Last night I saw 1 am and thought to myself “I’m never going to get to sleep, never, never never…” and then the next thing I knew I was being rousted out of bed like the house was on fire by the annoying iPhone alarm. To say I slept the sleep of the dead is an understatement. I was past the out cold stage of sleep. But I felt pretty good.
Breakfast was included with my room at the Four Points, so I showered and headed down. After my day of nothing but carbs yesterday, I was craving protein, so I had a yogurt and an omelette, a cheese croissant to balance that out, and fresh mango and pineapple with a cup of coffee. That ought to hold me over.
Stanley picked me up promptly at 8:30 and off we went to Wilson Airport for the flight to Lewa Downs. With the opening of the bypass toll road, gone are the days of leaving for Wilson at 6 am for a 10 am flight. We made it in less than a half hour and Stanley got me all checked in and ready to roll. It was gently raining but also pretty sunny as we left the hotel. It was also considerably cloudier than I’ve ever seen it here.
The Safarilink operation has done a serious upgrade to their technology and now issues real boarding passes and luggage tags. Gone are the days of the pretty laminated passes emblazoned with your airstrip destination that you’d hand back as you got on the plane. I have a collection of the luggage tags that have me waxing nostalgic each time I come across them in my desk drawer at home. Ah well.
We boarded at 9:50 and took off at about 10:15. I was the third stop, Lewa Downs, after Loisaba and Nanyuki. There were a bunch of low level clouds we rose above and stayed above for most of the flight. It was a nice transition from big air to small air to the rolling hills of Lewa, for sure. Just as we landed for the last time, I saw three reticulated giraffes at the end of the airstrip, my first wildlife sighting of the trip.
With the sheer amount of rain Kenya has gotten, everything is so incredibly green and not nearly as dry looking as I’m used to seeing it. That is really good for Kenyans, but will be a bit of a problem for photographers due to the high grass everywhere.
I was met by Johnson at the Lewa Downs airstrip and he will be my guide for the next 3 days. I’m sharing him with Ros and Lucy, from the UK. This is their first safari so it’s neat to see it through their eyes. We used the loos at the airstrip, and it was fun watching male weavers excitedly making their nests in the tree outside the restroom in their attempts to try to attract a female. Once on the move, we quickly came upon a lone bull elephant, a Somali ostrich and two more reticulated giraffes. So already I’ve seen 2 of the Northern Five.
Surprisingly, we also had fairly close sightings of three white rhino, a solitary one and a mom with calf. That was great to see them so relaxed and easy going.
One other very unexpected sighting was a trail of ants crossing the road. I know, you wouldn’t think we’d stop for ants! But it was a BIG line of ants crossing. So Johnson got us out of the Land Rover and we investigated. The car that had just passed us had run over a bunch of these and the remaining were freaking out. These are “sizzler ants” and when they are stressed they make a noise that sounds like throwing water droplets on a hot pan. It was really neat. He showed us how the living ants would carry the dead ones (if they weren’t crushed and unmoveable) back to their home. We waited it out and after maybe 5 minutes they’d all returned back to where they started, a few less in number, so we felt it was acceptable to cross now. It was a sobering nature story.
It is definitely noticeable how barely trafficked it is here. I’ve only seen a couple of other vehicles from my camp and one local vehicle. It’s so serene and low key. Delightful.
We arrived at Lewa Wilderness and Moosh the manager gave us the tour. I was a bit starstruck immediately because I’d just watched Anthony Bourdain’s 2018 episode in Kenya before I left home and recognized Moosh as the one who guided Bourdain around here (AB also stayed here, which is why I chose it of other camps here in Lewa). I was shown to my ridiculously gorgeous room with the harsh reminder “when you are not in your room please keep doors and windows closed, keep the monkeys out.” Ah yes, I’ve been there, done that. Now I know I’m back in Kenya.
Lunch was served buffet style and the chef came out to tell the vegetarians among us what was meat-free. I had tofu-veg kabobs off the grill, a white bean stew, cheesey twice-baked potatoes and a glorious Thai green papaya salad with some chile and basil that was to die for. There was also cucumber-lime sorbet for dessert but the star of the show was the homemade goat cheese from the camp’s own goats. Man, that was a last supper course if ever there was one.
As I sit here on my own little veranda overlooking a gorgeous gorge, I hear only the rush of the river running nearby, the relentless cooing of some doves and the barking of some vervet monkeys, no doubt planning when next to attempt an invasion. So now I sit, far from the 30 degrees, rain snow wind that I left at home. I’d say it’s low 70s here, comfortable for short sleeves and long pants. I’ll definitely need my fleece early and late day though.
We met at 4:00 to head out again and Johnson made me a nice iced coffee for the road…boy do I miss my iced coffee already and the Kenyan strength is incredible!
Johnson had a well-defined game plan for the afternoon drive. Lions first. Ever the skeptic and seeing the height of the grass (easily waist high in spots!) I was not holding out a lot of hope for lions. The two ladies I’m with, it being their first safari and all, rode on top of the Land Rover for most of the drive until we went offroad. I like being lower for photographs so I left them to it.
We drove on for a while, passing a couple of handsome reticulated giraffes (one is Fred, who has visited the camp for 20+ years and is very used to vehicles and people), and the elephant we saw earlier today named Boris. I’m finding that my 100-400 lens is a bit too much for some closer shots, so I was glad when Boris moved behind us by about 50 yards and posed photogenically for me so I could get his entire self in the frame!
We didn’t drive too long before one of my roof-bound mates shouted “LIONS!” and pointed left. Lo and behold, there were two male lions, lying flat in the grass, big bloated bellies from a zebra breakfast. These two boys were out cold and going no where, but any safari that starts with two handsome big boys is bound to be a good one! Since all of us are cat parents, we knew very well from the deep breathing and heaving sighs that they weren’t getting up any time soon, and we admired their massive paws and big scratchable bellies and moved on. Johnson thought rhinos would be up next. How wrong he was.
He’d spotted a huge crash of rhino a bit of a distance away. And for a moment it seemed we were headed that way. Until he scanned further with his binoculars and said “lions with cubs”. He had me there, and off we went. It took me until we were literally on top of them to see them. This was the Sara pride and they were tucked into the tall grass but as we got closer, one after another their heads popped up out of the grass. There were 4 moms and at least 9 cubs, it was hard to keep track. I was over the moon. I mean, truly, on my last safari I went 6 days before I saw a lion and here I was on my first game drive already with 15? Yes, I was pretty happy. We sat and watched them stalk something on the horizon which ultimately they gave up. Then the cubs played a bit and ultimately they walked on while we enjoyed our sundowners (G&T for me, of course) and the company of new friends. Today was a good day.
On the way back to camp we came across another mother white rhino and her calf. I was so blown away by how chill they were and how close we were able to be without them getting spooked. It just speaks to the beauty of a place like this, so highly controlled in terms of visitor traffic, but also that Lewa was, first and foremost, a rhino sanctuary. Johnson said there are about 270 rhinos here now, originally they started with about 15 in 1983 (I think?). That is a huge conservation success story. I’ve seen them in Nairobi National Park, but not like this. They are just so chilled here.
There was one large acacia tree on the way back to camp just full of weavers’ nests. And I noticed that they were almost all female birds in them, so the males had built the nests and the females had chosen them. But by the amount of noise coming from that tree, there had to be more than just the females. Johnson said the nests all had babies in the by now and the noise was from the adults and babies combined. It was loud but glorious. Very neat to finally see the end of the whole weaver-nest-making process! (Have video, will post to Instagram/Facebook)
We returned to camp, dropped our stuff in our tents and returned to the main area for dinner. I’ve made friends with Meshack the bartender. For lunch today he made me a non-alcoholic concoction that was so nice (I saw ginger beer, lemon soda and bitters, along with mint and cucumber, not sure what else) so tonight I let him make me a Casablanca cocktail, which was fruity and bright.
Dinner tonight was fish and chips (I am after all pescatarian and still craving protein from yesterday’s carb-a-palooza), a delicious french onion soup and a baked banana with chocolate crumbs and cream for dessert.
The other folks at the table tonight are from NY and CT, so of course with a table full of Brits and US Democrats, all talk turned to how this election year will pan out. Unfortunately for us, the consensus was not positive. So we had another round and called it an early night. 6 am coffee, 6:30 game drive tomorrow.
Not a bad first day out to start with. The bar is set high. I’m SO happy!!
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