Kenya travel April only time we can go what to expect?

East Africa has been in drought these past years. Any rain that comes will be welcome. But, while April/May are known as the "long" rains, no one knows if/when, how much, or none at all.

April is low-season so prices are great and often less visitors. However, unless there are torrential downpours for days on end (hopefully, unlikely), an afternoon shower or overnight will NOT inhibit your safari. If there is rain, everything will be beautifully green with field flowers appearing... something visitors in the dry season rarely see.

Go for it.

Hi silvia

Generally speaking I am a Kenya fan - but not as much as sandi

April Massai Mara: Too many question marks for me. I would not hesitate to go in October or February (which I do in 2010). But the outlook for April/May being rainy season would make me hesitate to focus on to Kenya.

Rain is wonderful for animals and nature - particularly if it hasn't rained for a considerable time.
Rain also has no impact on to your sightings or safari experience as such - we have done safaris in South Africa where we had rain for 3 consecutive days, every game drive in rain coats and rain pants. But had lion killing a buffalo. We were staying in a lodge and besides getting wet like cats during the drives had a great overall experience.

Staying in a tented camp during torrential rains (which might be the case in April in MM) is not just fun! We had such an experience in Tanzania (Olakira camp). We almost had the whole Serengeti under our soles messing everything with black cotton soil : tent, mess tent, vehicle.

It might be possible you decide on another destination and Kenya remains bone dry in April 2010. But who knows????

If I were you I would rather go to South Africa in April 2010. There you have lodges which makes a difference and despite the weather isn't predictable anymore it shouldn't be "wet".

Happy planning!

SV

I haven't been to Kenya in April but was there one December (which is supposed to be the short rains season) when there were torrential rains. I didn't find that it affected our enjoyment of the trip. Yes it was muddy and we got it on our shoes and in the case of one of our friends all over when he slipped but we didn't find it to be a big deal. Guess it just depends on how you feel about that and no one can say how rainy or not next April will be. If it's been raining, the grass may be high which could affect viewing and also certain activities such as walks may be stopped.

I was in Kenya/Tanz late March early April this year.
We had 1 wet night in the Mara, and 1 wet day in Tanzania, that was out of 3 weeks.
The weather is no longer predictable, so, if that's the only time you can go, go!

I don't know if it was already mentioned on this forum but I heart last week from a source that I trust very much that there was a robbery at Naibor camp in the Mara some weeks ago. All the tourists had to leave their tents in the middle of the night. My travel agent told me afterwards that this was not the only case and that even restaurants in Nairobi had some serious problems.

Thank you all for your insight. From my sources it has been raining in Kenya but not the heavy rains of March/April. Also, I had read that the drought had affected the bird and animal population on the lakes in the Rift Valley but with the recent rains it was now okay. When we went to Costa Rica we went on during the "end of the rainy season" and only had one night of rain. But everything I read on this forum and in books says that April is the worst time to go.

Are there only tented camps in the Maasai Mara? I would hate to miss this area.

I read on this forum about the robberies also. The issue in the restaurant I think was tourist error. I would never leave or even bring a purse that is visible let alone hang it on the back of my chair.

We haven't been in April, but have in May, we love it at that time of the year. I would definitely go in April!

That was my husband that Patty was speaking of that fell in the mud in Dec 2006. It still makes for a great laugh when we talk about that game drive.
If the only time you can go is in April i would go and not worry about the weather. It is one thing that is out of our control and the world climate is just so unpredictable anymore. Like they say in Kenya "Hakuna Matata"

Hey, it can rain in torrents during the so-called "dry" season. It's weather - "whether it will or whether it wont"

In the Masai Mara, you will find both lodges and tented camps. Some of the very small (6/tent) camps are closed during Apr/May/early-Jun, mainly to allow for refreshing the lands on which they are sited... being eco-friendly. Many larger (25-30/tent) camps remain open during this period as the tents are mostly built on concrete or stilt platforms. Plenty of choices.

Thanks for insights. We will be going in April. Now with only 7 days we need to decide which parks. I know the drive time can be 6 hours from Nairobi and 3 hours in between. With only 7 days I don't want to spend all the time driving. Also, when on safari, which type of vehicle is best?

I was in the Masai Mara at the beginning of April 2004 for just 4 nights. We had heavy rain during the nights but none during the day. The weather in the day was glorious - sunny blue skies. Lush green everywhere. Some muddy tracks, as one might expect.

No idea if this is typical, what with just the one, short April visit.

Myself my wife and two children were the ones (and two other tents) on the night of 7 October 2009. I have posted the abbreviated story on Trip Advisor, and pasted here again below

The bottom line is the robbery was violent and we lost approx $10,000 in money jewelry and camera gear. Given that i thought we going to die or be seriously injured i guess we got a way lightly. If the robbers had more time it seemed like they would have been intent on rape and injury

Most people think that violent crime is only in Nairobi; well unfortunately all these ugly forms of criminal activity have made it to where the rich tourists are. Be very careful even in the Mara, and make sure your lodge/camp site has armed guards. Naibor Camp is owned by a couple of light weights and did nothing to prevent the robbery or help us after the fact. In fact I have significant evidence that confirms that one or more Naibor staff were involved in the incident.




Trip Advisor post

On the night of 07 October 2009 at approx 11.30 pm the camp was raided by armed bandits. They discharged a fireman then proceeded to rob the camp site tents including the managers tents and the 4 tents of camp guests, 2 of which were ours. 4 bandits dressed as Masai entered our tent armed with machetes, spears axes etc proceeded to assault us at rob us of money, jewelery and camera gear and other electronics. They then proceeded in to our children’s tent roughed them up and robbed them. After the bandits left our tent my family and I hid down along the river. We figured it was a better option to risk it with wild animals than face the prospect of the bandits returning, these guys meant business and it was obvious they had little regard for life; it would not have taken much for this to have turned really ugly.

The camp owners did not give a damn and did not investigate the claims of staff involvement, their response : "We should have know of the dangers in Africa" & "our injuries were only bruises and therefore no big deal".

Good news is we made it out alive.

Naibor is owned by a couple of Kenya clowns Anthony Cheffings of On Safari Kenya and Nigel Archer of Nigel Archer Safaris who do not take safety and security seriously.
• Prior incidents of robbery in the Mara, the last one only 6 weeks before but Naibor had no armed guards.
• Obvious Naibor camp staff involvement in the robbery but no intention of follow-up by management

My advice: If you must go to the Masai Mara stay in a lodge. If you insist on staying in a tented camp enquire about security and make sure the camp is protected against bandits by armed guards, and lastly STAY AWAY FROM NAIBOR

Incidents like ours have happened before and will happen again, don’t be a victim.

PaulTraveller

Thank you for your post and update on safety and security at Naibor. Sorry for what happened to you.

Not that I doubt the incident and how it unfolded. But to give your post more credibility (as you are brandnew here) it would be excellent to have at least an email address.

Hope you don't take it as an insult. But these days where many camp owners struggle for business and I myself have heard of weird allegations from one camp owner towards another I would highly appreciate to have these information provided by a "real" name not by Mr/Mrs Anonymous.

SV

SV - Far be it from me to be controversial (it's just not in my nature), but I just wanted to say that I was horrified when I read this, and I certainly never once thought that it was not credible. You said this nice enough, and I think that is very good of you, but I would never doubt that that was the real traveller posting. I could not even imagine a camp owner posting this type of allegation to ruin another camp - that is beyond comprehension to me. If my rose coloured glasses keep me from living in a cynical doubting world, then I'm happy to have them & will gladly share them with you.

Paultraveller - I am so sorry that this happened to you, I love Kenya and I love the Mara, it hurts to hear about situations like this. I can only imagine what you went through, but as you say, at least you got out alive - which is a big plus. I hope you and your family are doing OK both mentally and physically after this happened to you, and I thank you for sharing this with us. I will heed your advice.

LyndaS
Here is the same poster posting under another name attacking me because I was stating that neither friends nor us are worried about staying at Naibor in Dec respectively Feb 2010.
http://www.fodors.com/community/africa-the-middle-east/re-surgence-of-crime-in-kenya.cfm

As these people who have been robbed at Naibor would have given interviews to newspapers or TV channels appearing in countless living rooms I assume it's not too much giving up of privacy here if they provide at least some info as many others do who don't post crucial facts here; e.g. email address.

It's very tempting to use an open forum for all kinds of vendettas.

Let me stress that I don't say this is fake here! But posting under 2 different aliases makes me think.
Particularly as the same poster does put an effort to open two new accounts/alias here to state his/her case.

Finally as you doubt that camp owners would not go that far to state allegations in order to drive others out of business:

One camp owner stated that Naibor had been built illegally not having a license and might be closed at any time!

If you provide me with an email address I will gladly disclose names.

SV

the way I read the posts is one is the one on this thread is from the husband and the wife made the post on the other thread. Maybe it's the same person I don't know but I do know a lot of people were wanting to know about the robberies that had been rumored.

joeyi
You might be right that's 2 people/couple.......

And yes - the rumours make everything worse. Coping with the incidents openly would be much better.

I for my part will contact the Kenya Tourism office in order to learn more about the situation.

SV

I am very sorry for your terrible experience. I cannot imagine your horror and hope your family has recovered, especially the children.

"In fact I have significant evidence that confirms that one or more Naibor staff were involved in the incident."

This info should be given to police/authorities and in time it would be useful if it were posted for other travelers as well.

I can understand why PaulTraveller does not post more specifics or personal contacts. I can also understand how any allegations of this nature are suspect and raise some doubts. Finally I can understand why someone who had never posted before on a travel forum would feel compelled to post such an event as a warning to others.

That's the way I read the posts too, Joyce - this is the husband, and the the other is the wife. I read the mom/wife's post first, and then this one, it was chilling reading about it and I feel for the family.

Thanks for posting your response to mine, SV and I do appreciate that you are looking into the KTO to learn more.

I am the wife of 'PaulTraveller'. No secret there. We had never posted on any travel forum before, but now felt the need to warn other travelers of the dangers. My husband has also posted our experience on other fourms.

Spassvogel - You made a comment 'As these people who have been robbed at Naibor would have given interviews to newspapers or TV channels appearing in countless living rooms' Have you seen this reported in any newspapers or TV channels ? NO!! Because it would harm the tourism industry. This incident [and others I assume]are being kept quiet. We realised that the only place information about the robbery will be heard about is on open forums like this.

I am sorry if you felt I was attacking you on your comments about Naibor. I hope you can understand that this is a very sensitive issue for our family right now, and I would not wish our experience on anyone. However, I do wonder how you can make the claims about Naibors safety and our experience being reported in newspapers and tv.

The evidence we have regarding a staff member being involved was given to the police, camp manager and camp owners.

Lastly, I know robberies can happen anywhere in the world, but the way these men came storming into our tent, attacked and robbed us was terrifying. What kind of human beings beats 2 teenage boys while they were sleeping? It was obvious they meant business and had little regard for life. This with the pathetic support of the owners of the camp leaves a very sour taste for Kenya.

Trac0, I think about how I would have felt if it had happened to my children and I just feel sick. We can be very glib about the dangers of safaris both animal and human, and if we have only experienced the wonderful, friendly people of Kenya then it is easy to dismiss the ugly side. I know all countries have this, but your experience is horrifying and I would hate to think that any of us down played what you went through.

Thank you for posting the information and I hope the camp I'm heading to has good security, in fact I will be checking forthwith.

HI there
Can I just have this one last clarification response on our Incident at Naibor on 07 October, and to expand on my wife’s last post. The reason my wife and I decided to post our bad experiences, not only on this travel site, but also other sites, is because we feel that we needed to alert others because :
• There are risks of violent crime occurring in the Masai Mara game reserve, we blindly assumed it is remote enough to be free of this type of activity which most people think is limited to Nairobi. Our research since has shown there have been previous incidents of a similar nature in the Mara.
• Alert others to the fact that our particular camp did not have security against such incidents, despite a similar robbery occurring only 4-6 weeks before at the Entim Camp (I also understand the Entim camp has been struck before).
• I am absolutely convinced that staff members were involved which were passed on to management, who summarily ignored them. I have also passed this information to the Ministry of Tourism and KATO. Too many pointers lead me to the conclusion this was simply a chance hit and run robbery:
o The camp was hit on the first night it was completely full offering maximum opportunity for reward.
o The camp was hit within 10 minutes of the last guests retiring to their tent, ensuring all guests were locatable.
o The bandits started the robbery by discharging a shotgun adjacent to the manager’s tent. I was a guest at Naibor for 5 nights prior to the robbery and I still don’t know where the manager’s tent was located because of the way the tents are positioned among the trees. However these robbers apparently wandered in to the camp without having been there before, or without facilitation from a staff member and knew exactly where the managers accommodation was located? I don’t think so
o The 2 way radios provided by Naibor in every guest’s tent were taken from our tent, and also from our children’s tent, before the robbery. These radios had been in our tents every night of our stay but mysteriously disappeared on the night of the robbery, removed from our tent before we returned from dinner that evening. I know they were missing before the bandits entered out tent because I tried to find our radio after I heard the gunshots, and so did my children in their tent. The radios were gone BEFORE the robbery, no question. As we were one of the last, if not the last guests, to retire for the evening my conclusion is that the staff member or members supporting the bandits made preparations by removing the radios so that we had no lines of communication. We advised the Naibor Camp managers of this fact immediately after the robbery.
• The Kenya Ministry or Tourism and Kenya Association of Travel Operators don’t give a damn. We have corresponded with both regarding our incident and have not had one reply from either. You get the feeling they have a vested interest in preventing bad news from being circulated. In my opinion the real truth only comes from these sorts of open travel forums, not glossy holiday brochures or polished websites
For all the doubters about this event I can assure you it was real and it happened, I could post the police reports lodged after the incident as proof, but if others choose not to believe our story that’s their call. spassvogel you seem to be the most doubting of our story, I would be interested in the response from the Kenya Ministry of Tourism and/or KATO on our incident, if and when you do contact them. They have never bothered to respond to our correspondence. It would be also great of you could also contact the Naibor Camp owners to get their story , I am sure they will play the incident down, or deny it ever happened .

Naibor Owners are:
Anthony Cheffings of On Safari Kenya www.onsafarikenya.com
and Nigel Archer of Nigel Archer Safaris www.nigelarchersafaris.com

The only advice to other Masai Mara travelers I can offer from our experience is:
1. be alert to signs of trouble, if we had reacted quickly enough there would have been enough time to hide before the robbers made it to our tent. I would rather risk it in the bush with the wild animals than have to kneel at the foot of a man with a machete again, or hear my children being slapped around in the tent next nearby. (Most of the Naibor staff had time to run and hide as the robbers were moving thru the camp, they just never bothered to tell the guests).
2. if you do get caught give the robbers your money etc, don’t argue
3. stay in a large lodge (the Serena lodge is central to the central Mara) not a tented camp
4. If you must stay in a tented camp then call beforehand and make sure the camp have armed guards.

My lesson is when choosing a holiday focus on security first, in the end nothing else really matters.

Paul and wife
I am very sorry when I have misinterpreted your first post(s) or doubted the incident.

As I stated earlier there were camp owners trowing dirt on to each other to damage the business or rather get the business. That was the reason for me to take your initial post(s) maybe on to a light shoulder.

We love being in tented camps, small intimate tented camps.......but now I admit I start feeling differently.

As you have got the papers and you had to stand that incident I would rather go even more forward and get my warning out loud so that more people hear of it to be warned. What about contacting TV travel magazins? TV and print mediums. If I were in your shoes having all the proof I would definitely go forward and inform as many as possible people.

Hope you accept my apology for not taking your warning seriously.

SV

PS
I am wondering there are several tour operators on board here who all sell and promote Kenya and the Massai Mara particularly. Why are they hiding? They must have recived information not only on that robbery.
Isn't it a TO's responsibility to clear any doubt or inform people of incidents in order to protect them or take appropriate safety measures?
As fas as I understood (now I know better) being a TO should be more than just making a buck/selling.

Trac0 and Paul Traveller: thank you so much for posting of your horrible event at Naibor. I agree that these types of forums are likely the only way to get your story out there. I applaud you for doing so. I would certainly not go to that camp after reading of your misfortune. I hope the camp owners do indeed suffer the financial consequences of lost business, which it sounds like would be the only thing they would care about.

PaulTraveller and TracO,
Thanks for posting this information. I'm curious about the reaction of the police. Did they also display a callous or coverup attitude? (It's not surprising that the tourism people don't want this out.) Also, did you file a report with the U.S. Embassy?

Aslo, I have to defend spassvogel in his attempt to pin down a story from anonymous sources. It makes sense. Your story has great credibility, but anyone can say anything on the Internet and without hard eveidence or a credible news source, it's perfectly understandable to want more information.

Thank you for the additional details and my sympathies to you again for the horror you had to endure. We'll know what missing radios mean from now on.

Security first is crucial.

The day after the robbery the KWS rangers were at the camp and all persons robbed filed a report, written only. They did not want to give us an opportunity for an interview to discuss the events in detail. The reporting was also very rushed as we had to leave at 10.30 am to catch the flight to Nairobi
Do I feel there was a cover-up? Probably no. However I did get the feeling they were “going thru the motions” with respect to the reporting process. They did endeavor to track the bandits the next day using sniffer dogs, obviously without success.
From my recollection of events, probably only about 10 minutes elapsed from when we thought the bandits had left the camp site (and we were told the bandits arrived and left on foot) to when the Rangers arrived. So I do find it very surprising the bandits were not quickly tracked down and caught. Does that indicate collusion by the police, I guess each person can draw their own conclusion in that regard

Aside from missing radios, gunshots are a big hint something is not right, in hind sight we had time to run and hide, but robbery never crossed my mind and so we never reacted. And believe me do not rely on the camp staff for guidance or advice during such an emergency. Basically in an emergency you are on your own, it is your call whether you run and hide or stay.

We also did file a report with the Australian High Commission in Nairobi, and have had followup since.

There are several threads on this, but I did post a response from a TO in Nairobi who sent me a copy of the REPORT written by Naibor camp's owners.

Obviously a bit different account than Paul's, but in my heart I believe Paul would not exaggerate this horrific experience. I saw several points in the report (that everyone can read for themselves) that made me feel it was being a bit too rehearsed.

As I said to the TO, if it was just a robbery, why not while the guests were at dinner together out of their tents? Just slip into into the tents and steal what they wanted - why wait til they are in the tents asleep - why put them through this and with children there of all things. It is a physical assault not just a robbery. That is what makes it all the more terrifying to me.

So, it is on SPASSVOGAL's posting on Tour Operators and Safety etc. that I am sure you have seen. Afraid I am not good at posting links, so if someone else wants to do it, I'd appreciate it.

I know people were wondering what Naibor had to say. This document is what was submitted.

FP

http://www.fodors.com/community/africa-the-middle-east/professionals-selling-massai-mara-safety-issue.cfm

Think I figured it out, if this works as the link - great!
If not, well,sorry but I tried...
FP