Any online search for 3-day/2-night Maasai Mara safaris in western Kenya will show luxury options upwards of $800-$1,000 per person. Searching for budget options still resulted in $450-$500 trips per person. Seriously? What the hell. Fortunately while volunteering in Kenya my program manager told me that past volunteers had been able to tour the Maasai Mara National Reserve for $300 per person. Then I befriended a foreigner who knew of highly recommended locals that plan safaris to national parks all over Kenya. This agency is Safaribook Evolution. For $300 per person, Chris and I got picked up from our accommodation…
Kenya
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According to worldatlas.com, Vietnam is the world’s 2nd largest producer of coffee, and the world’s 7th largest producer of tea. Also in the list of top world producers is Kenya, the world’s 15th largest producer of coffee and 3rd largest producer of tea. Looks like Kenya and Vietnam have something in common! =) (While both countries are the world’s top producers of coffee and tea, Kenyans primarily drink diluted milk tea while the Vietnamese passionately consume plain tea and black coffee.) Because Nairobi’s neighboring towns of Kiambu and Limuru are surrounded by coffee and tea farms, I knew I had to take a tour on each…
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Full day tours of Nairobi cost about $100, with the highlights being the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage and the Giraffe Center. However, visiting both places independently will cost less than $20 and requires only a half day. Traveling by bus in Kenya is incredibly cheap and easy! The elephant orphanage is only open to the general public from 11am-12pm on a daily basis. During this hour, visitors can spectate the endearing site of bottle-feeding and mud-bathing elephants and listen to a quick introduction to the orphanage’s family of elephants. Many elephants are rescue elephants and are later reintroduced back into the wild–yay! From…
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The idea of touring a neighborhood simply for photographing and gawking over a community’s appalling living conditions has never appealed to me. I mean, how would you feel if the top 1% came to your neighborhood, your home, and took pictures of your children playing in local parks or of you preparing meals, knowing that they feel great pity for your lifestyle and plan on showing their photos to their 1% community? It’s…demeaning. Sure, the high costs (roughly $25) of a tour supposedly go toward the local community to help pay for infrastructure, schools, and so on. The intent there…
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Amboseli National Park lies at the Kenya-Tanzania border with grand views of Mount Kilimanjaro looming in the distance. Hoping to witness the iconic Kenyan landscape, I meticulously planned an independent, budget trip to Amboseli for my first ever game drive without considering the current time of year…the rainy season. Naturally I was never able to lay eyes on the magnificent mountain as I discovered it was typically hidden beneath the thick layers of clouds year-round, but it didn’t matter. The journey there itself along with a wonderful stay in a tent house and spectacular game drive equated to a wonderful weekend getaway. Searching…
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Little did I know that I would end up waiting for almost 4 hours for my pick up from the time I stepped out of Nairobi’s international airport…at 2:45am. Sitting on the sidewalk with my bags watching groups of tourists get swept away by representatives holding name cards made me look and feel pretty pathetic. Due to the ungodly hour, there were only a handful of touts attempting to sell safari tours between stifled yawns, and even they pitied me. Fortunately this foreign country has 2 national languages, one of which is English. Whew. Naturally everything worked out in the…