We had a great few days in Kenya in the last couple of weeks of June. We visited Amboseli and the Mara. Although words and pictures cannot adequately capture what a great experience this trip was. Below is a high level review of the Amboseli part of the trip.
On the flight in, we had some great elephant sightings but Kili remained hidden by cloud cover. We were met at the airstrip by our guide from the Serena. The lodge was great – very friendly staff, good food, a nice pool with pretty good views. We were lucky that we shared our Landcruiser with just one other person on all drives and the park itself wasn’t crowded with visitors. She was an American woman that was staying in Kenya at a friend’s house for a month and had traveled extensively in East Africa and other parts of the world. We had a terrific time speaking with her during the game drives. We settled into our room and then headed out on our first game drive around 11:00 a.m. We returned to the lodge around 1:00 and headed out for another drive at 4:00. The following day we had two drives as well.
Having read so much about the awful impact of the drought that struck this region for a couple of years I wasn’t too sure how the game viewing would be even though the rains had returned. The area by the Ol Tukai section and the other swamps were quite green and lush and other areas of the park were dusty and dry. I am happy to say that there were ample zebra, wildebeest, tommys, buffalo, etc. about. If it is true that the concentration of these animals in the park is half of what it was before the drought, I can only imagine how spectacular this park must have been. (Of course there were many large herds of elephants as well.) Below is a very brief review of the different animals we saw on the two days we were at Amboseli.
Day 1:
Within ten minutes of leaving the lodge we saw a pride of lions (two females, several cubs and a couple of younger males whose manes hadn’t completely grown in yet). One of the males was collared. We had some nice close up encounters as one of the females and both of the males crossed the road directly in front of our Landcruiser. Additionally we saw tonnes of elephants (poor pun intended), giraffe, cape buffalo, gazelles, warthogs, ostriches, spotted hyenas, waterbuck, etc. Although the animal sightings exceeded expectations, Mt. Kilimanjaro remained clouded over during the first drive and we were concerned that we wouldn’t get to see the great mountain as we were told that it can stay clouded over for several days at a time.
The clouds cleared a bit during the evening drive and we did get some nice (yet hazy) views of Kili. The highlight of this drive was when a lone lioness crossed the road in front of our car (in a different part of the park from where we earlier saw the lion pride). She casually strolled toward a group of wildebeest and zebra and then proceeded to lie down in front of them and begin grooming. While the nervous beest kept a close eye on her the zebra made their exit. We observed this for about 20 minutes. At one point she got up and trotted toward them before lying back down. All this took place with Kili in the background. To the right of this a pair of crested cranes was engaged in a courtship dance and on the opposite side of the road (directly behind us) a large male elephant approached and obligingly posed for a couple of great pictures. The best part of this was that there was only one other car observing this.
We returned to the Serena for a bush dinner complete with Masai dance. The food was quite good however, it seems I’ve lost a bit of spring as I wasn’t quite able to jump as high as some of the local morans. This was quite embarrassing as I had been bragging how in 2007 I was able to jump higher than a couple of the young Masai in the Ngorongoro highlands. I blame this on the heavy three course meal (complete with a couple of Tuskers). I’ve begun a strict training regime and will seek to rehabilitate my reputation when we return to East Africa. We retired to bed and were awakened by the loud and fierce barking of Hyenas accompanied by a few lion calls and roars. FANTASTIC!!
The next morning we had yet another close encounter with a lone lioness in another area of the park who was calling out for the rest of her pride (woooo, oooooh, oooh). As we stopped and watched her I looked to the right and Kili had cleared out nicely. As I was gazing at a fantastic view of Kilimanjaro, listening to a lioness that was no more that was twenty feet away from us call out, I thought how incredibly lucky we were to be experiencing this. We moved on and met up with a couple of hyenas nipping at each other and got some great shots of a large elephant in front of Kili (which by now was still quite viewable but a bit hazy). On the afternoon drive we went to Observation Hill – fantastic panoramic views of the park. You can really see how much the geography differs. Some areas are lush, green marshland, some green/brown grassland, other forested and other areas are dry and dusty (complete with dust devils blowing across the landscape). Near Observation Hill is Narok Swamp. There were lots of elephants wading in and grazing. This was pretty neat to see elephant almost completely up to their heads in water feeding.
Amboseli Summary -
We were lucky to see lions on three of the four drives as well as many very large individual, and large herds of elephants. There were times when we were stopped and I would scan the horizon in all directions with my binoculars (spinning around 360 degrees) and see elephants in all directions. The park is green and wasn’t crowded. Most times we were the only car around an animal sighting. Other times there were one or two others. Amboseli was great and lived up to its billing (elephants, elephants and more elephants; plus good views of Kili and good general game viewing). We joked that our guide (a gentleman named Victor that worked for Serena and was terrific) had an easy job as the wildlife was so prolific that “spotting” wasn’t really necessary. Just driving along the roads we easily saw lions, elephant, zebra, beest, gazelle, warthog, hyena, Hippo, buffalo, waterbuck, etc. This was two days very well spent – we couldn’t believe how easy the game viewing was as compared to our previous experience in Tanzania (Tarangire, Ngorongoro and the Serengeti).
