4 Days, 3 Nights - Best thing to do Tsavo East/West and Amboseli

This 4-day safari package was a wonderful experience, our contact on Viator (Simon) answered our questions within a few minutes/hours as we approached the Safari date, and our driver Francis was an exceptional driver and a very knowledgeable safari guide. The general itinerary on this page is fairly accurate, but I'll provide some extra details here for those interested. We went as a group of 6, and had the safari vehicle to ourselves. Kenyan roads can be very bumpy, even outside the parks, so I would suggest a base level of fitness that can handle being jostled about. If you can stand up on a UK bus, you should be fine. We were picked up from Diani Sea Lodge, which isn't an option on TripAdvisor, but this is fine if you let Simon know. As I understand it, the safari lodges chosen may vary based on availability and group size. To get an idea of where you might stay, we stopped in: Ngulia Safari Lodge (Tsavo West) Sentrim Amboseli (Amboseli) Sentrim Tsavo East (Tsavo East) The first was a hotel inside the park, with views over a watering hole which attracted elephants, wilderbeast, and had a leopard feeding area, the second and third were small lodges - Amboseli had a great view of Kilimanjaro, Tsavo East had another viewing area with elephants, zebra and hyena. We arrived at all 3 for lunchtime, and all 3 had a pool you could visit between lunch and the evening game drive. Drives between parks were long (~5 hours), but Francis made a few comfort spots at cafe/giftshops and park gates. The game-drives themselves were very good. Tsavo West, Amboseli and Tsavo East provide a great deal of diversity in the landscapes. The van Francis uses has a roof which lifts up, and you can stand up or on seats for a better view - but Amboseli in particular was very dusty in October, so a face covering would be useful to bring. Also, the car can get quite warm, so bringing spare clothes would useful for when you sweat through them. Some limited boot space is available for bags, so I'd recommend you bring a small hand-luggage bag (entertainment, suncream, camera), and a larger bag for clothes/toiletries - maybe sports-bag size, not a plane hold-luggage bag. Francis had a set of binoculars, but I'd encourage you to bring your own if you have one - one set between six led to a fair amount of sharing. I would say that in almost all cases, you don't need binoculars, as the animals can get very close to the trail - it's just the lions which were quite hidden for us. I ended up taking my lion photo through the binoculars! I heard other groups had better sightings. The guides do stop and talk with each other to share tips, so your chances of seeing something are generally quite good. We saw many animals, most of them many times. This isn't an exhaustive list, but we saw: elephants, zebras, giraffes, several gazelle/deer-like species, hyenas, leopards, warthogs, wilderbeast, ostriches, flamingo, vultures, storks, several other types of bird, hippos, mongeese, possibly a crocodile in water, and a vague look at a lion through binoculars. This is the advantage of a 4-day trip, getting a chance to see more animals. For the 4th day, even though we returned for ~14:00, we had a fair few hours of viewing in the morning. One notable exception was rhino - we spent a game-drive in the Tsavo West rhino sanctuary, but even here the sightings are rare, and we didn't get lucky. Personally, I wasn't too bothered, and the vast array of other wildlife more than made up for it. I hope my comprehensive review has been helpful! If you want a safari with professional guides, many game-drives, and brilliant organisation, then I can whole-heartedly recommend this company. This was a spectacular trip which I'm sure to treasure for a lifetime.