Nairobi & The Masai Mara - Kenya

The next morning we headed over to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Elephant & Rhino Orphanage to see the orphan Ele's and to make an appointment to see the orphans that we foster later that night.

We have supported this fantastic organisation since the 1990s fostering a succession of Elephants over the years. However, it was only when we started to travel to Nairobi that we got to see first hand what a marvellous job the people here do and how our donations are put to very good use, see their website www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org for more information if you wish to help.

David Sheldrick was the first Chief Game Warden in Tsavo East and was instrumental throughout his life in safeguarding Kenyan wildlife and the environment for future generations. The Wildlife Trust is now run in his memory by his widow Dame Daphne Sheldrick who quite literally pioneered how to rescue and eventually re-habilitate orphaned baby Elephants and Rhino's back into the wild.

A lot of what she and her staff have learnt, such as getting the mother's milk substitute recipe correct, has had to be through trial and error but today they are the recognised world experts in saving baby Ele's which they do almost every week not only in Kenya but in other parts of Africa as well.

The Kenyan keepers are very dedicated staying with the orphans 24/7, even sleeping with them each night so the babies come to trust them and look upon them as part of the family. Each day the orphans walk with the keepers in Nairobi National Park which adjoins their stockade to get them used to the bush, here they can meet other animals including the wild Elephants.

At 11am each day the orphans walk in from the bush to enjoy a mud bath and three bottles of milk each at which time tourists for a small donation of just 300 KSHs (~ £2) can come and watch. Now one of the top tourist attractions in Nairobi the trust also does very valuable outreach work by bringing school children, many of whom have never seen an Elephant, to learn about Africa's wildlife and why it is so important to preserve it for the future. 

Providing you make an appointment as foster parents you are also entitled to visit the orphanage at 5pm when the orphans come in to be bedded down for the night, it's free but only foster parents can visit at this time. 

After making our appointment we headed over to CMC again to see about the drive belt. The traffic into town by now was building up and as we crawled along towards the stadium roundabout we could smell fuel fumes quite strongly, however as the car in front was an old banger we assumed it was him.

It therefore came as a big surprise when on parking up at CMC we saw fuel dripping from the engine, bloody hell what now? Lifting the bonnet there was nothing obvious and by now the dripping had virtually stopped. It was only when I restarted the engine did it become clear we had a leak in one of the very small rubber overflow pipes linking the injectors together.

Our first reaction was how lucky are we, this could have happened out in the middle of nowhere and as we don't carry spares for these very small pipe, driving any distance would clearly have been a fire risk so where better for it to happen but in a Landrover garage!

We showed the leak to the service foreman and straight away he said we needed a new Spendilar, a term which I hadn't heard before. The Spendilar turned out to be the whole unit of interlinking pipes so despite the fact just the leg between injector 3 & 4 was leaking we could not buy just that small section we had to buy the whole unit complete with fixing screws and nozzles etc.

Once we pulled back the protective sleeve on the old pipe we could see it had simply just perished, much like the fuel line we had replaced when we got back to Malawi in July. Clearly leaving Rupert idle for six months on the lake had not been good for the rubber, rather than change the whole unit we just removed the leaking section and replaced it with the equivalent bit from the new Spendilar. 

It took less than 10 minutes but the bill cost us £72, which was virtually all made up by the new part, it was not something we had planned for but still at least we had sorted the problem and  had the remaining bits as spares in case anymore went wrong in the future.  

In all the excitement we had almost forgotten about the drive belt, when we showed the foreman the chewed up belts comparing those with the belt that was currently fitted, he agreed it was different with deeper grooves but said all their belts were exactly like the ones that had already got chewed up. His only suggestion was to try changing all the pulleys but that would have been such a big and expensive job that whilst it was a worry if our non standard belt ever broke we could be in trouble, we decided to soldier on.

After yet more food shopping we were back at Indaba for 4pm just time to bag up the frozen meat and store it in Indaba's freezer overnight before going back to see the Ele's bedded down. We currently foster two orphans, Chyulu and Lesanju and we were keen to see them before leaving Nairobi, both are less than a year old so they will stay in Nairobi until they reach two or so then they will be transferred to the Sheldrick stockades at Tsavo East where they stay until their about six by which time hopefully they will be fully able to survive on their own in the wild.   

It gives us great satisfaction to see the baby Ele's mature and go back into the wild, we see many wild Elephants on our travels and over the years have frequently had close encounters with them, including in our camps, however not once have we ever felt threatened or had an Elephant attack us for no reason.

Sure sometimes when they feel threatened by a car they will mock charge, especially if the mother's have youngsters but we know this is a natural reaction and considering how humans have treated them with hunting and poaching etc it's says a lot for the Elephant that they are not naturally more aggressive towards humans. 

Lesanju for instance is a good case in point, orphaned when she fell into a well in the Samburu area she was found by the Samburu tribesmen when they came to the well to water their goats and cattle. Like most wells the walls were far too steep for her to climb out, there were signs her mother and other's in the herd had desperately tried to help her get out but in the end they must have realised they had to leave her.

By the time the Samburu found her the little Elephant was  exhausted and terrified at being on her own, she had to be hauled manually out of the well then the Samburu walked many miles to the nearest Kenya Wildlife Service office to inform the rangers of their find, they in turn got on the radio to Nairobi and the Sheldrick rescue people.

The Samburu have a custom where they cut their livestock's ears to show they belong to them. Before the KWS rangers could get there the Samburu had cut one of little Lesanju's ears so they would recognise her if she ever returned, the only problem was they overdid it taking most of one ear which must have been a terrible experience for the little Ele, yet today she still trusts her keepers and other humans implicitly.

Thankfully she was now progressing well and had become firm friends with  the other orphans in her age group. Like humans Ele's make friends for life, forming peer groups and just like little girls the young females like Chyulu often act as a matriarch to the orphans younger than themselves. When we arrived at the stockades the Ele's were already in their pens for the night and Chyulu was with another recently rescued baby called Lempaute whilst Lesanju was with Makena who is Chyulu's great friend.

Although very young Lempaute is the most mischievous of all the orphans, very inquisitive he came straight to meet us and put his trunk out to sniff us all over, in return we greeted him by gently blowing down his trunk which is Ele etiquette for 'hello, I'm a friend'.

Next day we awoke to a cloudy, drizzly morning and it was also Sue's birthday but unfortunately she was not in for a day of pampering as we would be busy getting all the last minute things sorted before driving to either the Masai Mara or Samburu tomorrow.

After our bad experience in the Mara last year we had to think  long and hard about whether or not to give it a second chance,  but in the end we decided we owed it to ourselves to try one more time, especially as by now the migration should have started plus it couldn't be any worse than the last time!

We now knew to steer clear of the crooks on the Talek Gate and enter via the more widely used Sekenani gate so the only remaining question was the weather.  For the last few days it had been mostly cloudy and raining in Nairobi so if it looked like more of the same then common sense said we should opt to go to Samburu as it is nearly always hot and dry there.

Finally after refuelling Rupert and topping up his oils, checking email for birthday messages and sending off our replies we were ready for a birthday celebration dinner at the Karen Blixen Restaurant in the suburb of Karen.

Despite the name the restaurant is not directly connected to Karen Blixen (AKA Meryl Streep in Out Of Africa) but in a house which pre-dates her arrival in Kenya. Originally known as the 'Swede House' (having been built by Swedish immigrant in the late 19th century, it is not very far from Blixen's old farm house at the foot of the Ngong Hills and she supposedly stayed there when she first arrived in Kenya.

Of course in her day the area was in the bush and a day's ride from Nairobi, now it is one of Nairobi's more upmarket suburbs where a lot of well to do expats and old Kenyan families live, steeped in Kenyan history with the Norfolk Hotel it is one of our two favourite eating places in Nairobi.

It had remained wet and cold all day so the restaurant had lit a roaring log fire in the wood panelled dining room which together  with the candles made for a very cosy and romantic setting. After a lovely evening we arrived back to Indaba just before midnight still undecided as to where to head off to in the morning in the end we decided to sleep on it and see what the weather was like.

We awoke to yet another drab, drizzly morning but we decided to go for it and head off to the Masai Mara simply because we really wanted to catch the migration and Samburu has far less game anyway so we could do that anytime.

As we left Indaba it was raining so we just hoped we had not made the wrong decision however by the time we reached Narok a few hours later the Sun had started to come out and even before reaching Narok we had seen one Giraffe and three Zebra all of which we took as good omens for the Mara. 

One thing that hadn't changed much from last year was the nightmarish road to Narok, more potholes than road, long stretches were now road works where we could see Chinese road builders supervising the local workers. 

It is not widely known but over the last few years the Chinese Government has been sending over thousands of workers to Africa. We had come across them in every country from Botswana/Namibia upwards, most were road builders, miners or engineers of some sort and some had even opened stores in towns and remote villages.

It is all supposed to be in the spirit of brotherly aid from the Peoples Republic of China to their African comrades but in reality China is very cleverly positioning itself for monopolising the continents rich minerals such as copper and zinc. All stuff it  desperately needs if it is to continue to grow at it's current rate - in effect white colonialism has now been replaced by yellow colonialism. 

It is no coincidence that with this influx of Chinese workers the incidence of Elephant poaching has also started to rise steeply.  Incredibly we were told that Chinese Ivory carvers were now in the various countries under the guise of being road workers or whatever so the trade does not have to risk shipping out bulky raw tusks anymore but instead sends out the finished articles to Asia and other parts of the world at an even bigger profit.

It is a very sad comment on governments and humans in general  that after all the terrible lessons from the massive poaching of the 1970's & 80s this abhorrent trade is now gaining ground again!

If anything the massive road works made the journey even worse than before so it was 12.30pm by the time we reached Narok where we re-fuelled before heading onto the Mara. After hours of driving the rough roads to Narok it came as a pleasant surprise to discover the road out of Narok was on good tar so our hopes were raised that the worst was over, however, after 25 miles we then hit the potholed dirt track again and our hopes were dashed.

We finally reached the Sekanani Gate and entry to the Narok side of the Masai Mara at 2.50pm, we now knew not to pay any fees here as the Mara is almost unique in the fact you pay where you sleep not where you enter, a fact we were ignorant of last year hence we got stiffed by the guys on the Talek Gate.

This time the ranger was very friendly and just waived us through once we told him we were going to camp at the Mara Serena lodge which is in the heart of the Mara conservancy or Mara Triangle. The triangle and Narok are under separate authorities, the Triangle being managed by a private company called Earthview versus the Narok side which is  managed by the Narok County Council.  As we would be sleeping in the triangle we would pay our entry fees once we reached the Mara River bridge which marks the border of the two areas.

Before then we had an hour and a half's drive through the Narok side of the Mara where famous lodges such as Keekerok are situated.  At 3.40pm we spotted a massive herd of Wildebeest crossing the plains heading towards the Mara River so the migration was indeed in full swing as  they had already crossed the Sand River bordering the Serengeti with the Mara, it looked like we had timed our arrival to perfection this time!

By 4.50pm we had paid our fees and were through the entry formalities, all that remained was to follow the river all the way to our campsite near the Mara Serena lodge. We hadn't been driving long when we spotted three Cheetah's walking across the plain and then shortly afterwards we saw thousands of Wildebeest on the Narok side of the riverbank looking to cross over into the triangle, we did a detour to take a closer look.

At the river there where already a number of game viewing vehicles from the various camps and lodges in the area all waiting patently for the animals to cross. We took up what we thought would be a good spot on our own but unfortunately it being our first experience of a 'Crossing' we misjudged where to go and before we knew it we had Wildebeest's hurtling up out of the river on either side of us, not the done thing!

It wasn't intentional as we never harass wildlife but even so we earned a scolding from the anti harassment squad who turned up while it was all going on and told to move. These guys do a great job of making sure vehicles don't get too close to the animals especially the Cheetahs when they are on a kill so we didn't mind being told off once and awhile, still it was very exciting having hundreds of animals thundering by on either side of the vehicle, the only pity was it happened so fast we couldn't get a photo. 

Further on we saw another big herd of Wildebeest on the other side of the river looking to cross. By now it was getting late so we were the only vehicle around, even the anti harassment guys had gone back to camp. The river at this point was very broad and the banks on both sides very steep but the instinct to cross must have been so overriding as we watched in amazement when some of the herd tried to descend to the river down a very narrow gully.

The problem was the bank was so steep it fell right into the river so on reaching the bottom the beesties had no where to go other than straight into the water and they like to stand and weigh up their chances before jumping in, equally there was no where else to go to get back up the bank on their side. 

The first few realising their mistake tried scrambling along the banks edge to find a way back up but it was so steep and slippery they kept falling into the water then were desperate to get out again. The whole river at this time of year is teeming with huge crocodiles so anything that enters the water, no matter how briefly is taking a big risk.

Some Wildebeest eventually decided valour was the best defence and just leapt into the water and started swimming as fast as they could for our side of the river, sadly we never saw any of them get out successfully although some might have gained shore downstream. 

Time was getting on and we needed to get to the campsite arriving there at 6.30pm, by 7pm it is dark so we needed to move fast to get the camp set up. The only other campers were three girls who were also just setting up camp, we picked the same spot as last December when the rain bucketed down non stop for nearly 24 hours, the spot had been ok just the circumstances had been bad.

This year the grass was much higher and had plenty of big ants which gave you a painful nip every now again, for speed we put the roof tent up and put out the awning which we were glad of as soon after it started to drizzle then over the night it rained  quite heavily, it was like Déjà Vu, surely we couldn't be in for weather as bad as last time, this was August for God's sake!

To our relief the next morning was fine and sunny but we were feeling very tired. Over the last few days I had been coming down with a cold so it was an effort to get out of the cosy roof tent. After a quick breakfast we put down the tent and awning as we couldn't well drive with them up which is the main disadvantage to using a roof tent for any length of time.

First stop was the Mara Serena lodge to find out about the Special Campsites we had been told about by the guys at the bridge when we arrived yesterday. They sounded so nice we thought if we could get one we would move there today. The man to speak to apparently was a Mr Siampei who we tracked down in his office, he was very helpful telling us there are seven special campsites situated in secluded locations along the river.

The good news was for an additional charge of KSHs 7,500 (~ £60) you could have exclusive use of the site for up to a week after which you paid another KSHs 7,500 even if you stayed only one night more. Even so they sounded right up our street as the public campsite was no great shakes and we do treasure our privacy and solitude.  

The bad news was they were all booked and had been for sometime but we made a note for the future. To console ourselves we decided to book a dawn balloon flight over the Mara, followed by a Champagne breakfast, something Sue had wanted to do for ages.

At US$ 425 per person it was not cheap but we thought we might never get another chance and for that you also got a Champagne breakfast, so that's made it alright then! However even these were fully booked, the first flight we could get on being in three days time, we couldn't see ourselves leaving before then anyway so we confirmed our booking and paid the cash.

Next stop was the lodge reception to see if we could hire a room for an hour or so just to have a hot shower, we could use our solar shower on the public campsite but privacy would be an issue. 

We had managed to do this on a visit to the Serengeti in the 90s when we paid just $10 each for the use of a room just t shower so we were hoping they would do something similar here. The young lad on the desk listened to our request and to our delight said yes no problem, great how much we asked, $425 he said!       

What! we explained we only wanted the room for less than an hour but clearly allowing this was over his remit, eventually an older guy came over and we repeated what we wanted, he said he would ask the manager. After 10 minutes he came back all smiles, a good sign we felt, he said normally a room would cost $425, but he would let us have one to shower in for just $250!

He said all this as if this was a good result for us, we thanked him for trying and asked him to pass on the message to his Manager that we only wanted to shower not buy the room and all it's fittings, it looked as if Sue could have her balloon flight but she would have to do it unwashed!

By the time we did all this the morning had gone so before heading off we decided to enjoy a nice Latte on the lodge verandha which has stunning views down to the plain and river below. Although the special campsite and shower business had not gone our way we were excited about the upcoming balloon flight and the weather was glorious to boot.

Back at the public campsite we put up our ground tent which we only use when we know we will be in one spot for three nights or more, it hadn't been used since being in the Serengeti last Christmas so it was well over due for an airing anyway. Then we rigged up our newly bought shower cubicle which we had seen on Ebay, so all in all we would be quite comfortable.

By the time we had finished setting up the camp there was just time to have a quick sandwich then head out for a late afternoon game drive. By now the clear sky's had come over a bit cloudy so it wouldn't be great for taking photo's anyway. As it was we saw little of note apart from some nice shot's of a Lilac Breasted Roller and being mock charged by an old Bull Ele.

When we got back to the camp we found three new vehicles had arrived in our absence and were parked quite close to us so it was just as well we had set up the shower cubicle. Due to the cloud the solar shower was only warm but still very welcome after a long day.

Very soon we had the fire going and Sue had started on dinner of Chicken curry so with G&Ts in hand we were feeling everything was well in the world and this time we would enjoy the Masai Mara.

During our first year in Africa we had told everyone that we would switch on our Sat phone each evening between 6pm and 8pm UK time in case anyone wanted to reach us but apart from one call from our niece, Ruth, no one ever did so we had eventually got out of the habit and for long periods it remained switched off in the cubby box.

Tonight as we sat by the fire for some unknown reason I decided to switch it on even though by now it was almost 7.30pm UK time so it was hardly worth the effort. Three minutes later the phone beeped quietly just once, at first I thought it must be a low battery alarm but when I checked we had a message.

Opening the message it was hard at first to take it in sat as we were in the dark with just the campfire and a few candles for light. As my eyes focused I still couldn't take it in, the brief message was from our friends Fee & Jeff in Sussex informing us that Mum had passed away in the early hours of that morning and could we phone my brother or sister asap, in those brief three minutes my world changed for ever!