. We spent one night in Nairobi, not far from the airport, at the Boma hotel. It was nice to relax with some great food and light beer (they don't make any light beers in Lagos, so we loved the Kenya brews!) We got up early the next day for a gourmet buffet breakfast and quick trip to Wilson airport. Here we met up with another couple and we took a small Kenya Airways plane to the Keekorock airstrip in the middle of the Serengeti. There we met up with one more couple that had arrived the previous night from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (where they live).


the group together at the little airstrip

our little plane taking off after dropping us off

What followed was 4 days of morning safari drives, 3 course lunches, relaxing by the pool, afternoon naps and delicious 3 course dinners! The Cottars 1920s Safari camp was full of antiques from the Cottars family as they have owed this land and been on safaris for hundreds of years. The pictures on the walls of the mess tent had amazing photographs of animal kills and ancient cars, so cool!
On a little side note, it was really fun to find out that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt stayed at our camp a few years ago with their kids.  Also, the Cottars Camp has played host to Keira Knightley and covered by Vogue!

what the living tents looked like

Mess tent

dinner by the pool after a bush walk and sundowners

the beautiful pool at the camp

that is me and Jason in the middle seats, so close to the lion!

our AMAZING guide, GG

J by our land cruiser

Something that it almost unheard of during out trip, is that we saw the Big 5 animals of the Mara in one day! That is the buffalo, elephant, leopard, rhino and lion. Thanks to our wonderful spotters, they were able to see some of the animals from as far as 2 miles away!!!! such a great experience seeing things like a lion eating organ by organ out of a wildebeest it had just killed, elephants playing in the mud and lots of baby animals that still walked very wobbly!! Our guides were amazing and gave us all kinds of information during our drives as well as riddles for us to think about in the evenings. Our 3rd day of the trip, we got up at 3am (I don't know how!) to drive an hour to the hot air balloon field. It was so cool to actually lay in a large basket and slowly be taken up in the air. Such amazing views from up there and seeing the sun come up and the animals start to play.


one of our breakfasts at the bush "Starbucks"

the girls

sunrise

at the waterfalls

giraffe

zebras playing

a lion cub eating breakfast

yawning lazy lion

baby elephant

cheetah on the prowl

air balloon ride at sunrise

breakfast after balloon ride

gourmet breakfast after balloon ride

mama lion hiding from the paparazzi

big leopard in the tree

preggo giraffe

lion cubs chasing each other

beautiful hilltop view

baby zebra

One very cool thing when we were leaving the Cottars Camp, was that our private charter came into a landing strip very close to camp. The guides liked to refer to it as "Cottars International Airport" or CIA, but it was really just a cleared area of land in the middle of the Serengeti. Pretty unreal! also the boys played paper-rock-scissors to see who would sit in the front seat and Jason won! So he was co-pilot on our trip to Nairobi airport. The pilot was really nice and explaining all the controls and buttons to Jason during the flight. He also pointed our to us when we were passing by Mt. Kilimanjaro, as you could see it peaking through the clouds.

leaving on a little jet plane

co-pilot J

such a fun plane ride!

J's passengers