We left Tortilis Camp early in the morning after staying for three nights. We slept in (barely) instead of going to breakfast so the staff packed us a box full of goodies for the journey. Our guide took us to the airstrip where we took a flight back to Nairobi (about an hour). We had a short layover in Nairobi then caught another flight to our next safari. We didn't go directly to the Cottars Airstrip; however, we flew about forty-five minutes, landed, switched flights then flew another ten minutes to our safari. Cottars 1920 Camp is a vintage safari camp in the private 7600-acre Olderkesi Conservancy bordering the Maasai Mara of Kenya and the Serengeti of Tanzania. It is run by Africa's oldest family-owned safari lineage, a family initially from Oklahoma. It is known for its authentic 1920s white canvas tents and has an old-world British feel. There are no other camps within the vicinity of Cottars so we did not run into any other safari-goers. Tortilis is also quite private and we had only two times I can remember that we saw another camp's car.
A box full of pastries and fruit from Tortilis!
I could see animals from the planes!
The landscape was very different in the Maasai Mara compared to Amboseli.
We met our new driver, Wilson, and our Maasai tracker, Ngotiek.
Cottars 1920 camp was a dream. I took a million photos. This was the main mess tent where you met for meals, talks, games and pre-dinner drinks. On arrival, we sat down to meet with our team. We had a steward, waitress, game driver and tracker. We also met with the managers of the camp. The chef came out and asked what food we liked and what food the kids would eat. Ethan said he liked brownies and the chef made him special brownies one of the afternoons we were there! While we were meeting with them, they brought out homemade chips, a beautiful fruit platter, hummus and drinks. Everyone knew our names before we even arrived (this was the same at Tortilis). I have never felt so spoiled in my life!
We were taken to our tent by Liz. She kept the tent spotless, turned down the beds at night and added the marvelous hot water bottles to heat the sheets, started our fires, brought us extra firewood and coordinated our canvas baths.
This was the view from our porch.
The living room was lovely.
I am still obsessed with these chandeliers.
The master bedroom!
Over all of our journey, you could not use the tap water to brush your teeth. We always had large bottles of filtered water to use.
The kids room had great views.
So adorable!
We sat in and enjoyed every chair and couch.
Cottars 1920 is an open camp which means that any animal can wander in. We saw baboons, gazelles, elands, zebras and more. They told us that we would be okay as long as we stayed on the paths during the day light. At night there is no walking around without a Maasai Warrior who held a small machete and spear. One of the nights we had come back to camp, there was a lioness near the driveway of the camp! Overnight, there is always a warrior stationed outside of each tent in case you need them. As we would leave for game drives before the sun was up, they would also walk us to our car in the morning. They also have a leopard named Georgina who lives on the grounds with her cub. We did not see her, unfortunately.
We got a kick out of the toilets.
We settled in and went back down for lunch.
I had a nap on this lovely couch after lunch.
The kids wanted to go swimming so we got ready for the pool.
A caterpillar safari!
It was too chilly for me.
Our first game drive in the Maasai Mara! The scenery was unreal.
For each game drive in both Tortillis and Cottars, there was a cooler box full of drinks and cute metal bowls full of snacks. They say cooler box instead of just cooler so I say that now too.
There was a lot more grass here and many more bushes and trees.
We saw many jackals.
We saw our first lion of the Maasai Mara.
We stumbled upon another lioness with her kill. The female lions do all the hunting and killing normally.
Shortly after, we came upon the whole pride! They were snacking on another kill behind the tree. Our driver told us this place is like a buffet for them with so many options to hunt and eat!
These are two brothers. They were so cute snuggling!
All cats are the same. Lu does this same thing.
The rest of the pride were too full for this wildebeest. The lioness ate some of it and left the rest.
After we got back we headed straight to dinner.
The food here was fabulous as were the tablescapes. The amount of food was crazy. We would have a main protein dish with at least four to five additional sides! There was also always tea, coffee or cocktail and dessert after dinner.
Our warrior walking us to our tent! It was quite windy at night here so I never heard any animals. We were told a bunch of elephants walked through one night making lots of noise. We must have been sound asleep.
The beds were always already turned down when we returned after dinner.
This was so cozy!
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