Bruce and Leisha Goodwin took their children to Kenya for a one-week holiday. It was brilliant – just not long enough!
We’ve been lucky enough to visit Africa a number of times. I first came with my sister years ago, on an overland trip through Kenya and Tanzania, and then Bruce and I have brought our two children Hamish (now 20) and Isabelle (now 17) for holidays in South Africa (in 2017) and Tanzania (in 2022). Another trip in 2020 was cancelled thanks to a certain pandemic.
Our most recent visit was in January/February 2024. We’d been to Europe to catch up with my brother and go skiing, and thought we’d do a stopover on the way home. So we flew down to Kenya from Dubai for a quick, one-week trip.
We spent one night in Nairobi and then flew up to Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, a rhino conservancy in the north of Kenya.
It’s a beautiful property located near Mount Kenya, with little thatched-roof huts and lovely gardens that are safe to walk around thanks to electrical fencing. We got to see all the northern Kenya animals, including quite a few lions, cheetah, reticulated giraffe, Grevy’s zebra, ostrich and tons of rhino: we saw three just driving from the airport on our very first day! We had three nights at Lewa: it was really cool and we loved it.
But then we went to the Masai Mara and honestly, it’s the best thing we’ve ever done in all our trips to Africa.
We stayed at two Kicheche camps in the Mara: Kicheche Bush Camp and Kicheche Mara Camp (there’s another one called Kicheche Valley, which people rave about as well). They’re luxurious, but not über fancy. The food is really great and the tents are nice – but you don’t spend much time in them, anyway! It’s all about the wildlife, which is what’s important to us, anyway.
We had two nights at Kicheche Bush Camp, which is located in a private conservancy called Olare Motorogi,bordering the Masai Mara Reserve. There are only one or two other safari properties on the conservancy, so you don’t see tons of other vehicles.
We had incredible sightings.
We’ve got some amazing footage of a female leopard climbing a tree surrounded by hyenas, to get to a kill she’d placed in the branches.
We also saw a female cheetah with two cubs kill a little antelope right in front of us. It was really hard for her to hunt because if she left her cubs the hyenas would get them: there are so many hyenas in the Mara, they’re everywhere. Our guide told us the cheetah had actually had five or six cubs, but now there were only two left. I think she was starving, so getting to see her catch an antelope was pretty cool. It wandered too close and within a matter of seconds it was all over.
The lions sightings were also phenomenal. One morning we spent ages watching a pride of about 20 lions just playing. Another time a pride was feasting on a hippo: it was hidden in a bushy area so we couldn’t see anything, but we watched as the lions came in and out of that area, and then at dusk the males started roaring. In all our other experiences in Africa we’d never seen lions so active. They were walking right past our vehicle: so close that we couldn’t take photos, and looking like they were staring directly into our eyes, it was freaky!
I think one of the reasons why people keep going back to Kicheche camps is because the guides really know their stuff. The entire guiding team is graded silver, which means they’re in the top 5% of safari guides in Kenya, so they are really good.
Our guide wasn’t super warm or friendly, but he was incredible. He was also an amazing photographer: one of his prints was actually hanging in our tent. He would get us to an amazing site and then get us really close to the animals. And because he really understood lighting, he also made sure we were in the perfect spot to take great photos. Bruce loves photography and he got some amazing shots.
Another really cool thing about Kicheche Bush Camp was the manager, Sharon. She was chatting to our son Hamish, who at that time had a job at a bar in Brisbane. I’d seen on the camp’s Instagram page that they sometimes did gin nights, and even though there was literally only one other couple staying at the time as us, Sharon decided to do a gin night just for Hamish. They were so fantastic, and really tried to make it fun for the kids.
Our next stop was Kicheche Mara Camp, which is located in a public area, so on game drives there were quite a lot of other vehicles from other properties in the area, but the wildlife was still fantastic.
We saw cheetah again, including a large male that lots of vehicles were looking for, and he actually walked out right in front of us. That’s because our guide at Kicheche Mara Camp was amazing too. He understood animal behaviour and was able to anticipate the cheetah’s moves and get us into just the right position.
On our last morning we went to see an elephant that had died and was covered in vultures, marabou storks, hyenas and jackals. It was half-eaten, and the hyenas were wandering in and out of the carcass. It was a pretty incredible thing to see… but not to smell!