Safari

The Samburu Safari

Despite having re-arranged my internal flight with Kenya Airways

to avoid the long drive to Mombasa from Watamu, I arrived at Malindi Airport at the suspiciously long 2 hour pre-flight check-in to be told that I was to be driven to Mombasa. I had suspected as much when I arrived at the airport and reps from a rival airline Flight 540 tried to encourage me to get on board their plane that was just leaving. When the unfortunate KA official, Philip, arrived, 5 minutes after the opposition had flown, he told me that whilst they had been intending to fly from Malindi from July 1st, they still hadn’t got their act together. More about KA later! I spent a happy three hours with him in his small office before the next well-organised flight 540 departure to Nairobi. Again a wonderful and unexpected opportunity to hear from a Kenyan about their hopes for the future, and their awareness of all their problems, not least regarding the environment and lack of rainfall. He arranged for coffee and cake on the house, and got a message to the rest of the family and the Somak tour rep who was to meet me at Nairobi informing me of my late arrival.

At 4 p.m. I arrived at the Holiday Inn, Nairobi, and waited for a short while whilst Jenny, Peter and James, who had caught up on a bit of sleep after their over-night flight from Manchester via London, together with Megan from St. Cuthbert’s, finished their trip round the national museum, just around the corner. After quickly rectifying a mistake by the UK travel agent (using wi-fi internet access at KES 400 per hour), we had a good time with Megan, beside the (coldish!) pool, and then a lovely fish buffet supper and early to bed to catch up and get ready for safari-time!

Wagons roll!

With Ahmed, (known as “Major” to his fellow safari drivers and many others along the way, because he once was a major in the Kenyan army), and our mini-van companions for the duration of the week-long safari Chris and Sue, a honeymoon couple from Bristol, we set off north east through the foothills of Mt. Kenya and along the still-being-constructed transnational Cape Town – Cairo road. It is going to be a few years before anything other than a well-sprung 4-wheel drive can make the journey along that part of the road we travelled, but north of the town of Isiolo, and to the point where we left to go into the Samburu national park, the Chinese had funded and built the road, enticed by the prospects of oil in north and east Kenya, and the very real possibility of a new port being built at Lamu. If sea levels rise as predicted by global warming scientists, then the port of Mombasa will be badly affected, and a second major gateway into East Africa would be absolutely vital. However, there are environmental considerations that would affect the Lamu area that have not yet been given serious thought.

After four hours and a couple of official stops and a few others as Sue was poorly, we arrived at the Samburu Lodge – an oasis in a very dry landscape. And it was even drier than usual, as there had been no heavy seasonal rains this year, and the river Ewaso Nyro was bone dry. The crocodiles had migrated to nearby Buffalo Springs, and whilst the water table was quite near the surface here, it was sad to see locals having to dig into the river bed in order to help the animals which bring the tourists, who in turn are their only livelihood , survive. We had a couple of nights here, and Jenny and I had a very interesting conversation with Oscar, a safari driver for another tour company, about the problems Kenya face at the moment: environmental and political. But, again, there was a real sense of hope and confidence in the younger generations.

As for the animals, we saw elephants, monkeys, gerenuk, giraffe, Grevy’s zebra, and a leopard kill stashed in a tree. As often happened, Ahmed spotted it first, and had we stuck around and looked a bit closer, we would have seen the leopard’s tail in an adjacent bush. We returned later to get a better view by which time it had moved to a distant tree. More about leopards later!

Only one sour note that spoilt our stay at the first of a succession of top-end lodges: the waiter at lunch offered us a fruit drink, and didn’t mention that it was not “on the house” The cost of that severely dented the funds we had set aside for tips. This was a whole new kind of holiday experience for we who are accustomed to visiting friends and staying in self-catered accommodation, and we rapidly had to get into the habit of changing big KES notes to smaller ones to keep waiters, porters and domestics tipped up. Many of the staff we met along the way had travelled from far and wide across Kenya to get work, and would only get back to their home villages for maybe a week every 2 – 3 months. Technology, in the form of mobile phones being used to communicate the transfer of funds right across the country was proving a real benefit, as was an innovative bank called Equity, which was providing loans without land or house being required as security. This was helping many of the poorer start small-scale businesses, and the more we spoke with Kenyans – and read their daily papers when available - the greater we sensed that there were many of the rapidly growing population who were not content to just sit back and do nothing all day.

Our second day at Samburu saw us “tick off” lions, warthog and buffalo on our must see list, and many, many other wonderful and exotic ( to British eyes) species of animal and bird.

The next day we were off early. Every morning was an early start, either to go on a game drive or to move on to the next location. In all we covered about 1800 kilometers from Samburu in the north through the Aberdares, Lake Nakuru and then the long haul down to the Masai Mara before returning to Nairobi after one week of real excitement and adventure.

Treetops
Back south down the dusty road, passing an exquisite little church in the middle of nowhere that stood out from the dry and dusty landscape because of the exuberant frangipani, and through some chaotic and busy settlements, we entered another world: the world of the former colonial power in the Aberdare. A much more lush landscape and coffee and tea plantations. We had lunch at the Outspan hotel, where the founder of the scout movement had one lived, and were then transferred to the famous Treetops game lodge, where, once again the impact of the drought was immediately evident, with very few animals coming down to the salt lick. James was the first to note the arrival of ah hyena, which merited 1 ring on the bell system which notified the overnight residents of anything of interest. The bell was not invoked for the rest of the stay there. However, we did enjoy a wonderful sit-down, served meal in the narrow dining room, which gave us opportunity to get to know some of the other people from the tour, who we kept spotting in different mini-vans whilst out on game drives. In particular it was a real delight to meet Thomas and Kristine from Denmark, but shortly moving to Sydney, and Carol and her daughter Victoria from Toronto as well as Ken and Margaret from Northern Ireland. Who knows if these people might get a visit from Peter and or James should they travel the world in the future!

A short hop

The next day we headed north, west and south and in the process crossed or drove parallel to the equator a few times, without the hassle that the obligatory stop on the first journey south brought with it. All the places we stopped for formal breaks in the long journeys necessitated dodging sellers of curios or traders interested in anything they could get. A pair of Jenny Wren exclusive hand-crafted earrings found their way into the hands of one trans-equatorial entrepreneur, in exchange for a measly couple of tatty cardboard bookmarks. This despite the advice and lessons on avoidance given by the other members of her family and travelling companions!

We visited the beautiful Thomson waterfalls and then arrived in the Lake Nakuru national Park, where the journey through to the splendid lodge gave us sight of black and white rhinos, flamingos, storks and baboons. This was my favourite overnight stop, with small chalets with individual solar panel water heaters that worked. I discovered that they had been removed from the next place we stayed because tourists complained their water wasn’t warm enough. Lake Nakuru National park had three distinct vegetation zones – savannah, forest and the lake which was receding at an alarming rate, and was 1.5 – 2 meters lower than it had been 5 years ago. Deforestation of the near by Mau forest – motivate by politicians giving land to their supporters, was also having a knock-on effect, as Ahmed told me. In the pat it used to rain for about one hour every afternoon in Lake Nakuru region, and that helped keep the water level of this lake high. Sadly this is no longer the case.

The long and winding ( and very bumpy ) road

Nearly 400 km drive south west brought us eventually into the Masai Mara National Park for the final two night of our safari. Again a beautiful lodge in an oasis, but for how much longer? The mighty Mara river was a trickle of its former self, and the landscape much paler than it should have been for the time of year. That did work to our benefit as we saw some wonderful wildlife, including a cheetah family, a leopard having its supper and two different lion prides having breakfast in full surround-sound glory. Our encounter with the leopard also brought us into a close and not altogether pleasant encounter with the park wardens on their early evening patrol, and our driver had the “pleasure” of their company for a few hours after we returned to the lodge.

Consequently the following day was much more relaxed, and the huge expanses and horizons of classic East Africa was allowed to soak into our being. We actually had a couple of short rain showers during the stay in the Mara, but it was stored water that provided the right environment for the hippo family to stay near the lodge.

After our final self-service buffet meal – we really did do very well on safari, and I kept thinking of the excesses of tourists and the amount of wasted food, but the stark contrast with real Kenyan life was yet to come, as the next stage of our journey records.