Kenya - Outspan Treetops Adventure
Historic Travel to Africa to See Kenya's Wild Animals Up Close
Kenya's Outspan Treetop Adventure in Aberdare National Park is a world class resort for viewing animals in their natural habitat as they come to drink at the water hole
Kenya - Treetops - Queen Elizabeth Was Here
Treetops is a tree-house lodge, famous for it's water hole where, at dusk, Kenya's wild animals emerge from the bush to drink. Today is one of the best places in the world to view wild life up close. It was here, in 1952, that the young Princess Elizabeth climbed into what was then a much smaller tree house to spend the night with her husband, Prince Philip. She descended the next morning as Queen Elizabeth II - her father, King George VI, had died during the night.
Kenya - Outspan Treetops Adventure.
This was the first time that a floodlight was used on the very top of the tree - to create ‘artificial moonlight’ in the absence of a full moon. For the rich and famous no visit to Africa was regarded as complete with experiencing this house in the trees.
Kenya - Aberdare National Park,
Treetops started out in a modest way. In 1928 a couple of English settlers, Sherbrooke Walker and his wife Bettie, opened a small four-bedroom hotel in Nyeri, a three hour drive from Nairobi. They called it The Outspan and shortly afterwards they began to build Treetops - the result of Bettie’s memories of England and the tree house built in the family garden by her brothers. It was to be a place where visitors could shoot the animals with a camera instead of guns. It overlooked a large waterhole where, day and night, the animals emerged from the bush to drink.
Kenya - Getting Close to the Animals
Like the Outspan, Treetops started out in a very humble way, as a two-room house in a fig tree. Today it has about fifty rooms. At night the waterhole is softly floodlit and guests, sit on open balconies and watch the animals. But to get really close the best place for viewing is the “hide” - a ground-level room which faces the waterhole. It’s a marvellous spot for observing at close quarters and for taking photographs Slowly moving herds of buffallo approach in twos and threes until they gradually reach the waterhole to spend a good hour drinking and licking the salt flats. Then, as darkness approached, the elephants and rhinos come.
Today, just as was the case fifty years ago, the evening meal at Treetops, by candlelight at long wooden tables, followed by the nightly visits of the animals to the waterhole, is an unforgettable experience.
Kenya - The Heart of Africa
From your bed you can see the huge stars of Africa, hear crickets and frogs, and in the bright moonlight watch buffalo and elephants wander by the waterhole while fat Egyptian geese waddled across the grass below your window. You will feel you really are in the heart of Africa.
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