An East African safari vacation is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and the Masai Mara, with its teeming wildlife offers some of the best opportunities for Kenyan travellers to view African animals in their stunning natural environment. The exclusive Mara Porini camp makes an ideal base for enjoying Kenyan wildlife and scenery in and around the Masai Mara, including the annual wildebeest migration.
Mara Porini Camp
The camp is about 18 km – 20 or 30 minutes drive – from the boundary of the Masai Mara Reserve. It is located in the Ol Kinyei conservancy, which is owned and maintained as a private game reserve by the local Masai community. Here visitors are able to see most of the animals found in the larger Masai Mara National Reserve, including a large resident pride of lions, in their natural environment but without the pressure of tourists which can be the case in the Masai Mara. A maximum of twelve visitors at a time can stay in Mara Porini, and the fortunate guests have this stunning 35 square kilometre area of pristine savannah, rolling hills and riverine forest entirely to themselves.
Activities at Mara Porini include not only game drives in well equipped and maintained safari landrovers, but walking safaris ( escorted for safety by both spear carrying Masai warriors and riflemen), luxury bush picnics and ” sundowners”, a refreshing gin and tonic or wine enjoyed beneath an Acacia tree before returning to camp. One or two days will also normally be spent in the main Masai Mara reserve, but daily programmes are agreed each evening by individual visitors with their personal guides, all of whom are well educated and expert in the reserves, their flora and fauna..
The camp itself sits in an Acacia grove beside a small stream in the 35 square kilometre reserve. It contains just 6 well equipped and furnished double tents on raised wooden platforms, each with its own shower room and toilet.The spacious Mess tent has comfortable sitting and dining areas, a 24 hour self service bar and provides a varied menu of first class meals.
Masai Mara National Reserve
Half an hours drive from Mara Porini, this is a magnificent 1500 square kilometre expanse of grassland plains and rolling hills, broken by acacia woods, rivers and streams. It is one of the most important African safari destinations and offers travellers the opportunity to view a wonderful concentration of plains game including all the “big five” – lions, elephant, buffalo, rhinoceros and leopard, as well as huge numbers of herbivores and, in the rivers crocodiles and hippopotami.
Lying on the border between Kenya and Tanzania, its southern boundary runs alongside Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, and game moves freely between the two. The climax of the year comes in July and August with the annual wildebeest migration, when hundreds of thousands of wildebeest, zebra and antelope graze across the savannah. The spectacle of hundreds of wildebeest plunging into the Mara River on this migration is an unforgettable for those visitors fortunate enough to see it.
Getting To Mara Porini From Nairobi
Mara Porini Camp is a 4 hour drive in a 4×4 from Nairobi, but visitors normally fly with the scheduled bush plane service from Nairobi’s Wilson Airfield to the Siana airstrip. During this memorable flight, lasting about an hour, the 12 seater plane flies low over dun coloured grassland criss-crossed by red earth tracks, tiny puffs of white cloud occasionally floating below. It’s low enough to get a good view of the occasional groups of round grass huts set in a circular stockade of thorn, and even of the colourfully dressed women working in bright green fields of crops.
At Siana, visitors are met by a safari Landrover and two scarlet-robed, spear-toting Masai, the driver and guide for the 30 minute drive to the camp. Here, on arrival they enjoy a welcoming drink while planning the next day’s activities with their guide.
