Travel Masters Podcast
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Travel Masters Podcast
Passion and Purpose Redefined in the Heart of Africa
Travel expert Karen Cleveland shares her personal journey from healthcare to leading safaris in Kenya, emphasizing the enriching experiences that go beyond wildlife encounters. She provides insights on planning incredible safari adventures, cultural interactions, safety measures, and client engagement for travel agents.
• The meaning of safari goes beyond wildlife; it’s a journey
• Different accommodation types cater to various comfort levels
• Kenya’s climate is temperate year-round, reducing heat concerns
• Interactions with local Maasai tribes add depth to the experience
• Travel agents must ensure guests' passports, visas, and travel plans are in order
• Wildlife encounters are generally safe due to conservation efforts
• Recommended health precautions are important for travelers
• Nunu's Kenyan Safaris promotes sustainable tourism and community benefits
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Welcome to the Travel Masters podcast. We're here to help travel advisors and travel agency owners get what they really want from their business. I'm Morris Sims and I'm going to be your host for our podcast. I'm an ex-chemical engineer turned life insurance agent. I got to tell you selling life insurance was a lot more fun for me than being an engineer. After a few years, they asked me to teach other people how to do what I was doing. And well, long story short, we wound up in New York City for 20 years. That was quite a change for a young Alabama boy. I retired after 20 years as the vice president and chief learning officer, where my team and I trained over 12,000 agents and their managers to be independent business owners and sales professionals. Now I'm not one to stop working, so I started my own business and I was blessed to find a sweet spot with travel professionals that I was able to help. Now I've got several travel agency consulting clients and I'm the co-founder of the Travel Masters Learning Community, where we provide opportunities for travel professionals to become more effective, efficient and to get what they want from their business.
Speaker 1:On this podcast, I'm going to be interviewing guests that I believe are going to have a message that can be of help to you. Our travel professional community and I'll do some solo episodes as well with some other stuff that I really think can help you in your business. So, with all that said, hey, let's get this party started with today's episode. What do you say? Karen Cleveland is with us today on the Travel Masters podcast, and I'm really excited about this. I've talked to a lot of people about travel over the last oh, I don't know how long, but over the last many, many months, and we've gotten into some really neat things and we've talked about a lot of really neat things. We've talked about a lot of really neat stuff, but Karen's unique and I can't wait for you to learn more about what she does and how you might be able to connect with Karen and be able to do some things that maybe you had never thought of till today. So, karen Cleveland, thank you so much for being with us today.
Speaker 2:How are you, I'm good. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I'm excited to share some of these unique or different ideas.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm sure you've got plenty. I'm looking forward to this for sure. Tell us a little bit about how you got involved in travel and what you do today.
Speaker 2:Sure, I will tell you, I started. My very first experience in travel was being a host for the NCAA the final eight I can't remember what they call them now, not the final four, but the eight. They were in Seattle and I helped direct people onto buses to go see them. But I became a travel agent for a while, but my primary career was in healthcare. I just couldn't quite figure out how to make it pay as a travel agent for many years. So I was in healthcare and I went on a safari.
Speaker 2:Eight or nine years ago I finally felt like I had the money and the time and my kids were grown and gone and that kind of stuff. So I went on safari with some friends and gone and that kind of stuff. So I went on safari with some friends and I thought I was going on a bucket list item, checking a box, come home, share pictures. But once I got there, things changed and it was a magical journey for me. I ended up at the end of that trip meeting a man who is now my husband. And so that trip yeah, it was completely unexpected.
Speaker 2:I was not looking for a husband, but something had a greater idea for me. So, fast forward to today, well, no, I should say over the last, then eight or nine years, I would take friends to Kenya, because now I had a reason to go to Kenya. I would take friends and family and their friends go on safari, visit my again now husband who does live in the States with me. And so it just kind of became not a business but something I did was take people on safari. Not a business, but something I did was take people on safari. And so my husband and I last year decided to actually make it official and start our own safari company.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I and it is kind of an unusual thing to do A person from Seattle taking people to Kenya on safari and talking about safaris or talking about Kenya but it just feels natural to me because I've been and I've been a lot and now I know how to make it easy and safe and comfortable for other people. So I really like to help explain what it's like and what to do.
Speaker 1:Hey, I told you guys this was going to be interesting and different. Listen up, because Karen's got even more to share with us. I bet, karen, that is really very seriously. It's very interesting to hear your story and I'm just so glad you guys have been able to turn it into something that generates income and revenue for you and your family. But tell us a little more about this whole idea of safari. I've never thought about it until just now, but you say we go on safari. What does safari mean? I mean you know we all have this idea that you go on safari and you see elephants and lions and tigers and all those kinds of things. But what does this really mean? What are we doing here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question Because safari, so the actual word is Swahili for journey. So we're just going on a journey and you know, and safaris started what probably 200, 300 years ago, with the British on hunting safaris.
Speaker 2:And that's not what I do. I do photographic and just connection experience safaris, and it can mean so many different things. So it can mean you fly into a really nice resort in the middle of a national park and go out for game drives twice a day and just kind of stay there, stay put and just enjoy resort facilities, going out and visiting the animals, or most of the ones I do involve visiting different parks because at different parks there's different animals, there's different landscape. It's just a different experience. So usually we will, you know, once we fly into Nairobi we drive to our first park. We're there for two or three days, just depends on the park and then we drive to another park two or three more days, two or three more days. So we see a large variety of the landscape of Kenya, of the communities and how they live, in addition to the different animals that eat at each park you mentioned.
Speaker 1:you fly into Nairobi and you go to the first part, a resort at the park. When I think about going on safari, of course I see, as you mentioned, the British old version. I see tents and the people with the big white hats. I don't see resorts. Tell me more.
Speaker 2:Well, it's one option. It's one option. You can spend $10,000 a night if you want to. Yeah, no, so there's several. You know, richard Branson just opened a hotel and in Masai Mara, and Marriott has a very nice hotel now, but that's not where I stay, that's not where most of my people stay, but it is available, just so you know it's available. So the tents we stay at, some tented I do call them resorts because they do have swimming pools, they have full food service, that kind of stuff, but they're usually they have floors, so they're tented cabins.
Speaker 2:Basically they have floors, they have bathrooms, they have running water, they have floors. So they're tented cabins basically. They have floors, they have bathrooms, they have running water, they have electricity. And then there's also lodges that are hard-sided or cabins, so there's a whole variety. People can go camping. You can take your own tent actually to some campgrounds and do that too. So every comfort level, every budget level can be accommodated. I would compare the most of my personal safaris that I do. Most of them would be compared to say, I don't know like a Hampton Inn, hilton Garden Inn kind of, you know of a mid-level kind of upper a little bit, not the full Ritz-Carlton, not Motel 6.
Speaker 1:It's interesting and there's just I don't know. I was raised in Alabama and it gets hot, and you know. Then we got air conditioning and ever since then I've decided that God made air conditioning on purpose and if it gets hot you turn it on. It doesn't really matter what time of year it is or where you might happen to be. When we moved to New York we had neighbors and they came over. It's just, it's not even May and you've got the air conditioner on. I said it's hot outside. So yeah, I do. Thermostat is not connected to the calendar.
Speaker 2:So question I agree, good Question comes out of that is it gets hot in Africa. Are these places air conditioned? Well, that's a great question, and here's a little education moment. Well, let me start by saying all of Africa is a little bit different. So I go specifically to Kenya, which is right on the equator, and, believe it or not, it is pretty temperate year round. So just while I was there in December, the lows were down maybe to the 50s at the coldest places and the highs during the day up to the mid 80s, and that's pretty consistent year-round for the safari parks and so you can.
Speaker 1:That's not terrible.
Speaker 2:That's not at all what I expected it's not terrible, so you don't really need air conditioning in those places. There are some places in kenya you can go that are in the 90s and 100s. Yeah, some of them do have air conditioning, but most of the parks don't get that hot and in fact at nighttime they'll put hot water bottles in your bed to warm up your bed, because they can get chilly at night because it's actually a very high elevation, like mile high-ish through most of the parks. Yeah, yeah. So all these things that you see about you know, africa and safari in Kenya yes, they can be brown, there's a lot of sun. There is a lot of sun, but it's not necessarily hot.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you fly in and then you stay at these national and you go out a couple of times a day and you see animals and topography and landscape or, if you will, whatever you want to call that the folks who live there normally every day and spend their life. Do you interact with the indigenous people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do to some degree. So we do some village visits to villages that extend invitations to us, and a lot of that might be the Maasai tribe, which is one of the more well-known African tribes, the Maasai people and they're the ones that are. They're usually tall and they do a lot of jumping. You might see videos of people jumping in their dances. Yeah, and I'm actually trying to implement a program with a lot of my safaris that we do more local visits. Just because things are different, things are different. And so getting to know my husband's family and village and you know things as simple as they brush their teeth differently than we do, these are, these are or they're taught, I guess, to brush their teeth at a different time of day than we're taught.
Speaker 2:So there's just these little weird things that you're not going to know unless you actually go visit them and see for yourself, or if they show you how they cook, that kind of thing. But yeah, there's usually at least one visit for those that want to go. That's amazing.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter, makes no difference here or there, but I'll tell you this I do an exercise when I'm teaching people how to do training, where I say, okay, now you've got to write the procedure for how to brush your teeth, and you've got to write this procedure for an alien who has never been on the earth at all, ever in his entire existence, and now you've got to teach him how to brush his teeth. So what does he do first and how does he do it? And you'd be surprised at the different things people come back with. Well, you know, you got to do this, then you got to do that, and it's amazing.
Speaker 1:So even on the earth, people do things differently based on culture and how they were brought up, and that's got to be interesting.
Speaker 2:And she said how they were brought up and that's got to be interesting. Yeah, oh yeah, it's interesting and the more I go and learn, the more interesting it gets that I've camped a lot in my life, so I'm a camper. I go out and you know, don't mind that, and you know don't mind that, but even coming across some of the bugs that I've never seen before, or you know, there's just things are pretty dusty there. They are pretty dusty because it doesn't rain a lot.
Speaker 2:So, there is, you know, different levels of, I guess, dirt and bugs and things like that. That, that, that that are you can deal with. You know they're dealt with well. It's just something new and different.
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Speaker 1:For right now, let's get back to the show. That's amazing. My lovely bride and she and I have been married now for 46, seven years, something like that a long time and she's every now and again. We've talked about it and she says, yeah, I'd go camping. My idea of camping is the Holiday Inn, where there's running water, air conditioning and a bathroom. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:If there's not those things, I'm not going. So you know she is not a camper, unless it has to do with the Holiday Inn or a Marriott courtyard or something along those lines. That's just not her thing, but it sounds like there'd be options that would be able to accommodate someone like my, carla, who prefers to camp with indoor plumbing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and you know I actually I have a video that I made just to show people what a typical day on safari is, Because there is no typical day. So when I say on safari back to your question a long time ago I just mean I'm referring to the whole trip and the actual drives. When we go to see animals, those are called game drives, but a lot of people would choose to stay back and swim in the swimming pool, for example, because there's a pool just about everywhere and there's a bar just about everywhere, Of course, For some people. Yeah, so there's a lot of, I guess, amenities at these places if another game drive isn't what you're up for in the morning or in the afternoon.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So let's get into the practical stuff for our audience out there. If I'm a travel agent, I'm thinking, gee, maybe I could get a group of people that might want to go on safari. What does it take to pull that off if you're the travel agent organizing a group?
Speaker 2:There is some things people need to look at as a travel agent. So you know their passports. They need to have at least six months on their passports, which is pretty normal. They do need to. It's a visa-free country, but you still need advance authorization, so there is still a form electronically. Kenya has people fill out that they need to get into the country, Travel to Kenya. So I'm coming from the West Coast and it takes me about a day to get there and a half a day to get back. But for me I usually go through Amsterdam or Paris. It's about eight or nine hours there and then another eight or nine hours from Paris to Nairobi.
Speaker 1:Do you stay overnight in Paris or Amsterdam or do you just change planes? I just change planes personally, and what airlines get into Nairobi.
Speaker 2:Quite a few now. So KLM, air France, british Air, lufthansa, turkish Qatar, qatar and Emirates all go there and I have flown most of them, so I'm pretty good at using miles on any airline miles and points or whatever's the cheapest. Yeah, and I sleep really easy on flights, so I don't mind not spending the night somewhere, I just get on the next flight and go. But some of those airlines are more comfortable than others.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, I did a stint in India a couple of times and I, what did I fly on? I flew on Emirates and it was. It was very nice because the company I was working for put me in business class, but oh yeah. I saw the folks back in the cattle car too, and I'm geez, that's a long flight for that.
Speaker 2:It is a long flight when you're have very limited leg and seat room.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, that's amazing. Wow, and it is. This is all just blowing my mind, Karen. It just, it just really is. So if I'm a travel agent, I wanted to put all that stuff together. There's got to be destination services. Is that something that we would talk to you about and say, okay, I've got a group of people we want to go on safari. Help me make this happen and pull it all together. You take care of everything once I get the group together, or how does that?
Speaker 2:work. Absolutely, I can help you because we have. So we have our own vehicles and we have some of our own drivers, but we can also, you know, outsource if, if they're busy or if there's a big group. So we need to know, you know, what kind of comfort level and luxury level and budget they want to know. Do they like to go, go, go? Do they want to relax through the whole thing? Do they want to do hot air balloon rides? I mean, a hot air balloon ride over the Masamara is pretty exquisite, it's pretty amazing. But do they want to ride bikes? Do they want to do some? So most safaris are vehicle safaris and there's not a lot of activity and so a lot of the cabins are going to be like the biggest form of exertion, like walking from the drop-off point to your cabin.
Speaker 2:that might be quite a ways, believe it or not because, they will often position them around a waterhole, for example, so you can see the wildlife from your room. But if you're a person that doesn't like to sit a lot and you're in a vehicle all day, do you need to add some things to go with it so you're getting a little more exercise? So there are a lot of questions to ask. You know is there a time of year?
Speaker 2:Are you limited in the time or I guess and I guess they're pretty normal triaging questions when someone wants to go on a tour somewhere and wants to do something.
Speaker 1:And I'm sure you provide or have access to some promotional materials that I could use with my clientele to offer this to them as an opportunity, right?
Speaker 2:I do, and we have a great referral partner program. Oh cool, yeah, so I will. Absolutely, if you or you know a tour. Well, absolutely, if you or you know a tour. I actually have a fam trip coming up in April. I still have a spot left open If someone wants to go check out Kenya. I don't know when this is airing, but yeah, but absolutely, I have information available.
Speaker 1:And before I forget to ask, because every now and again I'll forget how do we contact you? How should an agent get in touch with you?
Speaker 2:So yes, our company is called Nunu's Kenyan Safaris and it's N-U-N-U-S and Nunu was the name of my husband's mother, so it is named in her honor. So Nunu's Kenyan Safaris. You can find that on, you know, nunuskenyansafariscom. Or I'm Karen at nunuskenyansafariscom, facebook. Just look for Karen T Cleveland and I post most everything on my personal page. We do have a Nunu's page as well. And then, of course, you know, there's phone numbers. I'll go ahead and give a phone number. That's fine. Us phone number 425-309-0950 is our local Seattle office. We do have an office in Kenya too. So, yeah, you can find me any of those ways and I'll get you all the information you want.
Speaker 1:Well, that's amazing. And I guess one last question, karen, that I think crosses everybody's mind, because again, movies and just growing up I think of safari, and it's like who's got the elephant gun to protect me from that big old elephant over there and who's going to shoot the lion before he has me for breakfast?
Speaker 2:You're on your own, no not really. Not really, not really. They're actually really safe. So one thing about Kenya is they outlawed hunting back in the 70s.
Speaker 2:And so the animals are generally not afraid of people. Now there are poachers and such, so there's a few. But when they see a vehicle drive in they're not automatically afraid, as opposed to when they see a helicopter, which usually has a dart gun in it. Because they need to tranquilize them for something. They're afraid of the helicopters, they hide from them, but the vehicles are generally okay and they don't really care. They don't really want us. The lions will come up next to the vehicles and they'll look at us, but they would want to play with us perhaps, but not eat us so much. And the elephants you do need to watch out that you don't get them angry because they will charge your vehicle. But the drivers and guides at least the ones we use all my experience has been they know what they're seeing and they know when to get away.
Speaker 1:Boy, that's amazing. That's just absolutely incredible. So disease and stuff is the next thing I think about with Africa is I'm sorry to say, is all the terrible diseases that we keep talking about here in the United States that are taking place over there.
Speaker 2:Good question. So I always tell people you know, talk to your travel doctor. There's nothing mandatory coming in or out of Kenya right now, but some things that are recommended might be yellow fever, might be typhoid hepatitis, so just kind of some general immunizations. There have been some diseases recently near Kenya but they're not actually in Kenya and I can't remember the name of it right now, but from the Congo but, you're not.
Speaker 2:Unless you're interacting a lot with the locals, like hugging and handshaking a lot and doing a lot of activity with them being out on safari, you're not interacting with the people quite as much, so you're not as much at risk.
Speaker 1:You're with all the rest of those crazy people that are on safari.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:That's just amazing. Karen, thank you so much for joining me today on the Travel Masters podcast. I really appreciate it. And to tell you what this is, of all the shows I've done and on both of my shows I guess we've done over well over 300 episodes I think this is probably the most interesting one I have ever done in my entire experience.
Speaker 2:Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Yeah, if anyone needs any information, I'm happy to talk to them about it.
Speaker 1:New news Kenyan Safari. Yes, boy, y'all get out there and give Karen a buzz and drop her a note and see what you can learn. Because I'm telling you what I would bet money that there's not another travel agent in your area that's putting together a group to go on safari in Kenya. But now you know how to do it. So get out there and meet some new people, have a great time and see you again next time right here on the Travel Masters podcast. My name is Morris Sims. Karen, thanks again. Have a great day, I'm.