Dec. 26, 2021 - It’s finally happening
We wanted to avoid a stopover in a foreign country due to the unplannable quarantine regulation while the Corona pandemic was still active, therefore only a direct flight from Germany to Kenya came into consideration. For our travel period, this was only offered by Lufthansa from Frankfurt Airport. The trip therefore started, like our Kenya trip 2017, with us again at 7:22am at the Düsseldorf airport. Our son-in-law Philipp brought us there.
We bridged the waiting time in the train station with a large latte macchiato and some cookies at Starbucks. Then we took the Airport-Express train as scheduled to Frankfurt Airport, where we met our co-travelers Andrea and Harry in the waiting area of the gate after an unproblematic luggage check-in (the hand luggage was fortunately not weighed).
Our aircraft, the Airbus A330-300 “Oldenburg”, was already waiting at the gate:
After short de-icing (it was December 26 and very cold).
we started on time at 11:30 am. The flight route was via Greece and Egypt, the flight lasted a good 8 hours. Here is a picture of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan at dusk:
Landed in Nairobi
Around 9:15 p.m. we arrived in Nairobi after a pleasant and smooth flight. Armed with all necessary documents (vaccination certificate, Corona PCR test certificate, eVisa) we went to the immigration counter. After the cold temperatures in Germany, we were completely sweaty in the arrival hall in no time.
The formalities took a total of about 2 hours, the clearance was just as usual in Africa: Pole-Pole (Swahili for slow). Of course, almost everything we had meticulously filled out and organized was ignored. They didn’t have any scanners to read the QR codes from the PCR test, so they just took a quick look at the vaccination card. By the way, nobody in Frankfurt was interested in the test either.
Around 11:50 p.m. we were finally through. In front of the airport exit, a Sunworld Safaris employee was awaiting us. We were then taken by minibus to the Sheraton Four Points Hotel, which is still on the airport area and relatively new. We had been there in 2018 as well. After checking in there, we all first took showers and got our bags into safari mode. Then we fell into our beds dead tired for a short sleep. The alarm was set for 5:00 am, as we were already being picked up at 7:00 am for the drive to the Masai Mara.