Watamu is on the coast; the big parks are inland. A safari that starts here starts with a genuine transfer, before it starts with a sighting.
That isn't a detail to bury at the bottom of the page: it is the thing that decides whether you'll enjoy the trip. You leave before dawn, you drive for hours on roads that are not motorways, and you enter the park when the animals are already moving. People who know that in advance come back happy; people expecting a half-day outing come back tired.
So every experience states its door-to-door duration, its departure time and how many nights you sleep away. The numbers don't read like a brochure, but they are the same ones I use to plan the day.
Two days are enough for Tsavo East, the closest park to the coast: one night away and most of the time inside the park. From three days up you can add a second environment, such as Amboseli, without spending the whole trip moving. Below two days I won't propose a safari: it would be almost all road.
If hours in a vehicle wear you down, or you're travelling with someone they wear down, the internal flight changes the shape of the trip: less time lost, and you get much further. It costs more and it is a choice, not an automatic upgrade: from a 4x4 you see the country you cross, from a plane you don't.
Tsavo East is wide space and elephants covered in red dust. Amboseli has Kilimanjaro behind it, on the days the clouds allow. The Maasai Mara is another Kenya and needs the flight. Tell me what interests you most and I'll tell you which option actually gets there, in the days you have.
Savannah collection
There are only a few, and they differ by days, transport and the parks they reach. Each one states its own real duration.
Leave the coast at dawn and give the savannah the time to surprise you, instead of turning the safari into a one-day dash.
See the experience
Two parks that look nothing alike: the red earth of Tsavo East and the low plains of Amboseli, with two nights so you are not spending the whole trip chasing the clock.
See the experience
Four days and three nights to cross the Tsavo area, the country around the Taita hills and the plains of Amboseli, without rushing any of it.
See the experience
You leave by plane from Malindi airport: the Mara is reached by air, not with two days on the road, and the days stay free for game drives.
See the experience
It depends on three things: where you are setting off from, how many days you have and the pace you want to travel at.
A short safari is a first meeting with the savannah: it gives you the idea, but it compresses the transfers. With more days available the rushed journeys are cut back and there is more time inside the park, in the hours when the animals really do move.
Either way I'll explain the real travel times and the alternatives that exist, including when the honest answer is that a particular safari does not fit into the days you have.
When both formats are available for your dates I set them side by side: the price changes, and so do the flexibility over timings and the number of people travelling with you.
The proposal you receive lists only the options genuinely available in that period. I don't set out arrangements that I then cannot put on.
No. The animals are free, they move and they follow nobody's programme: sightings cannot be guaranteed, not in the savannah and not at sea. If someone promises them to you, know that they are promising something they do not control.
What I can tell you is how we look for them: keeping our distance, respecting the park rules, staying on the tracks, without chasing and without forcing an approach for the sake of a photograph. Respect for the wildlife comes before any promise.
Many of them can be, but there is no single answer: the duration, the length of the transfers and the timings all have to be weighed against age. A dawn departure with hours on the road is not the same thing for a four-year-old and for a twelve-year-old.
In the form all I need is the number of children and their age ranges. Names, dates of birth and other personal details are not required: those, if they are needed at all, come only when a property or a park asks for them.
Tell me where you are in your trip and how much time you have. We start from there.
