Kenya Safari Adventure
Watch the highlights slide show
Welcome to our latest international adventure BLOG. Sonia and I are leaving soon for Kenya on a 20-day adventure to the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy and several other eco-tourism destinations in central Kenya as well as the Serengeti. We’ll be flying from San Diego through Seattle and Paris to get to Nairobi. From there we’ll be driving and flying to several destinations in Kenya to visit several wildlife conservancies and National Parks. Our internet coverage may be quite spotty but I’ll try to upload pictures and provide updates as often as possible. I’m very excited to visit Africa, which will be my 7th continent; another bucket list goal.
We are getting very close to our departure date and are busy collecting all of the documents, tickets, visas, money, medicine cabinet items and personal effects for an 18-day safari with lots of airplane time on each end. We are visiting 4 safari lodges in Kenya plus several days in Nairobi visiting various local places of interest. It’s always a challenge to try and make sure you anticipate every need you might have without knowing what kinds of infrastructure you’ll have access to. We leave early Saturday morning for our 10,000+ mile marathon flights (SAN-SEA-CDG-NBO) arriving in Nairobi a scant 26 hours after we leave San Diego. We are sharing this adventure with Mark’s brother Rick and his companion Karla. The group leaders, Adam and Megan, are coworkers of Karla’s at the Minnesota Zoo.
We arrived in Nairobi around 11:00 Kenya time, just over 31 hours doorstep to doorstep. Plane travel is never dull; our flight from Seattle to Paris was delayed 2 hours due to a pilot calling in sick, making us a bit anxious considering we had a 2:15 connection in Paris. It was 30° and snowing in Paris so, even though our flight was delayed, we made our connection and boarded another Boeing 777 for our second 9:30 minute flight into Nairobi. After another hour and a half getting through immigration and customs, we made it to the shuttle and finally got to our hotel.
December 4, 2023 – Nairobi, Kenya
We had to get up pretty early as our first day in Kenya was going to be busy. Our first stop was the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an organization that rescues and rehabilitates orphaned elephants. Some are injured but most are separated from their mothers and would not survive in the wild. They are raised in an open facility location in the Nairobi National Park where they are allowed to leave and return at will until they are healthy and mature enough to survive in the park and freely decide to stay in the larger park rather than returning to the orphanage, we got to see them come down to a viewing area where the juvenile elephants are fed mass quantities of baby formula from giant 4 liter “baby bottles”.
After our baby elephant encounter, we were off to visit one of the many Kenya companies committed to sustainability, Ocean Sole is a Nairobi company that recycles over a million flip flops recovered from Kenya’s beaches every year, and transforms them into artistic animal figures for resales in zoos all over the world. We got to tour their factory and visit their factory store where you can choose from the myriad animal figures carved by local artists from the recycled flip flops.
Our third stop was to visit the studio of Joel Rintari, a local glass etching artist who recently received international attention when he created a special memento for King Charles during his recent visit to Kenya. He has been actively involved in training glass etching skills to young people to help them start a career.
December 5, 2023 – Lewa Safari Camp
Today was an incredible adventure in the Lewa Nature Conservancy, a 62,000-acre preserve where all of the animals are allowed to run wild and free wherever they desire. The conservancy employs over 1000 people from the local areas to ensure the safety and health of the animals as well as run their eco-tourism business. I’ve included a fraction of what we saw on our first day with plenty of exciting stories to follow.
December 6, 2023 – Lewa Safari Camp
Today was another unbelievable day of driving through remote sections of the 62,000-acre conservancy in search of the 100+ species of true wild animals living in the preserve. It’s hard to explain what it’s like hen driving over the rolling hills of this 6000′ in altitude savanna, cresting a small hill and seeing 100’s of zebras, gazelle, Cape Buffalo, rhinoceros, and kudus grazing in a huge grass plain! We split into 4 groups of 6 riders in each safari truck with the friendliest guides imaginable, all with encyclopedic knowledge of the mammals, birds and fauna throughout the park. We spend about 6-8 hours a day driving along the myriad dirt roads through canyons, valleys and plains searching for all of the 50+ mammal and 300+ bird species that call Lewa home. Today we saw lots more of everything we saw the first day plus a number of spectacular additions. Huge herds of Plains and Grevy Zebras (they are the rare ones with many smaller stripes) was spectacular. Also interesting was the fact that almost every hoofed animal we saw was grazing nearby in the same plain. The other surprising find was two mating pairs of lions laying out in the tall grass of the plains not more than a couple hundred yards from the other animals. The variety is surprising and our ability to often get close enough to have the animals within touching distance is an unbelievable experience.
As part of our morning safari drive, we stopped by the Lewa Conservancy headquarters and met with a few of the administrators. They gave us an overview of the community development programs they fund that provide infrastructure and economic development opportunities to the surrounding local communities, e.g., Womens’ small business grants. They also overviewed the sophisticated tracking systems they have developed to monitor the health and movements of many of the rare and endangered species, as well as the rangers who manage and protect the animals and lands.
After lunch we drove out to one of the valleys in the NW corner of the reserve and saw several new animals for us: Dik Dik, Klipspringer, Duikers, warthogs, giraffes and a mother/infant pair of rare black rhinos. The evening drive always includes a sunset cocktail party on some high spot in the park before heading back to camp for dinner and story sharing.
Tomorrow we will visit one of the local schools to donate items several of the group brought along for the children. Two more safari drives and who knows what other animals or fauna we’ll see then.
December 7, 2023 – Lewa Safari Camp
Today we headed out to the Lewa Conservancy headquarters to learn about the educational programs being implemented to ensure that all of the children in the Lewa area get a consistent and complete educational opportunity and experience. Several of our group brought educational supplies for the center to distribute to some of their 30+ local schools.
As usual, everything we do and every place we go is another safari drive and the ones we took today were no disappointment. We had repeat encounters with a pair of ostrich parents raising their clutch; we were happy to see that they still had the same number of chicks as the day before. We also got to see a mother giraffe and her baby for the second day in a row, she is possibly less than a week old. Encounters with the cape buffalo are always exciting. They are aggressive animals that account for more loss of human life than any other animal in Africa. Please enjoy the collection of photos captured on today’s encounters.
December 8, 2023 – Lewa Safari Camp to Borana Lodge
Today was our last day at Lewa Safari Camp as we were moving to the Borana Lodge in the neighboring Borana Conservancy. The geographical differences are obvious and stunning. We leave the savanna and head into the Borana foot hills to the west. The land is rugged, covered in shrubbery and trees, and contains much more water than we’ve seen for the last 3 days. In the morning as we head west in the Lewa lands we see many of the same, and now familiar animals like the giraffe with infant that we’ve seen every day. We also see the gazelle, rhinos and ostriches that live in the plains. But as we cross into Borana we now see more zebra, wart hogs, and Grevy’s zebra. We take a short drive past the famous Lion King pride rock on the way to our next accommodations, the Borana Lodge, built 30 years ago by a 4 generation Kenya family. We spend two nights here before moving on to our next destination.
December 9, 2023 – Borana Lodge
The Borana Lodge is amazing! It is spacious, rugged, elegant and beautiful. Our room was a split-level room built on a granite outcropping with a huge bedroom, sunken living room, and rock stairs leading down to the toilet and huge stone-lined walk-in shower. The only thing more amazing was the photo safari drives. We saw many of the same animals as we had seen before but many in much larger groups, especially the elephant, zebra and impala. The Borana Conservancy is smaller than the Lewa but still over 20,000 acres. It is patrolled by air by one of the founders of the lodge and we saw the plane this morning as we were visiting a pair of lions in the savanna. The more time we spend in the area the more we become familiar with the behavior of these magnificent animals and sometimes we see the same animal multiple times over the 3 days we spend there. The three most aggressive animals we see are the Cape Buffalo, Black Rhino, and elephants. The truck drivers often stop the car engine to allow us to take pictures but rarely when we are close to the first two. Today we also got the opportunity to visit the rhino tracking center in Lewa. They have a combination of electronic devices on some of the rhinos as well as rangers that walk the entire 20,000+ acres every day to account for every black rhino. After visiting the tracking center, we went on a hike with the rangers to visually verify the location of several rhinos. As you will see in the photo below, we were accompanied by two armed rangers in case one of the rhinos got overly aggressive. Every day brings new sightings and exciting situations with many more to come.
December 10, 2023 – Borana Lodge to Samburu Elephant Bedroom
Our last morning in Borana was quite exciting, we found a lioness resting in the grass after feeding on a baby zebra that she had killed that morning. It is the harsh reality that all the predator cats that we all love to see have to hunt all the other animals that we love to see. We also saw the now familiar herds of Cape Buffalo, impala and zebras that seem to be over every hill. It’s hard to convey just how close to these wild animals that you get but we are often less than 10 feet away from lions, Cape Buffalo, rhinos and elephants on our photo drives.
Today we left the mountains for the flatter and more arid region of Samburu, north and west of Lewa and Borana. We hopped on a chartered 12-passenger Cessna Grand Caravan airplane for the short 27-mile flight to the Sasaab Airport, which saved us about 5 hours of driving in getting to Samburu. From there we drove for an hour or so to the Samburu Elephant Bedroom camp. The terrain was much different than anything we had seen before with camels running wild in the scrub brush. It turned out to be one of the most exciting days yet on our trip. On our way to camp came upon a lioness hunting a small group of warthogs. The lioness took 10-15 minutes to sneak up on the warthogs and ultimately was not successful. Our adrenaline level went up when the lioness finally sprang into action and chased the warthog for 50 yards or so before giving up. The Samburu region has lots of elephants and we saw them in large family groups often. We got to see some of younger elephants nursing between struggles figuring out what their trunk does and how to control it, something that takes several months to perfect. The rest of the day was full of new animals we hadn’t yet seen, like the yellow-necked spurfowl which digs through elephant poop looking for worms and beetles. Finally, to cap off the day, we came upon a leopard that had just finished eating a Guinee fowl and was off for the afternoon to start hunting again.
December 11, 2023 – Samburu Elephant Bedroom
I’m going to take a minute to chat about the photo part of our photo safari. One of the group, whom has been on a very similar trip to the same areas, said after the first day of everyone frantically taking pictures of anything at any distance, “After a few days you might decide to shoot a pic if a giraffe’s butt touches your window!”. After 11 days in Kenya (I’m cheating ahead till the 14th) we’ve shot almost 3000 photos and videos between my Nikon and our two iPhones! Our guide/drivers are unbelievable, they’ll be driving done a bumpy dirt road dodging potholes and suddenly stop to tell us the dots on the ridge a half mile away is a couple of white rhinos. Later in the day they’ll catch a glimpse of some medium-sized bird in a bush along the road and spit out its scientific and common names and stop until everyone who wants a picture gets one. We were stopping so many times on an afternoon ride one day when we had an activity that we were late for that the lead guide, in another vehicle, finally radioed our driver and told him, “Don’t stop again for anything except a leopard giving birth!” While in Samburu, and having seen parades of elephants, towers of giraffe, dazzles of zebras, troops of baboons, barrels of monkeys, etc. the guide told us it was now time to look for the small things, and indeed we did. We saw hares and mongoose running down the roads, we saw small mounds in the road dug by naked mole-rats, one driver even stopped the truck when he spotted a couple of dung-beetles rolling a tennis ball sized ball of dung across the road.
Samburu is AMAZING! We got up early so we could call our youngest grandson on his birthday, the 11-hour time difference gave us a chance to call him early in the morning the next day but still be his birthday halfway around the world the previous night. Today’s technology is amazing; we can video chat, let him watch the monkeys running around the camp, see the camp resident antelope, and listen to the sounds of the savanna like birds and baboons screeching in the distance. After our birthday call it was time for a made-to-order breakfast buffet (typical for everywhere we’ve stayed) and then off for our morning game drive. One of the first things we found was a lioness just hanging out in the sun waiting for an opportunity to present itself for breakfast. She wasn’t in a hurry but we were so off we went. The bird life in Kenya is unbelievable, the field guide for Kenya birds is twice the size of the North America version and it was evident everywhere we went. Today we saw some of the perfect nests made by the Southern Masked Weaver, a beautiful yellow and black bird. There are lots of zebras in Kenya but the rarest and most notable is the Grevy’s zebra, easy to spot because of its narrow stripes. They were hunted to endangered status for their hides, which were favored for upholstery in Europe.
Kenya has its wildlife list and two that we talked about often was the BIG 5 (Lion, Elephant, Rhino, Leopard & African Buffalo) and the BIG 9, which adds Cheetah, Giraffe, Zebra & Hippo). We didn’t see all of these animals in Samburu but we saw all but rhino and hippo. We headed out to the north eastern part of the reserve early in the morning and found a family of cheetahs enjoying the morning. This mother had 4 juveniles still with her, learning how to hunt. The guide commented that she was a good mother and had a similar size brood before and all of her kittens survived to leave for parts unknown. The cheetah is a magnificent animal, so regal and graceful, and it was amazing to watch the group leaving us in a manner indicating they were preparing to track some other game. Oh, and did I mention elephants? Samburu is the elephant hangout; even though there is a corridor that allows elephants to migrate seasonally from northern Kenya to the forests of Mt. Kenya, there are over 1,000 of them in Samburu, and we saw hundreds of them! The elephant groups each have a matriarch and she runs the show. As the males mature, they are forced out of the groups and all of the females work together to raise the babies. We saw the group help the youngsters across the river and saw many of the babies still nursing. Some of the group were playing/sparing for their place in the matriarchy and we could hear them and see them periodically mixing it up. Another animal that has great maternal and paternal instincts is the ostrich, they typically lay 11 eggs and tend to them as a mother-father team, this group still had quite the flock as they were getting significantly older .
The river that runs through Samburu is fed from the foothills of Mt. Kenya and there had been some significant rains there the day we left Borana. Around lunchtime we heard the river making some uncharacteristic noise and noticed the water level rising quickly. Within an hour the water level had risen over a foot and all the sand bars were hidden. That posed quite the challenge for the giraffe and elephant as they made their daily crossings for whatever reasons they do. The river is the hub of activity for many of the animals and all along it we saw crocodiles, baboons, gazelle, elephants and giraffe. The one thing that’s not always obvious from the pictures is that we get very close to many of these wild animals! In some of the pictures you can see that we are within reach many times, which can be quite unnerving around some of the predators.
December 12, 2023 – Samburu Elephant Bedroom to Lewa Safari Camp
Today was another transition day, leaving Samburu after breakfast for a safari drive where we will reconnect with our Lewa team and return to the Lewa Safari Camp where we spent our first three days away from Nairobi. The water levels in the Ewaso Ng’iro river have finally dropped down to the level it was when we arrived and the sand bars are again visible. The native dress is quite colorful and plaids are quite common among the tribes, each having unique prints and combinations of colors. Our camp host wore beautiful dresses made from some of the common prints for the Samburu area. Africa has 100’s of mammals, 1000’s of birds, and probably a million different insects! One of the tourists, not in our group, left her bag on the ground and didn’t see the scorpion that climbed aboard. She got stung and apparently required medical attention and as transported to the nearest medical facility. This morning one of our group found a scorpion on their bags and we were able to remove it and take a few pictures.
On the way out of the Elephant Camp we ran across a parade of elephants that included a very young one. Funny thing is it takes about 6 months for baby elephants to learn how to use their trunks, their are over 10,000 muscles in an elephant trunk. The babies start to eat grass before they know how to use their trunk to pick it up and reliably get it in their mouth so often times they will kneel and graze directly with their mouths. The resulting maneuver is quite entertaining as it looks like they have done a complete face-plant in the grass. After leaving this elephant family we ran across a family of silver-backed jackals sunning in the middle of the road. There were several pups still following their parents and they eventually wandered off into the grass to go hunt up some food.
We headed northwest to reach the main highway but stopped at a village along the road to shop for handmade souvenirs. The village housing was quite basic compared to any western standards but is sufficient for the weather and terrain here. The Kenyan artisans are quite known for their bead work and it is found in all kinds of items from necklaces, bracelets, earings, belts, etc. After our short shopping spree we were back south in the trucks and drove through the largest town anywhere near our current location; Isiolo. It was a hustle bustle of foot traffic, cars and MOTORCYCLES! Motorcycle transport is the primary mode of transportation across Kenya. There is a on demand service, like UBER, where anyone with a motorcycle can connect with one or more people to transport themselves or make deliveries. It is not uncommon to see passengers in suits or dresses on the back, or 10 crates of chickens tied to the rear rack on the way to market.
After a long morning we were finally back in the Lewa safari trucks and on our way for another 5 days at the first safari camp we stayed at . As soon as we turned off the highway and reentered the Lewa Conservancy we encountered all the familiar zebras, rhinos, cape buffalo and birds that we had seen 5 days ago.
December 13, 2023 – Lewa Safari Camp
I know I’m a couple of days in the rears but our day usually begins between 5:30 and 6:00 AM with a wakeup coffee visit and a 6:15 game drive, or a leisurely 6:30 breakfast with a 7:00 game drive. We’re usually out until noon when lunch is served and we have 1-2 hours before afternoon tea and another game drive. That usually ends with a sundown reception in the hills and then back to camp for a 7:00 dinner. We are usually back in our tents by 9:00. It usually takes me about 2-3 hours to load all of the photos from the day, sort through the ones I want to share, resize them for the website, write my daily entry and upload the gallery pictures. Some days I just decide that an extra couple of hours of sleep is needed and hence I’m 2-3 days behind after 13 days of adventure. The good news is the initial excitement and feeling that we have to share everything is waning. I’m spending more time writing about the experiences and less time taking and posting photos of everything we see. Believe me, there is still so much to see and so much to share but don’t give up on me, I promise I’ll catch up by the time Christmas arrives. We started out early in the morning for a long drive to the Ngare Ndare Forest Trust in foothills of Mt Kenya. While driving through Lewa we encountered many of the usual residents that we see every day but it’s still amazing to see these magnificent animals in their natural habitat.
Ngare Ndare means goat water in Swahili and refers to the runoff area that provides water for the grazing domesticated animals nearby. The Forest Trust is working to reforest and restore the natural state to ensure clean water for the downhill communities. We were joined by the preserve guides/guards that provided an armed escort through the forest walk as there are leopards and elephants roaming throughout the preserve. Our hike took us to a large waterfall that we reached the base of by walking down a steep path with lots of switchbacks. The walk was worth it as the place was awesome, a beautiful cascading waterfall with a big pond below. We spent a few minutes there and then hiked back up the path and over to a large pool upstream of the waterfall. A couple of the brave souls jumped in to the cool water before we headed over to the canopy walk. There is a 450 meter long cat-walk in the forest canopy that provides great views of the forest floor as well as glimpses of a couple of elephants roaming nearby.
On the way out we did get a great view of a troop of baboons running into the forest, not someone you want to run into on foot. Now it was time to head back to Lewa so back into the trucks and on to the dirt roads that lead us back to camp. These roads are not wide, they are shared by two-way traffic and motorcycles, and they are not well maintained. We hit lots of bumps that had us up off our seats and hanging on for life, not a trip for those with faint hearts of bad backs. The drive back to our camp was again filled with great sightings of some of our now friends. It’s always neat to see the rhino, elephants, giraffe, zebra and cape buffalo. The cape buffalo are known to be quite aggressive and anytime they give you the stink eye or move towards you it is exciting. Today we ran into a mother and infant cape bushbuck, something we had not seen before. And there is always lots of birds of every size, color and habitat that we see everyday; Kenya has over 1000 species of birds and we’ve probably seen at least 100 of them over the two weeks.
December 14, 2023 – Lewa Safari Camp
Today started out like any other day, early breakfast and a game drive. Once again we spotted a pair lionesses out hunting so we followed one for a bit until we came to a clearing where a few warthogs were grazing. The truck stopped, engine off as we watched for 10-15 minutes as one of the lionesses slowly moved closer to the warthogs, hidden by the tall grass. The warthogs, unaware of the lioness, milled around feeding on the green grass. Then, the lioness sprung into action and started an exhilarating chase, missed her first attempt but continued chasing another warthog and this time she was successful. The lioness laid in the tall grass for quite awhile, trying to catch her breath and making sure her catch was dead. Aftera good while she decided to move her prey to a more hidden area and we watched as she drug the warthog off into the tall grass. It is hard to describe the adrenaline rush we got, not believing what was happened right in front of us, especially after watching a similar situation unfold days earlier but without success for the lioness.
After an exciting morning we sat down to a safari luncheon and continued on our typical game drive seeing an assortment of our usual friends and a few unusual ones. The leopard turtle was an unexpected treat that we saw while waiting for our dog-tracking demonstration. The Conservancy funds a group of government trackers whose job is aimed at tracking down poachers and rustlers in the park and in the surrounding communities. Lewa is proud to have no poaching in over 10 years, largely due to their investment in the neighboring communities that act as both responsible guardians and a neighborhood watch. A few of our group left with one of the armed guards and they hightailed it off to hide somewhere nearby. The dog handler hooked up the dogs harness, letting her know it was time to go to work, led her to the footprints left by our “villians”, and then off she went. It didn’t take her long to track down our friends and lick them into submission. The whole Lewa Conservancy, their facilities and community services are amazing! It has been incredible to view all the animals in their natural habitat as well as get educated on all the community services that are provided to engender the community support necessary for this operation to be successful.
December 15, 2023 – Lewa Safari Camp
Today we’re driving to Nanyuki to visit some shops and get our pictures taken on the equator. Our day starts out, as usual, with a game drive out of Lewa to get on a maintained road, that means rough dirt road instead of the usual trashed 2-track rutted trail, out to a paved road once close to town. On our game drive we see the “normal” Grant’s gazelle, rhino, Grevy’s zebra, baboons, lions, and birds; lot’s of birds. The bar for taking another picture goes up every day but Kenya and our guides seem to rise to the challenge every day. Whether it’s the number of animals, their proximity to our vehicle, their behavior or the lighting and angle, we keep getting better pictures every day.
As we approach Nanyuki we start to see the extremes of urban life in Kenya. The outskirts have housing built from reclaimed materials, the roads are still quite rough, the produce markets are set up alongside the road, the shops are small and specialized. There are motorcycles everywhere and they are monstrous 100cc motorcycles; I’m not sure you can buy a bike that small in the USA. As we get closer to the downtown area the buildings get bigger but you can tell that construction money is hard to come by and there are scores of partially completed buildings along the roadside neighborhoods. You might see a donkey cart on the road and the a huge 22-wheel heavy dump trucks moving lots of dirt and construction supplies. We finally get to the “Equator” signs and marker and pile out of our vehicles to take the obligatory pictures. By now we’re getting hungry so we head to the “famous” Karibu Trout Tree restaurant and fish farm fo a great lunch in their treehouse restaurant above the aquaculture pools where they grow, you guessed it, trout. The restaurant had some relatively tame Colobus monkeys that entertained us during a short walk around the grounds. After picking up a few more gifts and souvenirs it was back on the road to camp. As always, we encountered a few more photo-worthy moments as we saw giraffe and rhino up close and personal. While Kenya is known for its mammals, the number of unique bird and plant species is mind boggling. After almost two weeks in Kenya we certainly notice and appreciate that diversity more each day.
December 16, 2023 – Lewa Safari Camp
It rained very hard last night but had cleared up before dawn. We finished our breakfast and headed out to the trucks for our morning safari drive. The roads were quite muddy and we hadn’t made it more than a mile before our vehicles were recalled and our drive was cancelled. The conditions were not very safe, many of the steep roads were impassable, and the operations team didn’t want the roads to be damaged any more than they already were after weeks of rain prior to our arrival. One thing I haven’t written about much is the insects in Kenya, if you don’t like them then this type of trip probably isn’t for you. We’ve seen dung beetles, horned beetles and many others on our drives. We’ve also seen many around and inside our tents. Despite the fact that our tents are fully screened the bugs seem to have little problem visiting us. We’ve had walking sticks on our inside walls, different insects in our sinks every morning, and lots of caterpillars on our porch every day. This morning as we returned from our aborted morning game drive our guide found a horned beetle crawling around so we got a chance to take some closeups of this cool looking insect.
It was a good day to relax, chat with the other friends we’d made, and play some games for the rest of the day. Everyone hung out in the reception area and many played some of the assorted civilized games like cards, scrabble, dominoes, etc. After our afternoon game drive was cancelled we figured it was time for some more spirited games so out came the spoons and a deck of cards that no one cared about. If you never played SPOONS you are missing one of the best group games you can play. It’s the table top alternative to musical chairs and nearly as physical. We had 7-10 people playing for several hours and everyone had a great time grabbing spoons and watching to see how long it would take others to realize the game was over. We didn’t stop playing until it was time for our daily sundowner drinks and hor d’oeuvres which we enjoyed at the camp this evening. This would be our last of 8 nights at the Lewa camp so it was a little bittersweet as it would be our last evening with the amazing camp staff and guides.
December 17, 2023 – Lewa Safari Camp to Sand River Camp in the Masai Mara National Reserve
Our morning was pretty leisurely as we had packed up all of our belongings the night before to be ready for our drive to the Lewa airport. The roads were still pretty muddy and the water crossing were much deeper than usual. The drive was slow and we didn’t see a lot of animals on the drive except for the endless varieties of birds. This morning we saw one of the beautiful grey crowned cranes and it graced us with a takeoff and flight that I captured with my camera. Its flight is so graceful, it’s like a slow motion ballet.
We arrived at the Lewa airstrip and one of the planes was waiting for us, the other arrived a short time later. We split up into groups of 12 and loaded our baggage onto the Cessna Grand Caravans and took off on our charter flights to the Keekorok Airstrip in the Masai Mara National Reserve. You could tell that the planes were well loaded down as we used most of the dirt strip to get in the air, including a few hops before the airplane stayed airborne and climbed to cruising altitude for our 90 minute flight. All of the airstrips we’ve flown to are narrow dirt strips complete with loitering animals, this morning was no different. I was seating in the left rear seat of the Caravan, behind the wing strut and just behind the landing gear. As we were on final approach I was straining to see the runway but had a fairly restricted view down and forward. As our gear as about 3-4 feet above the runway I see this big black and white blob scream past the left wheel, we touched down a few seconds later and pulled onto the apron to unload and deplane. Apparently there were 4 ostrich on the end of the runway and we missed them by a couple of feet on landing. I commented to the pilot that the ostrich were very close to the plane and he replied, “Welcome to bush flying!”
Masai Mara means spotted landscape and refers to the vast grasslands with the acacia trees scattered about that appear as spots across the plains. Those trees are special spots for the animals as they look to them for shade during the days and as spots for the birds to nest in. The wildlife here is quite different from the previous 3 locations we have visited, there are no rhinos but many other hoofed animals that we haven’t seen before. There also seems to be bigger prides of lions here than we’ve seen before, some of them with over 30 members. We also saw lots of warthogs here, way more than in previous areas. We finished up our first day Masai Mara with a nice sundowner at flat rock where we enjoyed a few drinks and snacks while waiting for the sun to set. Then it was off to our last safari camp of the trip.
December 18, 2023 – Sand River Camp – Masai Mara National Reserve
Today was a big day, we’re leaving early for the Masai Mara reserve which is quite a drive on the 2-track dirt roads and trails that connect the towns and camps in the area. We were in the trucks by 6:30 and after a couple of hours of game drive we had seen quite the menagerie of familiar and new animals and birds. We had seen lots of giraffes but here we saw two different species next to each other, a reticulated and Masai. At first, we thought they we friends but we quickly realized that they were engaged in a spirited fight. Giraffe fighting involves lots of pushing and also major head butting. They jockey for position and then swing their heads to try and hit the other giraffe with their horns. We watched for 5-10 minutes before we had to move on to our next stop. Along the way we saw a cheetah, some unusual birds, crocodiles, hippos and zebras. We stopped at a Kenya/Tanzania border marker to take a few pictures and venture into Tanzania. We then stopped for a safari breakfast around 9:00.
After breakfast we continued into the Masai Mara reserve where we saw huge herds of all kinds of animals. We also saw a lot more of the predators that rely on the large herds of animals for their survival. There were also many of the opportunistic predator/scavengers that clean up after the lions, leopards and cheetahs like the hyena and jackals. The Masai Mara supports several big prides of lions and we saw lots of lions here, some in groups and others wandering alone. After a quick stop for lunch, we headed over to Talek, the largest town near us.
Our last stop of the day was a visit to one of the Masai villages near the town of Talek. This tribe lives a traditional lifestyle raising cattle for milk and food. They use the cow manure as a building material for their mud and wood huts that act as a shelter for their cattle at night. We were greeted by the tribe chief who spoke about their lifestyle and gave us a tour of the village. The adults greeted us with a traditional song and dance and gave us a demonstration of fire building and then we went to their small shops where we were able to buy some of their handmade bead and wood works.
December 19, 2023 – Sand River Camp – Masai Mara National Reserve to Nairobi
Today is our 47th anniversary so we decided to do something spectacular to celebrate, we went for a hot air balloon ride above the Masai Mara with Rick, Karla and Betsy. The tough part was that we had to get up at 4:00 AM to start our drive to the launch site for a sunrise launch. We’d never been in a hot air balloon so this was a completely new experience for us. The basket held 16 passengers and the loading procedure was a bit involved since there was a slight breeze that made it unsafe for us to climb in the basket after the balloon was ready to take off. They used fans to partially inflate the balloon and had the basket laying on its side. We then had to climb into the basket and crouch down in the basket while they finished inflating the balloon with cold air and then used the burners to warm the air inside the balloon. The basket was attached to a tractor to keep it from moving so when the balloon was finally generating lift the balloon rose and our basket flipped upright on the ground. When there was enough lift for us to take off, they disconnected the strap and away we went. We were only 10-15 feet off the ground as we glided across a large herd of Topi and antelope. What a way to start the day. After about an hour of gliding over the Masai Mara and getting views of lions, a hippo and a white-headed vulture in its nest, we touched down gently about 100 yards from our champagne breakfast setting and enjoyed a cooked to order breakfast before getting picked up by one of our Sand River Camp guides for a safari drive back to our camp.
You can watch the video from our balloon ride 
on YouTube!
We were expecting an accelerated return to camp but the Masai Mara wasn’t about to have that, we were very fortunate to get great views of some of the more elusive animals in the area. We saw a leopard and her cub, a very rare sighting as evidenced by the 50+ trucks we saw racing to the site where we spotted her as we continued to camp. We also saw one of the largest groups of elephants, the matriarch had gathered the herd into a tight group as a large bull elephant was harassing some of the youngsters and she was being quite protective. We also spotted a mother lioness with her lone cub, sadly she had been separated from two other cubs a couple of days before and she had not been able to find them. All of the guides were saddened by the loss but suspected it occurred when the large pride took down an adult hippo at night a couple of days ago. The jackals and hyena were hanging out in the area hoping to score some of the scraps but when we came by the feast site only one adult lion was there and he was clearly still stuffed from gorging on hippo meat for 2 days. We saw a few more unique birds on the drive back, it’s quite amazing that our guides have been able to immediately identify every bird and animal we’ve seen for the last 17 days. We returned to Sand River Camp for a late lunch and then hurried off to the airstrip for our last intra-Kenya flight back to Nairobi. The charter airline is obviously interested in quick turn-arounds and they proved their prowess, our plane touched down on the strip, loaded all of our gear and passengers, and was back in the air at 7000′ within 15 minutes! The 1-hour flight to Nairobi was uneventful as we landed at one of the smaller airports, about 20 minutes away from our hotel. We hopped on our small Toyota bus and made our way through rush hour traffic to our hotel on the fringe of downtown Nairobi, a city of about 2.8 million residents.
Safari Camps Overview: Since this was our last day to be in the wilds of Kenya staying at tent camps and lodges, I thought I’d devote a section to describe our habitats at each of the four locations that we stayed at: Lewa Safari Camp, Borana Lodge, Samburu Elephant Bedroom Camp, and Masai Mara Sand River Camp. We stayed at Lewa Safari Camp twice, we spent our first 3 nights at Lewa and then headed off to two other camps before returning for another 5 nights. We had two different tents but both we identical except for the bed arrangement and the view. All of the tents are made of a rubberized canvas with huge mesh openings all around and curtains to cover them for sleeping. The tents are separated by 50-100 feet and have walls or bushes between them for privacy. They all have zippers on the mesh walls to allow for entry and exit. You have to unzip the vertical and horizontal zippers each time you enter or exit. The bathroom is attached and separated by a canvas wall for privacy and light blocking. The tents also have a small desk with outlets for using a laptop or charging electronics.
Our next stay was at the Borana Lodge, a resort up in the mountains west of Lewa Conservancy. It was built on the hillside 30 years ago by a family that owns the Borana Conservancy. The owners also are actively involved in policing the region using their airplane to overfly the property on a regular basis. The shared facilities are very rustic and wide open considering the facility can only accommodate about 30 people at a time. We were fortunate, maybe, to get the largest room as the path to the room was 75 steps and a long path down the mountain to get there from the main lodge. Our room was a four-level suite built into the hill side, the bedroom was on the first level, the sunken living room had a standalone bathtub, couch, vanishing horizon pool and double sinks. The stairs lead to the toilet in a little recess and a few steps further down is a shower built into the hillside with huge picture windows looking out over the canyon behind the room. The adjoining reception area had a fully stocked bar plus a private deck with views of the entire canyon. Sonia’s walkthrough video is much more interesting than the pictures I captured; you can watch it here on YouTube.
We left the character of the Borana Lodge to head over to the Elephant Bedroom Camp in Samburu. This tent was very similar to the tents at Lewa. It was a nice layout with a huge deck facing the Ewaso Ngiro River. These tents were very close to the main camp area but, like all of the camps, required a guide if you were walking to or from your room after dark. The camp’s name came from the fact that elephants periodically wander through camp on their way to the Ewaso Ngiro River.
Sand River Camp was our final safari camp. It was the most elegant of the tent camps with beautiful wood furniture, a large living room area, raised tub, outdoor shower with large private deck facing the Sand River. The dinner service was quite formal, consistent with the tone of the entire camp. It was lovely accommodations; it would have been nice to have a bit more daylight downtime to enjoy this beautiful property.
December 20, 2023 – Nairobi depature
Today was our last day in Kenya. We had a leisurely morning and hopped on the bus to visit a couple of gift/souvenir shops and spend some time at the Giraffe Center just outside of Nairobi. This organization started in 1979 in an effort to save the Rothschild Giraffe species from extinction in the wild. This rare species existed in only a small region and the population was declining rapidly. This organization is dedicated to educating the public about the Rothschild Giraffe, providing a nursery for abandoned or injured giraffes, and breeding and repopulating the Rothschild Giraffe in the wild. We got to feed the giraffes at the center and learn about the efforts to protect them in the future. We also visited the KOBE TOUGH beads & leather center where women in need have found work making beads and then using them to make jewelry items for direct sale. Both destinations were very interesting.
This bus ride through Nairobi and suburbs was enlightening and sad in many ways. We passed billboards advertising $100,000 USD 2 bedroom high rise condos within a few miles of tin roof shacks packed in like sardines on the hillsides. It is a stark reminder of how difficult it is to break the chain of poverty and make the jump to a higher standard of living.
Tonight we depart Nairobi, Kenya and head back to the USA. It was an amazing trip for which we offer our sincere thanks to Adam and Megan, the primary organizers of this incredible and enlightening Africa Adventure. Many thanks to all of the people that help to smooth out the bumps and navigate the detours that are inevitable on an international trip of this length in some very undeveloped areas in Kenya. I want to also thank the scholars and medical participants that provided useful and often times necessary information and advice over the nearly three weeks we were together. Our travel group was quite large but everyone got along famously and we were able to shuffle groups the whole time to get to know all of the people we traveled with. We look forward to reconnecting with all of the group at some future time and place, wherever it may be. Hopefully everyone’s travel, despite being quite long, was uneventful and they arrived quickly and safely at their final destinations. Our intermediate stop was Seattle, Washington where we’ll spend Christmas with our daughter’s family and my sister and her husband before we drive our RV back to San Diego to celebrate the new year.
Thanks for your interest in our adventure and I hope you got some enjoyment following our travels and experiences that are often impossible to capture in words.