SAMBURU
AMBOSELI
SHELDRICKS
We flew into Nairobi and spent a night there to acclimatise...the next morning we went to an elephant orphanage just outside of the city - Sheldrick's. Earlier last year, G had adopted me baby elephant, a female named Dida. She had been rescued at just a few months old and was being raised by the wonderful carers at David Sheldrick's Wildlife Trust. Now run by his wife, Dame Daphne Sheldrick, the orphanage rescues orphaned elephants and rhinos - and due to ivory poaching being lowered in terms of priority, they have more orphaned elephants than ever it seems. We arrived (I don't think I could have been more excited - how old am I?) and waited for the babies to come back to the shelter for their evening feed and bedtime - at 5PM, so cute! After 10 mins, they came...ranging from knee height (2 weeks old) to chest height (2 years old) - pootling along with their little coloured blankets on their backs. Oh my god. They have wrinkly little bottoms that hang down, huge flat feet, long wiry hairs that come out of weird places, and they smell. I love them. The elephants share stalls with the keepers (each elephant has their own keeper who stays with them until they leave the orphanage, between 2-5 years). Full-time job, these keepers do not take one day's leave for 2 to 5 years. They spent 24hrs with their elephant. Incredible. They seemed alarmed when I suggested they rotate or take a weekend off now and then. That is real dedication. Dida - well it turns out she had 4 other foster parents - and they were all there! I tried not to show that I cared (after all, people had told me I wasn't her only parent) but when she refused to even look at me, well, pffft. The keepers must have felt sorry for me (moron tourist) and let me into the stalls with Shimba, a 2 year old male, who loved the hugs I gave him. They also let us into Owanjela's stall - a 2 week old baby who was shorter than my knees. We bottle fed her. I almost cried. I couldn't believe she was so small. Very sadly, she passed away a few weeks after our visit. What a wonderful day. Oh, and Maxwell the blind rhino lives there too. When he wants milk he makes these tiny little kitten noises. You have to see it to believe it.
The next morning we went by small plane to Amboseli, right on the border with Tanzania - elephant country! Our driver, Joseph, was really knowledgeable about the area, the animals, the customs - he has been doing this for over 25 years! The elephants were incredible - in Amboseli it is a dust bowl...arid as anything and so the elephants are grey as they are constantly covered in dust. They look like giant ghosts. Amboseli is desert-like with some green parts here and there...one minute you're driving along leaving dust trails behind you for miles...the next you're in a patch of green with palm trees (which incidentally the elephants push over so it looks like a tornado has hit!) and mini lakes. The elephants like to submerge themselves in these small lakes - to keep cool and to feed on the vegetation. There is one large lake in Amboseli that only fills with water during the rainy season, but the water evaporates within a few hours to just a few inches again - no wonder the elephants enjoy these mini lakes and take full advantage when they can.
It was scorching hot (I got sunburnt) and quiet...eerily but also peacefully so. The animals make NO noise...For some reason we expected them to snort, snuffle or something - but nothing, not a peep. It was so quiet that one could actually hear them breathing. We were told elephants can communicate with each other from up to 6km away - HOW?? Another amazing thing that we humans have yet to work out. Wildebeest, jackals, hyenas, lions, zebra, giraffe, buffalo. All living together in harmony. I know that's a bit Circle of Life Lion King, but it's true!
G visited a Masaai village (I slept) and came back laden with Masaai jewellery and a new-found skill - how to light a fire using 2 pieces of wood and goat pooh. He also managed to take a nap whilst in the village - 10 mins on the village leader's bed. Don't ask.
We drove into Tanzania...by about 20 feet...the border is not really a border, just a stone stuck in the soil with T K carved into it.
2 days later we flew onto Samburu, just north of Mount Kenya. Where Amboseli was dry and parched, Samburu was lush and green. Small too. Ok, not small small, but the topography was very different - trees everywhere, hills, rivers...and lots of clay. Amboseli elephants are grey, Samburu ones are red! Ww witnessed an elephant drama the next morning, right outside our tent...the rains had come the night before, causing the river to swell dramatically, and the currents were strong (imagine sleeping with your head next to the dishwasher!) - a family of elephants was attempting its usual daily river crossing...except that their smallest member, a calf about 2 weeks old (read: TINY) was getting swept away time and time again. Every time this happened, she would be pulled under the water and taken downstream, and each time the adults would chase after her, roaring and trumpeting away, forming a circle around the little one and pushing her back to the shallows or scooping her up in a pair of tusks. At one point the matriach was so frustrated and angry that she mounted the bank and actually stamped her foot! Then an incredible thing happened - another matriach from a rival tribe came from the other side of the river, and she appeared to almost coax the frustrated family across. I say "rival" because elephant families/groups do not intermix at all, in fact they openly dislike crossing paths. So to see a matriach from another group helping was quite something. The family made it across - eventually - talk about stubborn!
Amidst all this excitement, a crocodile had perched himself about 20 feet away from me - nice. Thankfully he was more interested in a potential free baby elephant breakfast than me. Another opportunist lurking about was a hippo. Until this point I thought they were the cutest things ever. No. They cause more deaths than any other creature - and they are vegetarian for god's sake! They like to kill for the sport apparently...and then leave the remains for others such as crocs or vultures. Every time baby elephant was swept away, hippo widened his mouth just a tiny bit more - my god they can open those jaws wide...it almost defies the laws of physics. He, like the croc, went home hungry.
Masaai Mara - the final part of our wonderful holiday. We had seen Masaai tribespeople in Amboseli but now we were in their real home. The Mara (as they call it) is massive...it is a humungous great park basically with official gates dotted around it - a bit like toll-booths I suppose. We were there in October - in the middle of the Masaai Mara, we came across a chap wearing an Obama badge, no joke. Kenyan pride. Wonderful to see.
The tree gyrax - size of a cat. Cute looking - a bunny rabbit with regular ears. I have never heard anything so loud in my life. It can wake you from over a mile away. Jesus Christ. It screeches throughout the night and then of course it's friend 1 mile away has to respond. And so it goes on. Little bastards.
The columbus monkey. The most frightening monkey in existence. There is something not right with a primate that has a face of a human, stands like a human in the trees (seriously, that image will haunt me forever), wears a "skirt" and looks like it might kill you at any moment. Ok the last sentence is not quite true but it scared the life out of me. I should say they - lucky us had several in our vicinity, one of whom was extra aggressive as his wife had just given birth the night before.
Black faced vervet monkeys. Other than the elephants, my favourite animal. Very cheeky - they know when it's tea time - between 3 and 4 pm - and with no shame they appear - families of them. You are told to double zip your tents closed...yeah right - well, they are cleverer than we imagined. One let himself into our tent, peered around (because we were so still he didn't register us watching him I think), picked up stuff, shook it, licked things, shook more things and then left. Of course after that we took macadamia nuts, cookies, anything monkey-friendly with us and did our very best to invite the entire clan to dine with us at every opportunity. Sadly only one took us up on that but it was great because he actually drank my coffee from its cup less than a foot from us. Excellent.
