Back from my trip to Kenya and Tanzania
Oct 17th, 2007, 02:49 AM
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Day 4 – September 18, 2007
My second day in Samburu and I woke up at 6 AM for a 6:30 AM drive. I must have woken up along with the baboons and vervet monkeys because they were all over our camp. I could’ve watched them all day - they’re so much fun to watch, their antics made us laugh and they’re quite intelligent. Right near our bathroom was a faucet that didn’t have the knob on it, so one has to turn the “stem” in order to get water and it’s quite difficult, even for me. One baboon must have seen it dripping and in under 5 minutes, figured out how to turn the darn thing and actually started drinking water from the faucet! Of course when he was finished he didn’t turn it off, so water was just pouring out and splashing all over the place. I decided to walk up and turn it off but was quite nervous because his other 3 buddies took over the bathrooms/showers next to the faucet and were opening and closing doors, jumping off the roof, going from stall to stall, etc. I didn’t want to get too close to them as I wasn’t sure what they’d do. They seemed to clear out as I got closer and I turned the water off no problem.
Then we left for our drive. I saw a beautiful sunrise over “Lion King Country” and saw plenty more gazelles, impala, giraffes and elephants. This morning we were driving along the river when yours truly spotted a single male lion across the river! My first lion sighting ever but he didn’t stay too long - after a few minutes of walking around, he decided to walk away from the river and we lost sight of him. Well to be honest, I had “seen” lions on my drive the day before, but after my driver would stop and look for himself, they’d always turn out to be dead trees, gazelles or something.
We continued our drive and saw herds of zebras this morning - regular and Grevy’s - lots of Dik Dik’s, more elephants - I even saw two fighting, but our driver said they were just play fighting. I still found it fun to watch. I saw a few Oryx and a solo Somali Ostrich – which completed my Samburu Big 5. We also saw a warthog before going back to camp for bunch.
Back at camp the monkeys were still there, and at one point a pair of monkeys – I swear they did this on purpose – started running around and being goofs, distracting the whole group and making us laugh. While this was going on, a 3rd monkey came by our stove and stole a piece of toast. It was like he told them to distract us so he could steal our food. Now if an animal is that clever, congratulations, good for him and he deserves that food. But our cook, a small, 64 year old man from a tribe in the Lake Victoria area, took it personally and started chasing the small monkey with a stick almost as large as him. Keep in mind we’re in the middle of Samburu and he ran off chasing that monkey into the bush and was gone for like 10 minutes! We were all laughing and after a while figured he got eaten by a lion or something he was gone for so long. He eventually came back, but without his piece of toast though.
After brunch I toured a Samburu village just outside the park gates. They greeted us outside and I had to pay $20 each in order to enter the village. The first thing I noticed as we pulled up was how trashy the mud and stick huts looked. If you’ve ever seen a birds nest that has sticks, twigs leaves AND trash in it, their huts were the human version of this. I noticed a large amount of trash strewn about their camp, USAID cans and empty food bags strewn about. They seems quite poor and quite messy.
I did the usual tour of the village and I thought their huts were interesting when we went inside. A family of 6 shared a hut and it was divided up into two “rooms” – parents in one and 4 kids in another. Their beds were just dried out animal skins and they were as hard as cardboard and completely uncomfortable. The other shocking thing I noted about them was that Samburu is an ‘open park’ with no fences and given that this village was right outside the park - they has lion problems all the time – periodically killing their livestock and harassing their village. And the laws in Kenya prevent them from killing the lion, even if caught in the act of killing cattle. They also bathed right in the river. If anyone’s been there, you’ll know the water is as brown as mud, fast moving and infested with crocs (which occasionally attack bathers). Even wackier to me was that they drank the water directly from the river! I saw one pour a cup of water into a whiteish mug and it was still pretty brown, yet he drank it like it was Evian spring water! Remarkably, just as if I drank his water, he said if he drank my bottled, spring water, he’d get sick!
After the tour we did our evening game drive. I found the first hour and a half quite slow, seeing nothing but “lion food” – gazelles, impala, zebra, etc.. As we drove along the river we spotted a bunch of safari vehicles stopped. I would soon realize that you don’t need to spot animals, just look for large groups of cars and you will find something
As we pulled up we spotted the gorgeous lioness everyone was looking at and I started shooting photos of her like she was a fashion model (http://www.flickr.com/photos/saridde...7602389944721/). She paid no attention to us and walked right next to our truck. I could have pet her and was half tempted to do it, but thought better of it. This was lion spotting #2!
My second day in Samburu and I woke up at 6 AM for a 6:30 AM drive. I must have woken up along with the baboons and vervet monkeys because they were all over our camp. I could’ve watched them all day - they’re so much fun to watch, their antics made us laugh and they’re quite intelligent. Right near our bathroom was a faucet that didn’t have the knob on it, so one has to turn the “stem” in order to get water and it’s quite difficult, even for me. One baboon must have seen it dripping and in under 5 minutes, figured out how to turn the darn thing and actually started drinking water from the faucet! Of course when he was finished he didn’t turn it off, so water was just pouring out and splashing all over the place. I decided to walk up and turn it off but was quite nervous because his other 3 buddies took over the bathrooms/showers next to the faucet and were opening and closing doors, jumping off the roof, going from stall to stall, etc. I didn’t want to get too close to them as I wasn’t sure what they’d do. They seemed to clear out as I got closer and I turned the water off no problem.
Then we left for our drive. I saw a beautiful sunrise over “Lion King Country” and saw plenty more gazelles, impala, giraffes and elephants. This morning we were driving along the river when yours truly spotted a single male lion across the river! My first lion sighting ever but he didn’t stay too long - after a few minutes of walking around, he decided to walk away from the river and we lost sight of him. Well to be honest, I had “seen” lions on my drive the day before, but after my driver would stop and look for himself, they’d always turn out to be dead trees, gazelles or something.
We continued our drive and saw herds of zebras this morning - regular and Grevy’s - lots of Dik Dik’s, more elephants - I even saw two fighting, but our driver said they were just play fighting. I still found it fun to watch. I saw a few Oryx and a solo Somali Ostrich – which completed my Samburu Big 5. We also saw a warthog before going back to camp for bunch.
Back at camp the monkeys were still there, and at one point a pair of monkeys – I swear they did this on purpose – started running around and being goofs, distracting the whole group and making us laugh. While this was going on, a 3rd monkey came by our stove and stole a piece of toast. It was like he told them to distract us so he could steal our food. Now if an animal is that clever, congratulations, good for him and he deserves that food. But our cook, a small, 64 year old man from a tribe in the Lake Victoria area, took it personally and started chasing the small monkey with a stick almost as large as him. Keep in mind we’re in the middle of Samburu and he ran off chasing that monkey into the bush and was gone for like 10 minutes! We were all laughing and after a while figured he got eaten by a lion or something he was gone for so long. He eventually came back, but without his piece of toast though.
After brunch I toured a Samburu village just outside the park gates. They greeted us outside and I had to pay $20 each in order to enter the village. The first thing I noticed as we pulled up was how trashy the mud and stick huts looked. If you’ve ever seen a birds nest that has sticks, twigs leaves AND trash in it, their huts were the human version of this. I noticed a large amount of trash strewn about their camp, USAID cans and empty food bags strewn about. They seems quite poor and quite messy.
I did the usual tour of the village and I thought their huts were interesting when we went inside. A family of 6 shared a hut and it was divided up into two “rooms” – parents in one and 4 kids in another. Their beds were just dried out animal skins and they were as hard as cardboard and completely uncomfortable. The other shocking thing I noted about them was that Samburu is an ‘open park’ with no fences and given that this village was right outside the park - they has lion problems all the time – periodically killing their livestock and harassing their village. And the laws in Kenya prevent them from killing the lion, even if caught in the act of killing cattle. They also bathed right in the river. If anyone’s been there, you’ll know the water is as brown as mud, fast moving and infested with crocs (which occasionally attack bathers). Even wackier to me was that they drank the water directly from the river! I saw one pour a cup of water into a whiteish mug and it was still pretty brown, yet he drank it like it was Evian spring water! Remarkably, just as if I drank his water, he said if he drank my bottled, spring water, he’d get sick!
After the tour we did our evening game drive. I found the first hour and a half quite slow, seeing nothing but “lion food” – gazelles, impala, zebra, etc.. As we drove along the river we spotted a bunch of safari vehicles stopped. I would soon realize that you don’t need to spot animals, just look for large groups of cars and you will find something
As we pulled up we spotted the gorgeous lioness everyone was looking at and I started shooting photos of her like she was a fashion model (http://www.flickr.com/photos/saridde...7602389944721/). She paid no attention to us and walked right next to our truck. I could have pet her and was half tempted to do it, but thought better of it. This was lion spotting #2!
Oct 17th, 2007, 03:19 AM
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After this our driver got a tip from someone that there was a leopard in the park and we sped away. It was about a half hour away and when we got there, it seemed to be gone. We drove around for about 10 minutes looking for it and I was quite disappointed as we wasted a lot of the evening looking for it and the night was approaching. In our truck was a bird enthusiast who could spot any bird in a tree and eventually spotted the leopard in a tree. We pulled up next to the leopard and spent about 20 minutes just watching him (http://www.flickr.com/photos/saridde...7602430121075/). This was a small leopard and was just larger than a housecat. Since this was my first up close leopard sighting, I figured all leopards were this small and was amazed. Later I would find out that these were juvenile cats. After a few minutes he got up and walked away. So as we drove away we saw another small leopard in a tree right next to him! That was leopard sighting #3 in 2 days!
Day 5 – September 19, 2007
Woke up to a monkey and baboon-free camp (and night, no noise at all) and we did one more driver before going on to Mt. Kenya. As we drove around the park we spotted Leopard #4! This was a large leopard sunning on a rock (http://www.flickr.com/photos/saridde...7602430121075/) and we stayed for a few minutes before moving on. About 3 minutes after driving away from the leopard we saw a few vans sitting there and at this point I know that it means something good was there
We drove up and I had a real hard time seeing what everyone was looking at, but eventually saw a pair of lions laying in the grass on honeymoon. Our driver said that this was the most dangerous time to be walking near a lion. During this week long mating period, the lions mate every 15 minutes and when not mating, lay there. But if an animal walks by, the male lion will kill it and just leave it there. They’re extremely dangerous and kill anything that walks by. We waited about 15 minutes to see if they would mate but they never did, so we drove off and went to Mt. Kenya. Lion count is up to 4 already All in all I was amazed that I’d already seen all of the Samburu Big 5 and 4 of the Africa Big 5! Samburu’s landscape was very dry, dusty and yet was quite beautiful. The Mt. Kenya area was much greener than Samburu and we did a monkey trek around the mountain. The only monkeys I saw were black and white colubus monkeys and most ran away as soon as we got remotely close to them, making the photos difficult. But as we finished our trek a group of them was right outside our camp and they weren’t shy at all, allowing me to get a few photos of them.
Day 6 – September 20, 2007
Today we drove from Mt. Kenya to Lake Nakuru, but we took a major shortcut through a private game reserve (shhh, don’t tell them) filled with animals. First, I was amazed that there were such things and even more amazed that people would go to them as it just doesn’t seem natural, like a zoo. Our driver said they were quite expensive and only rich people went to them. This was also the same place where most of the exotic meat for Carnivore is sourced from.
After a long drive we got to Nakuru, the town outside the lake and I was startled how built up and modern the town was and how close the lake was to the city. This park truly felt like a zoo as it was fenced in, next to the city and packed with traffic. The first impressions of the lake were very unimpressive and I didn’t know much about the lake, figuring it was just a place to just view flamingos. I got some amazing photos of the flamingos and when I figured we were going to go home for the day, we did an actual game drive. The park was pretty large and I saw plenty of cape buffalo and Rothschild Giraffe’s. The Cape Buffalo were the first animals that really noticed our trucks and they looked mean as heck. They would stare us down as we drove by and look menacingly at us (http://www.flickr.com/photos/saridde...7602267289120/).
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