September 2007... Week 1

Week 1

Samburu & Nairobi - Kenya

The main drawback to staying at Lion Camp was not being allowed to have a camp fire, Nazeer was concerned it would mess up the area in front of the Meru, which was fair enough considering how much they charge the punters who fly in and stay there, however we did miss it of a night.

The other drawback was the staff looking after the place were never too far away and as we normally camp in places where we are completely alone then it was a bit off putting but we could live with it providing they were quiet, which in the main they were.

However last night we were awoken after midnight by voices shouting, sounding pissed and then loud music started up. It was too dangerous to go out and walk over to the staff camp to complain so we had to put up with it until finally around 2am we heard people getting into vehicles and leaving, this in itself was a big no no as no one is supposed to drive in the reserve after dark for the sake of the animals.

Despite the disrupted night we got up early to go out on a game drive, as we were leaving Duncan came over and we complained to him about the noise last night. He apologised but then surprised us by saying the noise was caused by the park warden and his mates who had come over for drinks, it's saying something when the most senior park official blatantly flouts the regulations!

The morning was lovely and sunny and we were out on the road just after 7am, heading along the river bank the scenery was glorious and not a soul about so despite the disturbed night we felt privileged to be there.

One thing we had noticed since being in Samburu was how quiet it was along the river game wise. Normally in any game park which has a major river that is where you will find regular amounts of game, especially during the dry season like now but in Samburu the Ewaso was noticeably quiet, maybe the settlements on the other bank had something to do with it.

That's not to say there was no game about and what Samburu lacked in quantity it certainly made up for in quality. The Beisa Oryx for instance is one of the five special species found in Samburu, similar to the Southern African Gemsbok it is now considered a separate species. Due to it's impressive horns the Oryx has been widely hunted for years so now the Arabian Oryx is extinct as is most probably the North African Oryx sadly this  just leaves the Beisa and the Gemsbok both of which are now also considered threatened, it's possible in less than 30 years that no Oryx will exist in the wild in Africa.

On the other side of the coin in every game park a common sight is the Guinea Fowl, the chicken of the bush. Normally we see the Helmeted Guinea Fowl but in Samburu there was the much less common Vulturine Guinea fowl, the largest and most striking of the Guinea fowl family. We had seen them just once before Swaziland so it was great to see them again. 

One thing we did notice was the Elephants in Samburu were much more nervous than the ones we are used to in other parks, a decent herd crossed our path at one point and rushed away as soon as they heard our vehicle. Their reaction was more akin to Elephants we sometimes come across outside of game parks where they sense they are not protected, again this made us wonder about what goes on in the reserve.  

Driving on we suddenly came across a Lioness sitting on her own under a bush, it's not often you come across Lionesses on their own as they tend to stay with their pride sisters, maybe she was new to the area or had become separated from the pride but she looked in good condition so nothing to worry about.

We watched her for quite a while and the great thing was there were no other vehicles around, always the best way. Suddenly she got up stretched and walking right in front of Rupert slid off into the undergrowth. Just as her bum disappeared out of view we saw a game viewer quickly approaching, the first we had seen all day, followed in the distance by more vehicles.

One of the drivers had obviously spotted us stopped for a while, came to investigate and radioed the others, however by now there was nothing to see, we have to say we love it when this happens as the game viewer drivers rarely if ever tell us where to find a good sighting.

Back at camp Duncan greeted us with hot water for our showers, obviously he was feeling a bit guilty about last night, still it was very welcome all the same. The next day would be our last in Samburu and of the five specials we had yet to see a Somali Ostrich, hopefully tomorrow would be the day.

Each day we had had Vervet monkeys and Baboons around camp but for once the Baboons were not a problem as they kept their distance concentrating on foraging in the bush for food, a good indication they were unused to humans or afraid of them!

The Vervets however were as troublesome as ever constantly trying to steal anything they thought was edible so we needed to be alert whenever they were around. Unfortunately today was not the day as just after we got back I forgot and left one of Rupert's doors open and before we knew it a Monkey had got in grabbed a packet of crisps and was off - the little bugger!

For our last day we decided to take the track to the Kalama gate situated on the Northern border of the reserve, this is real desert country, isolated and totally deserted. After an hour or so we found the gate but it was deserted and looked like it hadn't been used in years if ever?

The track continued on into the desert, real wilderness country, if you lost it here you were in a world of pain, we found out later the area is earmarked to become a conservancy which would be worth a visit if it ever comes off.

We headed back to the river and finally we got our reward for staying on the extra day, not a Somali Ostrich but a lovely Leopard instead. Samburu has a reputation for seeing Leopard but you hear that about a number of places and rarely do they deliver so we were very pleased to find one particularly because he/she was in classic Leopard pose lying on an Acacia branch.

The only down side was the Acacia tree was a long way off and there were a number of other vehicles around. No one could drive closer to the tree as unlike the Masai Mara off road driving is prohibited in Samburu and anyway the bush in between was too thick to get through so everyone had to make do with long distance shots.

We carry a 500mm super telephoto lens and a 2x converter for such occasions so we were able to get some decent shots at about 750mm length but the tourists in the other vehicles just had small digital cameras with in built zooms so they couldn't have got much but they kept snapping away anyway. We all watched the Leopard until he woke up, realised he had company so calmly climbed down from the tree and disappeared into the thick undergrowth.

On our way back to camp along the river storm clouds started to gather, by now it was past 5pm and with the late afternoon Sun the lightning was magical it was a great end to our Samburu visit, tomorrow we would leave for Nairobi.    

Back at camp we paid our bill to Duncan, five nights camping at Lion camp had cost 5,000 Kshs (~£40) which was very good plus £2 per day for preparing the showers and £5 for the Monkey Guard while we were out on our game drives!

We had been told this was necessary to prevent the Baboons from trashing the camp but as we said earlier the Baboons in Samburu were probably the best behaved of any we had come across and anyway we never leave anything out which they would take.  No the probable truth was this was either to guard against animals of the two legged kind or just simply a way of wringing more cash out of you.

Wouldn't mind if it had helped but the first day we left the solar shower in the sun to heat up and when we got back found it was stone cold cos the guard had moved it into the shade, then he without asking he decided to clean our paraffin lamps and being heavy handed buggered one so we had to tell him not to do it again, still we paid him anyway, poor sod!

Overall we had mixed feelings about Samburu, the scenery was dramatic in parts but there was not much game and the settlements strung out along the opposite bank of the river were off putting, still just for the special species, you can only see there, it is worth going at least once.

We left Samburu just after 9am and immediately came across a large herd of Camels and goats with their Samburu herdsman moving through the bush, for us this epitomised the problem for Samburu as the local population grows and the climate increasingly gets drier the pressure on access to the river and the grazing around it grows, this in turn reduces the wildlife which in turn reduces the visitors. 

We had decided to take a different route back to Nairobi which would take us via the Aberdare's and Mount Kenya. 25 years ago whilst living in Bahrain we had booked a holiday to Kenya and one of the places we were supposed to stay was the Mt Kenya Safari Club. It would be our first time to Africa and we had spent weeks planning the trip so after five years of living in the desert we were really looking forward to it.

Then the day before we were due to fly we heard on the radio there had been an attempted coup on the then Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi and all Kenya's airports had been closed, it was months before the country returned to some sort of normalcy so we had no choice but to cancel the trip, it would be another four years before we would eventually set foot in Africa by being posted to Botswana.

At the time we were bitterly disappointed but now we were thankful it had turned out the way it did because our feelings towards Africa may have been completely different if our first experience had been a lightning tour of Kenya staying in luxury lodges!

Mind you that isn't to say we weren't curious to see what we had missed but by the time we reached the turn off for the Mt Kenya Safari club the weather was dull and Mt Kenya itself was masked in heavy cloud so we decided to press on, it would just have to wait yet again for another day.

Crossing the Equator the weather began to clear and soon the Sun was out again, at Karatina we found a big 'bend down' market going on alongside the railway line. Most towns and villages have bend down market days so called because everything sold is on the ground so you constantly bend down to inspect the goods. This one was a so big the whole rail track was blocked by the crowd there was no way any trains would get through today, why hold it on the railway line in the first place is anyone's guess!

By mid afternoon we found ourselves back at Thika and this time the road we were on was lined with Flame Tree's, though sadly not in flower at the time of year they would look stunning when they are. The traffic into Nairobi was as bad as before and the heavy cloud had returned so we were very glad to reach Indaba before it got dark.

We had been away just less than a week and two overland trucks had arrived in our absence so the place was jumping but  after a snack and a shower we went to bed, very tired, we had just three days to recover and re-stock before we were due back in the Masai Mara.

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