Saturday, November 3
Forgotten from last night (or lost in the haze of two Dawa’s and a glass of wine?!)...in addition to the ubiquitous rock hyrax here, new to the Emakoko experience are a family of genet cats and a bunch of bush babies who join the dining room crowd at dinner. The genets seem familiar with Anthony, a relationship which is bolstered by the generous bowl of Friskies he leaves down for them. Genets are a cross between a cat and a ferret, with an elaborate spotted coats. And I’ve only ever seen bush babies on night game drives, and usually just the shiny brightness of their eyes from within a bush. I had no idea until last night that they are quite similar to North American gray squirrels, with long bushy tails.
I managed to sleep the sleep of the exhausted and jetlagged last night. I took an Ambien at 10:30 and it delivered a precise 7 hours of sleep for me. I woke at 5:30 ready to go for the day and was dressed and ready to roll when my 6 a.m. coffee and cookies were delivered as my wake up call.
That I feel mentally and emotionally far more stable today really ought to be a wake up call to me. I feel more like a normal Amy and really need to bottle up this feeling to remember it when I’m back in reality.
Today we headed straight out on a game-drive, choosing to save breakfast for mid-morning. Rashid said that since it is Saturday, that the park would be crowded, but since we are already in the park and a fair distance from the gate, we would head to the most remote part of the park that day-trippers would take hours to get to and start there. Later today we’d got to the other side that the day-trippers would have covered earlier, all to avoid the crowds, which is a great strategy.
Of course lions were on the agenda here, since I never managed to see them on my prior trip here. Late last night I received an email from one of my Safaritalk friends Tom, who shares a love of both the Emakoko where I’m staying now as well as Nairobi National Park. He said that it is his birthday today and that I was to go out and “find something spectacular for me”. Early in the morning, we came across a newly born zebra, just minutes old, still wet and finding it’s legs beneath it. Its mom was nuzzling it and licking it clean. It chose today, Tom’s birthday, to enter the world. To me that was just poetry. I sent a photo to Tom to appreciate. It’s funny how Mother Nature seems to offer up just what you need.
Nearby the lodge is a hyena den which we saw late in our drive last night after the sun had gone down. I didn’t manage to get well-lit shots then but saw the puppies and mom again today and they really are darn cute. And very curious! They kept running over to the vehicle and then running back to their mother if one of us moved. Rashid explained that the den was likely shared by two females who had puppies a few weeks apart. The pups were different sizes, the smallest probably being about a week old.
We spotted about 4 black rhino along the way and then came upon a solitary male who appeared to be grazing near the road around the bend from where we were. Rashid slowed the car to a crawl and got as close as he thought he could with a running engine and turned off the ignition. We sat and waited a bit and the rhino got closer as it grazed and finally stopped and looked right at us. At this point it was maybe 40-50 yards off, fairly close for a sighting in my experience. I popped out the roof hatch and started to take photos when suddenly it was getting closer without my manipulating the lens. I looked up from the viewfinder, puzzled, how was it getting closer without my zooming in? My mind calculated this quickly, it was charging! It would rush forward 10 steps or so, stop and snort at us. Then do it again! It ended up 20-30 yards off and stopped, staring us down, before it turned and ran in the other direction. It was a spectacular encounter. So between the newborn zebra and the rhino, I was rewarded by this early morning game drive. As I say, I’m never disappointed when I get up early.
As I was out the hatch in the roof though, I heard a lion roar and told Rashid and pointed in the general direction. So I know now at the very least that they exist here. We tried for a while to conjure them up but then just gave in to the natural rhythm of the drive. We found a small lake that had zebras drinking and a pair of hippo floating lazily. On the other side of it Rashid spotted a crocodile hatchling on the water’s edge, barely a foot long. I’m used to the massive crocs I see in the Mara, so this was notably smaller. I also spotted a rock agama lizard sun bathing in the road, and a second visited me here on my deck at the Emakoko after breakfast, this one missing half his tail!
This visit has already confirmed for me that, even without the cats, Nairobi National Park is a underrated gem. In just two game drives I’ve seen: black rhino (7+), zebra, wildebeest, impala, grant’s gazelle, Thomson’s gazelle, Coke’s hartebeest, waterbuck, giraffe, duiker (spelling? A small gazelle), eland, hyena, hippo, jackal, ostrich, genet, bush baby and rock hyrax. I’ve also seen a slew of birds, the exact names of which I cannot remember, but include doves, bee eaters (at least 2 species), roller, plovers, sandpipers, starlings, larks, kites, vultures and eagles. I still cannot believe this is right in Nairobi and so accessible to so many people. That the government doesn’t do more to protect and promote it is a sad situation.
Returned back to the lodge around 9:45 for a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs, apricot scones (delicious!) and granola with a splash of yogurt. I devoured a pot of coffee by myself (caffeine withdrawal headache be damned) and then took a shower. Sitting out on my deck enjoying the air before lunch and when we then head out to Sheldricks for my private visit.
The weather here has been good so far. They got a drenching of rain before I arrived yesterday but it cleared to be pretty nice in the afternoon. It’s probably mid to high 70s if I had to guess, certainly a lot more comfortable than the last two times I was in Nairobi in February. This is short rainy season though, so short rains can be expected at any time. I’m comfortable in short-sleeved shirt and pants, but am sitting out in shorts and a t-shirt now. I could take this weather year round!
The rest of this is written 9 hours later...fasten your seat belts.
Today will go down in history as my best day on safari ever. No, seriously. I’ve said it before and never think it can get better. But then it does.
I met up with Rashid just before 2 and he’d just gotten back from getting the truck serviced. He said he ran into the Kingfisher pride, a lioness and her four sub-adult daughters at the top of the hill. Off we went. Except the hill is pretty bumpy and slow. We were maybe 15 minutes getting there. And no lions. So we made a best guess, remembering that I have a 3:00 appointment at Sheldricks. We went about 15 minutes and he said he saw an impala with a young baby in the same spot coming back earlier, so if the lions headed this way, the mother would have taken the baby off or been eaten, so they didn’t come this way. We doubled-back and went another direction. Rashid stopped and looked through the binos and somehow spotted them about 1/4 mile off. “They’re hunting”, he said. OH NO. I’ve done this before. I’ve waited hours and hours (quite literally) and if a hunt happens, it failed. I can think of at least twice I’ve invested time in failed hunts. And I had somewhere to be anyway, I couldn’t invest that time again.
We pulled up to an area with knee-high grass. Rashid could see where four lions were crouching, I could only see them as the poked heads up slightly and I could see the black backs of their ears. All of them were focused on two male impalas standing in front of a small bush. The lions spread out in a circle around their target. They kept creeping closer so slowly, tightening the circle bit by bit. I was watching through my camera and saw the middle female lion get so darn close to the impala I could hardly believe it didn’t see her. Then the impalas both turned to exit the scene to the right. Big mistake. I’d have thought that middle lion would’ve gone right at it, but one from the side dove in. After the fact, Rashid said that it was as if the lions didn’t have the same plan. One went for one impala, another went for the other. I thought that I was watching with my naked eye but I also felt my finger go down on the shutter. They got the impala! Impala and lion flying through the air well above the grass from right to left. The five lions somehow got the impala over to the far right, conveniently not more than 15 feet off a road (we must stay on-road in NNP, so this was convenient). We pulled up just as they were tucking into the impala. I watched a bit of the lunch, then realized we only had 40 minutes to get to Sheldricks and Rashid said that’s exactly how much time we needed. So we left. But not before noticing that the impala all of a sudden tried to move! It wasn’t dead yet, even after having most of its insides taken out. Yikes. As I’ve seen plenty of lion meals, I was ok with leaving. But think about it, we caught up with these lions at about 2:15 and we were leaving at 2:20. That’s how fast it was! What was even better, we were the only vehicle there. It doesn’t get better than that. Fingers crossed on the photos. I’ve never taken action shots of any sort, and I don’t even remember looking through the viewfinder, so I don’t know how good they’ll actually be.
Sheldricks was wonderful as usual. They have 22 babies there now and while I missed some of my regulars who have graduated to the reintegration sites all over Kenya, I still had a good time with the four I have left, Enkesha, Luggard, Jotto and Tamiyoi. Enkesha was one of the first in and one of the first to eat and then dive head first into the mud bath and also the very last to leave. She loves her mud baths! She didn’t leave it the entire time I was there! I ended up playing with Tamiyoi before I realized it was her, she is a playful one who really likes attention. Luggard seems to be walking better but he stays off on his own because he doesn’t like getting pushed around by the others. I got my photo with Jotto but quickly lost him in the crowd. I didn’t take as many photos this time as it was more fun to just watch them interact. So many personalities, like kids on a playground. One of the larger elephants tried to push a baby out of the mudbath and the baby started to trumpet and Edwin went over and called the bigger one by name and it stopped right away! Another time all it took was for Edwin to lift his finger and wag it at them and they stopped. So funny.
There is a newly rescued elephant Dololo who just came out with the herd for the first time today. She was found in a shallow mudbath with only her trunk sticking up out of the water. She looks so sunken, hollow cheeks and very thin but they think she will be ok since she’s done well so far. The keepers were trying to get her to go in or near the mudbath so that they could cover her with protective mud to shield her from the sun and insects.
As the hour was up the babies started to get anxious to get back out to the park and they all lined up as if to tell the keepers, “come on now, let’s go”! Somehow, in the rush for the park, Kuishi, a not small baby elephant, stepped on my foot! Good lord was she heavy. Edwin was right next to me, and he said one word and she moved. I’m fine but it just goes to show you how not “baby” these babies actually are!
We got to meet Maxwell again. Rashid said he heard that another released black rhino got pregnant and had a calf and brought the calf back to meet Maxwell and visit her keeper, which is really interesting given how anti-social black rhinos are.
Kiko the giraffe has been moved since he’s outgrown the barn he was in. He’s such a big boy now. I asked Edwin why he’s so shy about going out with the giraffes he sees in the park, and he said it’s because Kiko is a Rothschild giraffe and those in the park are Masai. Never the two shall meet, I guess. His species are more up in northern Kenya so if they are going to release him I suppose it will have to be up there.
We left Sheldricks not thinking it could get any better. I mean, really, right? Rashid had a mission for either leopard or white rhino, neither of which we’d seen yet. We drove through leopard territory with no luck. He then saw through the binos about 5 white rhinos well over a mile off. They were just speck under the horizon. But he knew we had time as they were grazing and don’t generally move fast like cats can. We started to head in that general direction and saw two vehicles stopped at the side of the road. I saw one very large camera lens sticking out of the window closest to the side of the road. They were watching something.
That something was two lionesses and four cubs lying in the tall grass. I’d have missed it entirely if I didn’t know where to look. And even from my vantage point sitting on the roof of the truck, I could only see the long indentations where they were lying. Suddenly one lioness’ head popped up and she gave a long yawn. Twice. That’s lion speak for “getting up now” and she did. Followed by her sister. They only moved maybe 20 feet, but I managed to get some shots of them both. The cubs were impossible to see clearly let alone get decent photos of, but I did see them scurry to the one they were nursing from. Six more lions. So they DO exist in NNP! My drought has ended!
But we weren’t through yet. Off we went to the rhinos. We first found four. I managed to get a great shot of the rhinos in front of the Nairobi skyline and just some generally nice shots. Then it seems that the four decided they were going to cross the road. As we were the only car on the road, I got incredible photos. You’d think four would be enough right? No, we saw 12 more here, there and everywhere! We saw another crossing with a 2 year old calf too! It was raining rhinos.
Our last sighting of the night was a bit sad. There were two adult females, an adult male and a one-year old calf. The male wanted to mate with what appeared to be the mother of the calf. In order to do so, he felt he needed to make the calf disappear. Just as we started to drive off, the male charged the calf and kept poking it with its horn. The calf was distressed and the mother didn’t seem to do much but offer cover when the calf ran behind it. She certainly wasn’t intervening. Rashid says that the other female is probably in estrus and the male wants to mate with both females and sees the calf as preventing that. It was quite dark by the time this happened and to be honest I didn’t want to be there if the inevitable happened. Rashid said that it had happened once before that he knows of, so it’s not unheard of. And sad. I’ll drive off pretending they all live happily ever after. It’s easier that way.
We got back to the lodge and I came to the room to freshen up and look at my photos. I was sitting quietly and through the room (all doors closed) ran a rock hyrax. I wasn’t scared or nervous, just worried he wanted to get out and my room was closed up for the night. I mentioned it to the guard as I went up to dinner and he said he’d take care of it. Remember that....
Dinner tonight was excellent. There’s quite a crowd here with a large family so it was a bit raucous. I recognized one guy of a pair traveling together. I went to sit on my own to eat (it’s not communal dining here) and they invited me over. How nice! It dawned on us both that we knew each other and it turned out he was camp manager at Encounter Mara, where I stayed for safari #3! Andrew is a really nice guy and I appreciated the conversation and companionship over dinner. Small world!
Dinner was as delicious as I’ve come to expect. I had another dawa to get started. Appetizer was grilled mushroom over polenta toast. Main was ricotta and tomato tart with scalloped potatoes (the non-veg main was beef, so I got their potatoes too). Dessert was a wonderful passion fruit meringue. We washed this all down with a Malbec which was tasty.
I returned to my room to pack to move on to the Mara tomorrow. I’d gotten that all done and climbed into bed only to look up through the mosquito net to see the rock hyrax (remember him?) jumping up at the door knob to my deck. He wanted out. I got up, he ran and hid, I opened the door, climbed back behind the mosquito net and waited. It took him a few minutes but out he went. I closed the door behind him or else I think I would have had an all-night rave of rock hyraxes in here.
And that was the day. In total, 11 lions, 1 more black rhino (bringing my total to 8), 16 white rhino, 22 baby elephants. I honestly can’t imagine how this can be topped. To say I am insanely happy is an understatement!
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