Samburu National Park Game Drives

Later in the afternoon, we had another game drive. Samburu National Park is a very dry region, with scrubby, thorny vegetation.

In this picture, you can see an umbrella acacia tree, with lots of weaver nests hanging from it.

Samburu contained some very attractive birds, including this yellow-billed hornbill.

Red-billed hornbill

yellow-necked spur fowl

The gerenuk (giraffe-necked antelope) was very common at Samburu.
Here one is in the classic pose of standing on its hind legs to reach higher branches.

The dik-dik is a very small type of antelope. The tiny horns on its head are so cute.

There were quite a few impala

including this mother and her two young ones.

There were also other antelope present.

Another animal that was unique to the Samburu area was the Beisa Oryx.

Unfortunately, they weren't particularly cooperative for getting a picture from the front.

This jackal apparently took posing tips from the oryx. Every time I got her in focus, she would turn her back and walk away from me.
This hare was only slightly more cooperative.

Towards the end of the afternoon, we were losing daylight, but spotted this young male lion. He walked away, and crouched down at the perfect angle to the sun for a fabulous picture. I had him perfectly centered, and thought to myself "smile pretty".

He returned that thought with a giant roar and a lunge toward me. I let out a startled scream and Thomas - our driver - hit the gas! Then he told me to close my windows (but we could still keep the pop top open). The lion was not happy with all the paparazzi as he was surrounded by multiple safari vans. He kept trying to walk away, and was basically stalked by the vans. I expressed my concerns that I felt sorry for the lion and perhaps we should leave it alone, but it fell on deaf ears. I'm sure the lion was extremely happy a few minutes later when all the vans had to retreat because the park was closing for the night!

Later that evening, crocodiles climbed up the river banks near the lodge.
It was quite the thrill to look inside a croc's mouth!

The next morning, I took a short stroll around the lodge grounds before breakfast.
This colorful lizard was getting his start first thing in the morning.
I also spotted this waterbuck on the other side of the river.
And this hadada ibis enjoying a morning preen.

Before leaving, we had another short game drive. Right away, we saw two lions on the hillside.


They were quite a ways away and the Sun was behind them, which made it difficult to get a good picture.
At least this time, the herd of minivans was further away and stood still, rather than chasing them.
On the way out of Samburu, we finally got a close look at the Grevy's Zebras. The stripes on these zebras are narrower and closer together than the regular plains zebra. The ears are also larger and rounder.

This zebra decided to start the morning off with a nice dust bath.



Next Stop....Aberdare National Park

Aberdare National Park

Leaving Samburu, we stopped again in Isiolo to refuel. Crystal ran to get more popcorn, and I was accosted by the same men who tried to sell us crap the previous day. I pulled a few postcards (of Arizona) out of my bag and showed them to the men. They all wanted one. I told them it would be 20 shillings. At first, I think they thought I was going to give them a postcard and a 20 shilling donation! No way! I wanted 20 shillings per card. If they really liked the card, then I wanted 30 shillings! I can beat them at their own game. In the end, I ended up accepting a scary rusty metal bracelet in exchange for a stack of postcards. I had a blast and thought it was a fun game to play, but Thomas gave me a disgusted look the entire time. When Crystal got back to the van, he was more than happy to speed off (and give Crystal a lecture how her purchases in local stores rather than tourist traps was harmful to Kenya's economy).

We had a long drive on reasonably good roads to Aberdare National Park. The first stop was lunch at Aberdare Country Club. The food was excellent and the grounds were beautiful. There were lots of flowers, trees, and some wildlife on the grounds.

There were a lot of wart hogs that made themselves at home on the grounds.

After lunch, we went on an optional game drive through the park before heading to our lodge for the night.

Elephants were hidden in the dense forest, poking their heads out from time to time. You often heard their rustling long before you could spot them.

A large colony of black and white colobus monkeys played in the canopy of the forest,
and baboons raised their families on the floor.

I saw a lot of wart hogs, and a few giant forest hogs (although the latter were too quick or too far away to get a good picture).
I also spotted this female bushbuck peeking out of the ground cover.

Cape buffalo were plentiful.
Once we arrived at the Ark (our lodge) we were basically trapped there for the rest of the evening.

The Ark was a dump. Our room had a horrible musty smell and the toilet didn't flush properly. The walls were paper thin and there was no lock on the door when you left the room.

We left the room for a while so it could air out. I entered about an hour later and discovered that the carpeting was wet near the bathroom. Gross! We spoke to the person in charge - at first she seemed hesitant to move us - but after I asked her to put her hand on the floor and feel it (which she didn't) she was quite willing to move us. The new room had a dry floor, was less musty, and had a toilet that flushed properly. The water still ran brown and I wasn't able to get hot water.

There were viewing platforms on multiple levels so you could watch the animals that they baited by tossing salt outside. It mostly attracted resident herds of cape buffalos and elephants. The behavior of the animals was signifcantly altered due to the artificial placing of salt.

Some of the elephants were obsessed with digging for salt.

Others tended to have more sexual obsessions.

Many of the animals were very aggressive with each other. I witnessed several dominance challenges with the buffalos and a couple with the elephants.

They had an elaborate buzzer system set up so to let you know if there was anything exciting to view in the middle of the night. There wasn't - and the buzzers were silent all night.

I was quite happy to leave the next morning.

Maybe the buffalos would get along better if they drank a martini rather than fighting over salt!

We returned to the Country Club and were picked up by Thomas. He asked us if we would like to visit a school in the area. We asked what to expect if we visited a school. He didn't actually tell us what WE should expect to see or do. Instead he informed us that we were expected to bring gifts for the children (school supplies and/or candy) and provide a substantial donation for the school, otherwise WE would disappoint the children since they expect that from white tourists. Lovely. We didn't know what constituted a substantial donation, but didn't think we had the funds to make one, so we passed.

Thanks Thomas and Rhino Tours for making us feel like crap for not being rich enough to be "good tourists" for Kenya. We hadn't realized that there was an income requirement to visit.

Lake Nakuru National Park

After leaving Aberdare National Park, we headed to Lake Nakuru for lunch and then for a game drive. After lunch, we added two more people to our tour - a very nice couple from England. They joined us for the next two days.

They seemed to be our lucky charm.
We started out the drive and almost immediately saw a mother lioness.

Looking around, we could see her cubs on the hillside.

She called them, and they promptly fell in line behind her.

She led them right to their lunch.
A tasty meal of zebra caught earlier or the day before .
Ahh....now a nice nap after a hearty lunch.

We didn't get a nap though. We continued on our drive.

We saw lots of giraffes here. These were the Rothschild giraffes.

Their fur pattern is less defined than the reticulated giraffe, and they have white up their legs, which looks like white knee socks.

There were also quite a few red-billed ox-peckers along for a ride (and a meal!). You can see one peeking out from just above the giraffe's mane.

Our first glimpse of a rhino was the endangered black rhino.
This species has a hooked lip and tends to graze on shrubs and small plants.

A little later, we (and this jackal) saw white rhinos.

They have a wide square mouth, and graze on grasses.

The whole area near the lake is covered by birds -
pelicans.....storks....

and an impressive display of flamingos!
As we were viewing the wildlife, we watched a huge storm blow across the lake. We managed to just stay ahead of the storm and all its rain. The wind really picked up, which was nice, since all these birds really really STUNK!!

This was the first place we got a good look at the plains zebra.
I happened to get a great shot of this rare mutant two-headed zebra. :-)
But(t) this is the view we usually saw.

The short grasses also made it easy to see the cape buffalo.

The vervet monkeys were busy playing in the grass too.

After the drive, we had about an hour drive to Lake Naivasha, which is where we spent the night at Lake Naivasha Simba Lodge. When we arrived, Thomas tried to sell us a morning boat tour on the lake to look for hippos. None of us gave him an answer as to whether we wanted to do it or not. He told us to be ready at 7:30 the next morning.

Most of the game drives have been 2.5-3 hours long, so we collectively assumed that was the length of the boat tour, and we were supposed to meet at 7:30 for that. We decided to meet him at 10:00 and either sleep in, get a massage at the lodge, or go for a walk.

At breakfast, I confirmed with the other couple that we were still meeting at 10:00. They agreed and then went back to bed. I went for a walk to the jetty on the lake. On the way to the lake, I was able to get really close to these waterbucks.

I was close enough to this giraffe that I could have walked right between his legs!

Around 8:15 am, I just spotted this hippo when I heard Crystal shouting for me. I hurried back to meet her, and arrived to get scolded by Thomas for being late. It turns out that we were supposed to leave at 7:30 (unless somebody went on the boat tour, and then we would leave between 8:15-8:30 - so I really wasn't "late").

When nobody showed up at 7:30, he called each of our rooms and woke the others up, but was furious that I wasn't there with them. The other three members of my tour were not upset that I delayed their departure by 10-15 additional minutes, but Thomas was. He seemed to get even angrier when I suggested that we could make up those 10 minutes by skipping one of the overpriced curio shops where he liked to stop! I think he needs to go back and take another course on good customer service! I didn't dare tell him that I needed to use the restroom before we left, so I just hopped in the minivan and tried to hold it as long as possible. After about an hour, I began pestering him with "Are we near a bathroom yet?"

After a 5 hour drive on bumpy gravel roads (and a curio shop / bathroom break) we finally arrived at the Masai Mara!