Our First Safari, But Not The Last!

June 2021 | Kristin Speed

I'd been wanting to go on a Safari in Kenya since I as 10 years old, and this year I finally decided to just make it happen! So in June, my sister and I flew to Kenya for what we thought would be a once in a lifetime trip.

We only had 4 nights so decided to spend our time in only one camp. We decided on Porini Lion based on recommendations from Gamewatchers and reviews I'd read.

When we landed at the Olare Orok airstrip we were greeted by our Masai guides Chris & Edward. I'll never forget that first drive to camp, it all felt sort of surreal. They had a stocked cooler in the jeep, and it wasn't long before we were enjoying our first Tusker Beer. On the way to camp we saw so many animals, including 3 Cheetah!!

We had a super friendly welcome at camp and arrived just in time for lunch. Since this was our first safari, we weren't sure how we would fill our time between game drives, but we decided to spend that time sipping on a glass of wine on the deck of the mess tent., eagerly looking forward to our afternoon drives.

We chose to be out in the bush every minute possible, so we had a bush breakfast every morning, went back for lunch, and then went out again every afternoon, topped off with a wonderful sundowner with more wine and snacks. We had one day in the Masai Mara NP where we were out all day, so we had a picnic lunch as well. We saw saw so many beautiful animals on our game drives! We even saw a few herds of Zebra cross the mara river in a little 'mini-migration.'

We saw several prides of Lion around the conservancy and even more in the NP. Fig, the resident leopard eluded us the entire time, but our guides found us Pretty Girl on our last night. We were able to follow her for about 20min while she was bringing a freshly caught hare back to her cub, which was so exciting! We also saw a bunch of baby elephants which were a highlight for me as elephants are my favourite animal, and we saw a baby giraffe who was just a few days old, sooo cute!!

We loved the Porini Lion camp as well, the tents were super comfortable, surrounded by nature. We heard hippos, lions and elephants RIGHT outside of our tent at night. One night after dinner, a hippo even crossed the path right infront of us. The camp staff were SO friendly, we loved chatting with them! And the food was DELICIOUS..even better than we expected, especially since we are kind of picky eaters.

It was so hard to leave the Porini Lion and the Olare Motorogi Conservancy. We flex to Diani beach after, and even though we LOVE the beach, we couldn't help but wish we were back in the bush. Needless to say, we are already trying to figure out when we can go back..the sooner the better!

It was really the perfect trip, except for being WAY too short, and we still think about our time there every single day!