One writer’s experience planning a big trip, and what you can learn from it

You plan and plan, but nothing prepares you for the first time you hear a lion in the wild roar, or see 300 wildebeests running.

On day one of my Kenyan safari last fall, an elephant walked so close to my vehicle I could have reached out and touched it. Day two brought the sighting of a female cheetah with five cubs, and my first two lions.

My dream safari got better each day. If you’re planning a safari, here’s what I learned that could help you spot the big game.

It’s important to find a guide and driver you’re comfortable with and who can provide the trip you want. One of my traveling companions did most of the trip research over 15 months, finding our husband-and-wife guides Chris and Janine Angell of Activity Safaris through a friend.

“The No. 1 thing is the guide and the trackers on the ground,” said Jim Roane, owner of Roane Travel Design in Excelsior, which specializes in African adventure tours. “A good guide can sit with you for about two hours and tell you why giraffes eat the way they do and what they eat.”

That’s exactly what our guides — native Kenyans with 30 years of safari experience — did. Chris, who drove the Toyota Land Cruiser, had a sixth sense about where animals would be. Janine had a keen eye, spotting cheetahs and lions.

The Angells also had connections to other guides, hotels and more. Driving along a dusty road, Chris stopped to ask another driver, “Anything new?” The response in Swahili sent us hurtling toward an area where some lions were spotted. He soon pulled off to the side and around a bush and there they are — three female lions napping in the shade about 30 feet from me. We watched them in awe. They completely ignored us.

Our group was interested in elephants, big cats, hippopotamuses and rhinoceroses. The Angells tailored our safari to those goals as well as focusing on smaller, less crowded national parks and private land conservancies.

Everyone in our group agreed to be out as often as possible seeing as much as possible. On a typical day, I would rise before the sun did, drink coffee, head off on a safari drive for a couple of hours and return to the lodge for breakfast. That pattern would repeat two more times until we ate dinner around 7:30 p.m.

Our group of four was smaller than the average of six to 12 people. That let us be nimble, make quick decisions, switch positions easily in the Land Cruiser and have meaningful conversations.

Do you want to travel in a jeep or a minibus? How many people do you want to jockey with for the best view? Group size is something to consider.

It’s a long flight — 17 hours or more — to reach Africa. Consider spending a day or two in a connecting city, such as London or Paris, in each direction to break it up. My travel buddies and I added a cushion day before the safari to acclimate and combat jet lag. An added bonus was being able to explore Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi.

On safari, you’ll spend hours sitting or standing in a vehicle jostling over rough terrain. There also are long drives between camps. My 11-day safari covered about 1,200 miles.

“It can be rough,” said Mary O’Sullivan, a Mankato retiree who last fall joined a 14-day, 12-person tour in Kenya and Tanzania thanks to a small bequest from her late sister. “There’s a big step up and a big step down on the Toyota Land Cruiser. My quadricep muscles were so sore the first few days.”

Overall, the safari “really exceeded my expectations,” she said.

Roane suggested asking to sit in the front of the safari vehicle with the driver or toward the front, because “the farther back you sit, the bumpier it gets,” he said. Some older adults are opting to pay more to fly from camp to camp instead of taking a four-hour drive or longer, he added.

Early on, I checked the U.S. State Department’s website for what travel documents I would need and when. I realized my passport would expire just days before the six-month validity required by Kenya, so I applied for a new one, which took six weeks. I also applied for a Kenya travel visa within three months of arrival. If that’s unappealing to you, plenty of travel companies will handle the visa process for you.

Check if there are any health alerts or recommended precautions for your destination on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s website. Consider a consultation with a travel nurse months in advance. I received six vaccinations and asked my health care provider to print out my official immunization record to carry with me just in case.

For the first time, I bought travel insurance, researching insurers online and querying a Facebook travel group for recommendations.

Most people who take a safari aim for the “Big Five”: the lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros and Cape buffalo, Roane and Chris Angell said.

I saw four of the Big Five (the leopard remained elusive) and all of the “Ugly Five” — the wildebeest, hyena, warthog, marabou stork and vulture. While searching for and finding a lion was an adrenaline-rush, I also enjoyed spotting smaller animals, including the bat-eared fox, bright agama lizard, African wildcat and silver-backed jackal.

“The Big Five should be the Big 25 or 35,” Chris Angell said. “The cheetahs, giraffes, zebras are all a spectacle.”

After all of the preparations, it’s the unexpected that makes a safari spectacular.