Nairobi National Park Safari

Kifaru Ark — the rhino sanctuary within the park — is home to one of Kenya's highest concentrations of black rhino. Your driver threads the vehicle through acacia scrub along the Athi River, stopping whenever a shape moves in the grass. The park holds lion, leopard, cheetah, hyena, eland, buffalo, zebra, wildebeest, giraffe, and more than 400 bird species. What is missing: elephant. The park is too small and too close to farms for elephants. But the rhino population more than compensates.

Your picnic lunch is eaten at a designated spot near the river — the Impala site or Kingfisher, depending on the day's route. Between game drives, you will likely stop at the Ivory Burning Monument, where President Moi set fire to twelve tonnes of confiscated ivory in 1989. The monument is a powerful statement on a hill overlooking the park, and the view from there — wildlife in the foreground, city skyline behind — captures the strange magic of this place.

The park has a proper wilderness feel despite the towers visible on the horizon. It works because the animals migrated through this land long before Nairobi was a village, and the fence runs only along the city side — the southern edge is open to the Athi-Kapiti plains. During the dry season, animals move freely between the park and the surrounding conservancies. A full-day game drive here easily fills six to eight hours, and a good guide will find you lion and rhino before lunch.