Nairobi With Kids: One Night, Giraffes at Breakfast and Elephants at Eleven

Nairobi is the airport, the door, and the place where the safari starts with a giraffe eating out of your child’s hand. One night, two things, and then the small plane to the Mara.

The Sheldrick elephant orphanage is open to the public for one hour a day, at eleven, when the keepers bring the baby elephants in from the forest for their bottles. Twenty or thirty orphans, some a few months old, mud bathing and playing in front of a rope, while a keeper tells each one’s story. Kids can adopt one for a year and get updates. It is the hour every family talks about.

The Giraffe Centre is next. A raised platform at giraffe head height, a handful of pellets, and a Rothschild giraffe taking them from your palm with a tongue the length of a forearm. The brave ones put a pellet in their lips for a giraffe kiss. Ten minutes and a photo nobody deletes.

Where to sleep and the rest

Giraffe Manor is the hotel where the same giraffes put their heads through the breakfast room window. It is expensive and it books a year out and if the budget allows it is the most memorable hotel night of a childhood. Otherwise, a hotel in Karen near the sanctuaries, with a garden and a pool.

Nairobi National Park is on the edge of the city, with lions and rhinos against a skyline of office towers. A morning drive before the airport if the flight is late. The Karen Blixen house from the film is next to the giraffes.

Then Wilson airport, the small plane, and an hour later a dirt strip in the Mara. The city night is the deep breath before the trip begins.

Planning Kenya with kids? Start with the full Kenya family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.