Kenya Safari
I think it is about time I write about safari destinations in Kenya since I just wrote about Ol Pejeta Conservancy and Pamela and I toured many other parks in November. I’ll skip the Nairobi destinations and save them for an entry on Nairobi. I have now seen a good part of Kenya although the more I see the more I want to see. Given that I still have a long list of places in California that I want to see after 25 years of living there and touring around the state regularly, I would guess that it will take a lifetime to see all of Kenya. I had alluded in the past that we had some trouble during our three-week trip and that was a main reason for not writing about it in the past. Our guide basically ripped me off and abandoned us near the end of the trip in Mombasa area. As time has gone on I feel less inclined to write about that bad apple and just move on. Considering the number of people in Africa and Latin America that I have blindly put faith in and trusted with money and my well-being, I consider it a real statement about humanity that there has only been one thief and crazy person amongst all of them. Kenya has bad apples like everywhere else, but they are a small minority and I do everything I can to not let them taint everything that is great about this country and people.
The trip had a few components to it. I wanted to see Nairobi where Pamela lived and that was suppose to include the largest slum called Kibera. I also wanted to visit a couple of orphanages so we chose one between Nairobi and Mt Kenya and another near Pamela’s family’s village near Mt Kenya. Pamela wanted to show me where she was from and have meet her family. I also wanted to see a number of different parks and their animals and different tribal peoples and, finally, spend some time on the coast. About the only failure with the plans was that we were not able to visit Kibera due to things being iffy due to the upcoming elections. Now that I live in Nairobi not far from Kibera, I will make it there one of these days. There are a number of volunteer groups working in Kibera and that may be the way that I get there over the next year. As I said in the last post, one can never appreciate the size of an almost million person slum until you see it from the air – truly remarkable and horrifying.
The two orphanages were pretty amazing parts of the trip. There are over two million orphans in Kenya mostly caused by AIDS and to some degree by the number of single women having children combined with poverty. The young children at the first orphanage being run by a retired man and some women were a lot of fun to meet. I was very touched by the sacrifice of the people running the home and by the mental and psychological disabilities some of the children had. We brought exam books, pens and pencils as gifts and made a cash donation to help. We all laughed a lot and I suppose that was the more important gift that we brought that day. The second orphanage in Meru had older kids – all boys – maybe between 9 and 17 – all of which had serious physical disabilities such as being in wheelchairs. One kid had a huge head from some weird ailment where fluids caused it to grow. We visited this orphanage again more recently and his head looked much better. Frank who dedicates his retired life to these kids does a great job in helping them learn to live with their disabilities. Since this orphanage is in Pamela’s home village, we will make periodic stops to say hello and make a donation. Both orphanages sang songs for us – something I have just come to expect in Africa and especially Kenya where songs are part of everyone’s lives.
A couple of days before we started I became very concerned about meeting Pamela’s family. It all of a sudden meant something that I did not want it to meet. Luckily for me I met her wonderful parents and other family members and things were not awkward just easy. Meru South is a highland tropical area as green in flora as you can ever find. The hill where her parents, Riungu and Idah, and maybe four hundred other extended family members live is mostly tea farming although everyone has a mix of different plants such as bananas, potatoes, mangos, and many other fruits and vegetables for their food. Riungu and I spent a day hiking down the valley and visiting with people along the way as we ventured through neighboring farms. I met numerous children who had never met a mzungu before. Meru and in particular this part of Meru is not a tourist haven. We all had a good time with it. The views of Mt Kenya are stunning until the daily clouds cover it up and the rivers coming down from the mountain are very clean. The equatorial highland forest for Mt Kenya comes right down to this area so there is a clear delineation between farms and wild areas. I believe it is about 20 kilometers between the mountain and these farms in which many animals like elephants, giraffes, monkeys and leopard live, but they do not come into the farms. Late in the day a group of us drove up the hill and hiked down the ravine to a cave. Riungu told us that the rebels fighting the British during independence battles used this caves and others in the area to hide from the British troops. The British never found these hiding places and I was probably the first white person to see this cave. Its main feature was the thousands of bats.
The real safari began when we drove north of Meru (this is all on the east side of Mt Kenya – second tallest mountain in Africa after Kilimanjaro) to Shaba National Reserve. Shaba is next to Buffalo Springs National Reserve and Samburu National Park so this is a huge area set aside for wildlife. The dry landscape is acacia-filled savannah with large rocky hills/mountains providing an amazing contrast to nearby Meru. The whole trip provide less than stellar big cat sightings, but we did find two cheetah brothers lounging around before getting up to hunt right before sunset. I think the best part of this visit was seeing Pamela react to seeing the elephants, giraffes, buffalos and other big animals. She was obviously enjoying the time. I also really liked visiting with the local pastoral Samburu tribe. They loved that Pamela was a fellow Kenyan and she was quite amazed by their bright clothes and jewelry, their barren stick and mud homes and village and their animated dancing. We handed out more books and pencils at the village and the children were great to see. Other highlights included seeing grevy’s zebras which have very thin stripes and are quite striking and seeing gerenuks which are a small antelope with a very long neck and stands on its hind legs in order to reach acacia leaves as if it is a giraffe. Both were new species for me and ones that for the most part only exist in this area. We stayed at the Sarova game lodge along the river that separates Shaba from Samburu. The lodge was a fantastic place with amazing amounts of wildlife including large monitor lizards, crocodiles, birds, monkeys and baboons. The monkeys were the troublemakers making one attack on a female diner while we were there.
Next we drove around the northern end of Mt Kenya and down its western side to the city of Nakuru where Lake Nakuru National Park is located. The park is very convenient to the city so we stayed in town rather than in the park. Nakuru was a very violent place during the post-election eruption, but it seemed like a decent and calm large city when we visited just weeks earlier. This park is famous for its birds. In particular, hundreds of thousands of flamingos and white pelicans are in this shallow alkaline lake. Of the six million flamingos in the world, three-fourths of them are located in the Rift Valley lakes such as Nakuru in Kenya and Tanzania. A ribbon of pink wraps around the lake’s edge making a stunning scene. I loved taking photos here especially of the birds in mid-flight. We were able to get out of the vehicle and stand near the water which really made the numbers of the birds seem more tremendous. Right in front of us on a small island separated from the shore a cape buffalo sat surrounded by the pink. Zebras and many other birds were there, too. The lake is ringed on two sides by hills and cliffs. Looking down at the lake later from the cliffs was mind-boggling because we could see every single bird and their pink ribbon. I will definitely visit more of the Rift Valley saline lakes in the future to see more of the flamingos. The park also has a lot of rhinos. We mainly saw the more docile white rhinos grazing in the fields next to the lake. A never to be forgotten moment had us watching a male rhino chasing a female and her baby. They went right by us and the chase only ended when he tired. At that point he was behind us and he turned and stared at us. We took off just in time as he decided to charge us. I would not want to be in a vehicle that is hit by a rhino. We found one black rhino during the last drive on the hilly side of the lake. He was a real menace and was definitely running at us and everything else that moved.
Other highlights at Nakuru included finding two lioness in a dead tree. Lions are not good tree climbers and this was amply demonstrated when they almost fell a couple of times. We saw them later as we left the park at sunset when they were starting to hunt. We had a close encounter with baboons on the top of the cliff, but they were peaceful. Peaceful enough that we posed right next to them. My favorite photo is one of just baboon hands clearly showing that they have finger and palm prints. The other really amazing sighting was a herd of 100-200 cape buffalo charging through the lake. Their power and sound was intense. I would say that Lake Nakuru is one of the easiest and most rewarding parks in Africa. Truly a wonder considering the city can be seen from some of the spots around the lake.
We crossed the equator numerous times since it basically goes through Mt Kenya and we circled it. We did the picture routine at one of the stops and watched a man demonstrate how water flows on either side. He poured water into a funnel and we watched it swirl counter-clockwise on the north side, clockwise on the south and straight down on the equator. I liked the demonstration a lot.
I had wanted to go to Amboseli National Park for the last couple of years since first coming to see Tanzania and Kenya parks. My friend, Bebe, along with anyone else who has been there raves about it. You know Amboseli. Think about images of elephants and/or giraffes with Kilimanjaro in the background and you’re thinking about Amboseli which is just north of the Tanzania border and the tallest mountain in Africa. Amboseli is mainly a dry lake bed teaming with herds of animals and their predators. The highlight of this park was having my friend Albert and his daughter, Ayana, from Tanzania join us for two days. It was very special to see Ayana gawking at the animals. Albert told me that he had never had a vacation in his 50+ years until this quick trip from their home in Arusha. Mixing the Kenyans and Tanzanians together made for some great times, too. Kilimanjaro showed itself each morning, but quickly covered up and I was not able to get great pictures of giraffes or elephants in its foreground. But the photography was far from being a bust. As our first day’s drive ended near sunset we came across a huge meeting of many elephant families totaling hundreds strong. I have never witnessed anything like this and our vehicle was right in the middle of it all when they crossed the road heading for some forest for the night. A brilliant red sun was hanging right at the horizon and I was able to get shots of that sunset with silhouetted elephants – basically another classic Africa photo – one in which every viewer can instantly identify which continent it was taken. Wildebeest, lion, impala, zebra, and many of the other animals of Kenya were well represented in this park dominated by the mountain to the south. We stayed at a wonderful safari lodge owned by Serena and I would stay there again without question.
I had attempted to stop us from spending time in Tsavo East and Tsavo West National Parks which are just east of Amboseli also near the Tanzanian border. These parks are wonderful, but they are huge and I read enough reports to understand that they are not great for game viewing. In the end, I am glad we did visit them for their scenery and animals, but they are not great parks for seeing game. The size of the parks is one issue and they are also full of undergrowth so that even when you are close to elephants they can be difficult to see. Highlights at these parks included blue monkeys (a first for me, but they are not rare), three cheetahs and their mom lounging on a small hill and red elephants. The red elephants were very special. They are normal African elephants, but the soil at Tsavo is red and the elephants are covered with the red mud. We had some very bad luck with getting the right angle with the sun and these elephants at a close distance so I never pulled off a photo that was stellar as I have seen in the past with these subjects. I think Tsavo parks could be a great experience, but they are a place where your vehicle MUST have a radio so that you can find game spotted by other vehicles. Generally, I do not like radios to be on, but I will make sure we have one next time we visit Tsavo area. We stayed at a tented camp with a hippo and crocodile lake that reflected the northeastern side of Mt Kilimanjaro each morning. I was wondering how the hippos (fierce animals) and nile crocodiles (scary!) got along. The owner told us that one day a crocodile ate one of the hippo babies. The crocodiles are at one end of the lake separate from the hippos. The mother hippo went over to the crocodile side and killed three crocs. The crocodiles don’t mess with the hippos anymore. We did a night game drive where we were able to get very close to a hippo on land and we saw a bush baby in a tree. A bush baby is an amazing primate kind of a mix of a monkey and a lemur. They are special to see because they are nocturnal with huge eyes.
After Tsavo we drove further east to the coast near Mombasa. I believe I reported earlier that it was amazing to see Pamela see the ocean for the first time, walk on sand for the first time and swim for the first time. Although this was mainly a beach and relaxation portion of the trip, I did arrange for a day drive to the local park called Shimba Hills. This is a very green and hilly park lying within seeing distance of the ocean. We did a hike to a waterfall hoping to see elephants, but we did not come across any. The best part of this park was seeing their sable antelopes which I consider to be the most beautiful antelopes. The male in particular is very striking because he is black with incredible features. We saw one herd and they crossed right in front of us. At one point there was a giraffe in the middle of the sable and that was quite nice.
Although there are many more parks in Kenya for me to see, I think this trip combined with seeing the Masai Mara two years ago have really shown me why Kenya is so famous for its parks. Aside from the horrible experience with the guide, this trip was almost perfect. My only disappointment was not seeing a leopard. One of these days we will find one so that Pamela can see for herself why I talk about them regularly. If we do not find them in a new park then we will get to Masai Mara where I know they are guaranteed to be found. Kenya is truly a remarkable place and this trip showed us so many different views of its amazing landscapes, animals and peoples. It was this trip that was my first with Pamela and that started me to wonder about really living in Africa so I will never forget it.
Tags: Africa, kenya
vagabondrick
Glad you made it to Amboseli and that you and Pamela enjoyed it as much as Jessica and I. Keep up the travels and very importantly the blogs!
i enjoyed alot travelling with rick . thanks very much my sweetheart you made me see the ocean , which i had never seen before..you are a very lovely man, and so caring love you so much, pamela
red was my favourites colour but after travelling to lake nakuru with my dear rick i loved seeing pink flamingoes !!!since that day my favourite colour is PINK.
my favaurite animal is girrage ..i love watching girrage run and when its bending down drinking water its amazing!!! saw in sweetwaters in nanyuki kenya as we were waiting to eat dinner with rick.
thanks rick you made me get a chance to see the ocean if i didnt meet you i dont know when i wound have seen it. you are such a caring and kind man to me thanks GOD I MET YOU . happyness and joy filled me each day i woke up and found rick next to me.what a lovely man you are rick!!
love you too much pamela