Kenya and Tanzania with Overseas Adventure Travel

Since our retirement, my wife, Dorothy, and I follow a custom of celebrating Christmas away from home. We spent the 2005 holiday season on the tour “Best of Kenya and Tanzania,” Dec. 13-31, with Overseas Adventure Travel (One Broadway, Ste. 600, Cambridge, MA 02142; 800/493-6824, www.oattravel.com).

East Africa is an area of great natural beauty mixed with abject poverty — huge collections of animals alongside native peoples scratching out a living yet apparently cheerful.

This itinerary started from Nairobi, Kenya, and went north to a tented camp at the foot of Mt. Kenya — a long haul but worthwhile if for nothing else than the chance to stand at the equator with one foot in each hemisphere.

The return trip south went onto the “circuit” of northern Tanzania, which can be approached from either end. We went east to west from Arusha to Lake Victoria but met other groups going in the opposite direction. The plethora of wildlife around Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti is unmatched.

The base price for 19 days round trip from Orlando, Florida, was $4,900, but one must add costs for visas and immunizations.

The accommodations were luxurious throughout; sometimes we found them a little too upscale. Our previous safari experience with OAT in Zimbabwe and Botswana had been more authentic and down to earth. All meals were included and were varied and copious to the point that we gained weight despite the physical activity involved. Bottled water was available in all of our rooms and tents and in the safari vehicles.

In Kenya we had modified minivans; in Tanzania we had Toyota Land Cruisers with raised roofs and modified to seat seven. As we were a group of only eight, with two vehicles space was not a problem.

Our driver-guides were excellent, keen-eyed and knowledgeable. It was intriguing to find one who pleaded to borrow my wife’s CD of King’s College Cambridge Christmas music, as it was his favorite.

An expensive but very worthwhile option was an early-morning hot-air balloon trip over the western Serengeti ($425). The cool, peaceful ride offered a magnificent view of the Ngorongoro Crater on the horizon, herds of antelope and wildebeest on the plains and eagles in treetop nests below us.

Some of the images are unforgettable: giraffes at the water hole at dusk in Sweetwaters; over a hundred elephants surrounding us in Amboseli; a lion taking down a zebra in Tarangire; lions in Ngorongoro Crater eating a buffalo as their Christmas dinner, plus the ethereal beauty of the crater as the light changed during the day; the handsome dignity of the people, especially the Maasai; the roaring of lions at night; the cheerful fishing village on Lake Victoria; the open trust of children seeking to hold our hands...

One downside — OAT continues to use Northwest Airlines despite their odd schedules and, in my opinion, poor equipment. Fortunately, the legs flown by KLM were better, but, even then, Orlando to Amsterdam via Detroit is a long way around.

Actually, the real flying fun was a 12-seater prop plane from a dirt strip in the Serengeti to Arusha. The strip had to be cleared of animals before the plane could land. This entailed driving a jeep up and down it several times.

Our fourth OAT trip, this one ranks among the best not only with OAT but with all of our other globetrotting excursions.

— CHRISTOPHER HARTLEY, Ormond Beach, FL