After our poor experience on Lamu Island, we had an incredible experience in Tsavo West National Park, Kenya.
We flew from Lamu Island to Nairobi. We had one night in at the excellent Razana hotel. Then on November 11th we caught a bush plane flight to the Finch Hattons airstrip in Tsavo West national park.
We were met by our guide in a Land Cruiser and driven to Finch Hattons tent camp.
This was the nicest place we have ever stayed in and the best lodging point redemption we have ever had. Our private tent camp was right in front of a lagoon and we had hippos, crocodiles, bushbucks, baboons and other animals all within fifty feet of our deck.
Besides the indoor shower there was an outdoor double shower (a baboon came by and turned on the water at one point). The lodge was fully inclusive with unlimited alcohol. We paid 375,000 Virgin Atlantic miles. If we had paid cash it would have cost us $5,940.
While at this lodge, we went on four game drives and one bush walk. One of the highlights was spotting a Melanistic Serval. This is an all black Serval. Our guide had never seen one and we read that some guides go thirty years without ever seeing one. Alas, the photo below is not mine but is a google image. If I had been able to get a photo it would have been so rare that I was supposed to send it to researchers.
We also saw honey badgers which our guide had not seen for years. Beyond that, tons of giraffes, bushbucks, antelopes, dik diks, baboons, monkeys (Sykes, black face & vervet), Klipspringers, hippos, crocodiles, agama lizards, Nile monitor lizards, savannah monitor lizards, tortoises, a terrapin, secretary birds, guinea fowl, fish eagles and lots of other birds (see Kate’s post for a better list).
THAT SOUNDS GREAT, BUT HOW DID YOU GET THE VIRGIN ATLANTIC POINTS?
I had seen that the lodge was having a sale of 125,000 Virgin Atlantic points per night (usually about 325,000 points per night). I transferred Chase and Amex points to Virgin Atlantic. I transferred 72,000 Amex points in December when they had a 40% transfer bonus in effect and I transferred 200,000 Chase points in June when they had a 25% transfer bonus in effect. This gave us a total of 425,800 Virgin Atlantic points. After making the Finch Hattons booking, that left us with 100,800 Virgin Atlantic points left over (some of which we have already used for flights in Africa).