As a travel specialist who’s lived and worked in Africa for several years, and taken more safaris than I can count, I consider myself a safari expert. And as a mother who’s recently planned a Kenyan holiday with my own children, I know how to plan a journey that meets the needs of all family members. Here are my firsthand tips and tricks for how to plan a African safari for the whole family.
Work With a Guide
A professional guide can give a personal touch to a safari experience that enables you to truly connect with the surrounding environment. On our trip, the warm and knowledgeable presence of Kennedy Omwenga, our Micato Safari director, vastly improved every aspect of the journey. He was a Maasai elder in his home village, and as our highly credentialed guide, made sure our safari logistics — check-in at our lodges and camps; itineraries of each day’s activities; and luggage transportation — were seamless. Omwenga also brought his deeply rooted understanding of Kenyan wildlife and culture everywhere we went. He formed such a special bond with my sons that by the end of the trip, they were calling him rafiki, or friend, in Swahili.
Know Where to Stay — and for How Long
Buluu Poppy/Courtesy of Great Plains Conservation
Since I knew my three tween and teen boys would prefer longer stays at fewer places, we booked only three stays. The longer stints helped us feel more at home in each location.
At our first stay, Hemingways Nairobi, we enjoyed the gorgeous grounds and swimming pool before visiting the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a marvelous sanctuary where orphaned baby elephants are raised and later reintroduced to the wild.
Our next destination between Tsavo and Amboseli national parks, ol Donyo Lodge provided many opportunities for wildlife sightings, and not just on our daily game drives. While on the grounds, my family and I spied cheetahs and elephants — forcing my sons to forget all about their iPads. They instead took guided mountain-bike rides and practiced using traditional African slingshots given to them by their best rafiki.
We all abandoned our devices at Mara Plains, a low-impact camp that’s part of the Great Plains Conservation Foundation within the vast Masaai Mara National Preserve. Here, our spacious platform tent was set amid lush greenery that felt like true wilderness (though we also indulged with gourmet cuisine and copper bathtubs). On game drives, we saw every species on our family checklist; we also took a sunrise hot-air balloon ride over grasslands dotted with zebras and giraffes.
By the time we got to Segera Retreat, an artfully designed compound on the Laikipia Plateau, we felt fully immersed in the safari experience. A demonstration with the camp’s anti-poaching trackers and hounds gave us a deeper understanding of wildlife conservation efforts, too.
Give Back to the Local Community
Caringe Photographrapy/Courtesy of Micato Safaris
As magical as the rest of our safari was, my family’s most meaningful experience was our visit to Nairobi’s Mukuru, a collection of 30 villages home to over 700,000 people. Here, nonprofit foundation AmericaShare operates the Harambee Centre. The libraries, computer labs, and extensive educational programs available through this program help thousands of local kids learn and thrive. These initiatives, which benefit the entire community, are largely funded by travelers of Micato.
We also visited the headquarters of Huru International, which helps women by supplying them with reusable sanitary pads. Learning about this work, speaking with the young women, children, and families who have been transformed — and knowing our trip helped make a difference — was the highlight of our trip.
Emily Baldwin is a member of Travel + Leisure’s A-List and specializes in East and Southern Africa safaris. You can create a tailor-made itinerary with Baldwin by contacting her at ebaldwin@micato.com.
