| OUR NEWS
After 35 years of renting offices, we have finally bought and built our own new office and camp stores complex in the Karen suburb. We are over the moon with our new home and moved in over the holidays. We now have double the space we had before, which will help us keep pace with our continued growth.
Robert and I are both excited about our strong year ahead and look forward to guiding some of you on your upcoming safaris and helping you create lifelong memories.
We are very excited to be working with the next generation of Carr-Hartleys, as Robert & Angela’s two sons, Taru and Roan continue to guide safaris for us, as well as flying for the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. They are proving to be a huge asset to our business, with their youthful energy, amazing knowledge, and enthusiasm being traits that serve them well when on safari with our guests.
This photo below is one of them bravely rescuing a truck driver, whose truck was swept off a bridge by a raging flash flood. Taru is piloting and Roan is pulling in the stranded driver. |
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| William and Tanya’s son Jamie has just completed his first year at high school in Grahamstown, South Africa and has taken to it amazingly well. Their daughter Amelie will most likely join the sister school in a year’s time when she is 13. |
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| SAFARI NEWS
We are proud of our mobile tented safaris business and remain one of the very few operators left in Kenya who still successfully operate mobile tented safaris for the high-end market. We have access to some fabulous wilderness areas, and this past year ventured into a couple of new locations such as Tsavo East, and Eastern Laikipia with amazing success.
We continue to refine our mobile camps, keeping up with levels of comfort that the market dictates, yet retaining mobility to get our guests out there into the remote wilds of Kenya, where there are no (or at least very few) lodges, and the associated crowds that come with that. |
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| Whilst Kenya is still our core safari destination, since we have greater control of the product and feel Kenya is the most diverse and advanced safari destination, we continue to branch out to other countries across Africa. Some traditional favorites such as Botswana, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda as well as some exciting and adventurous new markets that have recently opened up such as Central African Republic, Zimbabwe, Chad, Angola, Socotra and Gabon to name a few. |
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| OUR MAASAI MARA PRIVATE CAMP
Some exciting news for our Maasai Mara Camp – the Governor of the County that the Mara falls under has taken some bold steps to reduce numbers of tourists that visit the reserve each day with the aim of preserving this critical eco system.
The Governor has identified several key areas in the Maasai Mara Reserve as ‘Low Use Zones’, focusing on restricting the number of vehicles, and people, permitted into those areas each day by a considerable margin.
We are extremely excited to let you know that our camp in the Maasai Mara falls inside one of these exclusive ‘Low Use Zones.’ From June 2024 onwards, our game drives will be more private and will offer our guests a chance to enjoy the incredible animal sightings that Maasai Mara has to offer without having to share the experience with hordes of other vehicles. |
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| AMAZING SIGHTINGS OF 2023
TIVA RIVER
One of the fabulous new locations we visited with our mobile camp in 2023 is a wild and remote area of Tsavo East National Park called the Tiva river area. The Tiva is an area with a seasonal ‘sand river’ running through it that provides water for the wildlife all year around, even throughout the dry season. The problem is, during the dry season the animals especially elephants have to dig down into the sand to get to the water.
On our first camp there with a couple of young & adventurous guests from California named Barb & Mike, we had been looking for three days for a couple of well-known bull elephants with huge tusks that live there by visiting all the known water-digging points (where the water lies just under the surface) along the river at key times of the day. Whilst we found masses of elephants at these points, we did not see any big ‘Tuskers’.
On our last evening there, we decided to go a long way downstream and visit one last digging-point at a place called Bisadi. We parked the car some 200 metres away from the watering point and crept the last stretch on foot, hidden from the eles view by a tall hump on the riverbank. We crept quietly up to the edge to get a full view of the sandy river bed below us yet still out of sight, and to our absolute delight, there was our prize – a massive bull elephant with huge tusks right there below us, oblivious to our presence! We watched him and his young ‘askaris’ (Swahili for ‘security guards’ – typical of young bull eles who like to hang out with the big guys) for over an hour – what a treat and such a thrill! |
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| IMAGE: Beautiful bull elephant on the Tiva River
As dusk descended, we decided to head back to the car. I took a small detour to the ‘boys bush’, then we jumped in and I turned it around to head back to camp. As soon as we turned, there on a termite mound was a huge male lion, who had evidently had been sitting there watching us the whole time – perhaps trying to decide which one of us to eat first…or maybe was just entertained by our antics!
As we approached him by car now, he just got up and walked quietly away, totally unnerved by us.
What a Day!! |
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| IMAGE: Ghost in the darkness! The watching lion slinks away in low light. |
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| KIDEPO VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, UGANDA
With the same adventurers as the story above, we also visited a couple of locations in Uganda – one was Murchison Falls National Park which the Albert Nile River flows through, and the other was the incredibly beautiful Kidepo Valley National Park in Northern Uganda.
From the balcony of the lodge we were staying at, after lunch I was scanning the area to the South with my binoculars, and in the distance I could make out a herd of Rothschilds giraffe, which we had not seen a lot of so far during our stay there. So we decided to head out in that direction that afternoon for our evening game drive.
We were incredibly fortunate to locate the herd around an open swampy area, where we could see almost every individual in what turned out to be one of the biggest herds of giraffe I have ever seen! Not to mention there are only around 1500 Rothschilds giraffe left in the wild today. We counted 74 individuals that we could see!
This is incredible, as the population was only around 20 in number in the early 2000’s. |
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IMAGE: Part of an amazing herd of 75 Rothschilds giraffes in Kidepo Valley N.P., Northern Uganda
As if that amazing giraffe sighting wasn’t enough to satisfy us, on the way home we bumped into a pangolin on the side of the road, though he refused to show his face! Pangolins are extremely rare, shy and elusive scale-armored anteaters. To put this into perspective, I have probably only seen six pangolins in the wild in 35 years of guiding!Another awesome day on safari! |
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| IMAGE: The rare pangolin in Kidepo Valley N.P. |
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| 2024 SEASON
We still have a few openings for the Summer 2024 safari season, so for those of you who have not yet figured out your summer plans, do please get in touch with us and we would be happy to propose an amazing safari itinerary for you.
Similarly, if you have any friends or acquaintances who might be interested in coming on safari with us please let us know and we promise to take good care of them.
As always, we would like to sincerely thank you all for your support you have given us over the years and wish you a very happy, healthy and enjoyable 2024!
Warm regards,
William, Robert & the Carr-Hartley Team. |
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