Fairmont Hotels Kenya What Has Changed
If you stroll into the bar at the Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club Hotel to day
, you will not see Ernest Hemingway telling tales from the day's big-game hunting, neither will you witness Ava Gardner downing gimlets in an attempt to forget her failed marriage to Frank Sinatra; nor will you have to fight pet leopards for a seat.But in the Mount Kenya Safari Club's heyday in the 1950s all these activities were common, Hollywood heartthrob William Holden (Bridge Over The River Kwai, Network) and his partners, oil billionaire Ray Ryan and Swiss financier Carl Hirschmann, ran the place as the most elite private members' club hotel in the Africa. Membership was by invitation only and members included Bing Crosby, David Lean, Charlie Chaplin, Steve McQueen, Conrad Hilton, Winston Churchill and the Maharaja of Jaipur.
Stefanie Powers and John Hurt still keep houses adjoining the club.Holden, fell in love with Kenya on safaris in the '50s, was known for his practical joking in the bar, such as snakes hidden in the bottom of a peanut tin. He was also a very hands-on manager, keeping an eye on the bar and its goings-on via telescope from his private villa.
"Bill Holden said, when he saw the hotel 'This is the most beautiful place in the world', remembers American Don Hunt, Holden's friend and chairman of the Mount Kenya Game Ranch, a conservation project set up next door to the club. The club's beauty includes sweeping highland forest that leads into dense thickets of bamboo, while rich clusters of birdlife and herds of waterbuck roam nearby.
Canadian-based hotel group Fairmont, has changed the hotel four years ago. The beauty that awaits you when you turn right past an electricity substation from the nearest township, Nanyuki, with a family of warthogs trotting alongside. A few minutes later, imposing iron gates embroidered with Mount Kenya Safari Club logo, two elephant heads, you can see what captivated Holden.
Manicured lawns sweep down to a pool, past flower-filled ponds and then on to the slopes, where they climb for kilometers to the snow-dusted peak of Mt Kenya. The club is constructed on the equator its line cutting straight through the main bar, following the curve of the national park before running straight along the seventh hole of the club's petite nine-hole golf course.
The Mount Kenya Safari Club general manager is, Philippe Cauviere a gregarious Frenchman with "hospitality in his blood" The club's 124 rooms are imposing and royally decorated, many with gargantuan fireplaces lit each evening to stave off the crisp mountain cold. The General Manager's aim is to bring back the delight and the glamour to the club as well as the tradition, and he spares no details, his dream is to bring back the white peacocks that used to roam the grounds, the zebras and even cheetahs. He also aims to restore the spirit of the club as a vacation destination.
The Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi, where the history is more White Mischief than Mogambo, scenes from White Mischief was filmed in the hotel and much of the real mischief took place inside its walls. Now, the walls are adorned with paintings of another African epic by Irish artist Timothy Brooke, made from sketches of his time as an extra on Sydney Pollack's Oscar-scooping Out Of Africa.
The Norfolk is Nairobi's oldest hotel, opened in 1904; it is one of the few buildings to survive the razing of Colonial-era buildings in the '60s that followed the overthrow of British rule. This venerable abode, along with Mount Kenya and the Mara Safari Club, were purchased by Fairmont in 2004 from Lonrho Hotels & Lodges. A $50-million refurbishment started and it would have been completed last year.
The Norfolk Hotel has seen the bulk of Fairmont's investment, with Mount Kenya a close second, and it is evident as soon as you arrive. The most controversial change was to eliminate the terrace bar, which once hosted Nairobi's hard-drinking set, with the elegant Lord Delamere Terrace, where seasonal bites replaced heavy spirits and regulars are likely to be seen working on a laptop than nursing a hangover. However it's still a lovely bar to catch a Tusker, a Kenya beer.
Mara Safari Club Camp, a luxury safari tented camp is located on an oxbow along the Mara River. The Mara Safari Club is characterized Hippos bathing beneath your tent. The camp was leased from a Masai Chief. The main area with a restaurant, bar and library is the social focus of the club where safari stories are swapped and thirsts quenched, however the Mara is really about wildlife and savannah, safaris to view wildlife imply no time is spent in the tents.
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