10000 Elephants

The trip to Tsavo National Park started with a two hour bus ride (only 100km) that had me thinking back to other bus rides in Tanzania a good decade ago. Although this time I wasn't in a bus which had its body skew on the chassis and the road was not potholed but the journey did involve a lot of hair-raising overtaking. Eventually I put my ipod on and decide to let whatever was to happen, happen without stressing about it. The journey involved a convenient pit stop at a curio stall where we were given more than enough time to use the facilities and browse in the shop - I don't think that anyone bought anything so they lucked out on our group. The group, by the way, consisted of 14 medical students from Sweden on a training course about third world health care systems (like me they had the weekend off), 2 young Kenyan woman whose father had been given a voucher for the safari and set his daughters in his place, and me.

About 10 minutes after the leaving the curio shop we arrived at Tsavo East's gate and were transferred into land rovers for the 46 km ride to Satao Camp. The larger group was divided up with the Swede's going 7 in a vehicle and the Kenyans and me in a vehicle. I'm not sure what got to our driver more: the fact that he actually had 2 Kenyans in his car or that they were both very attractive. Whatever it was the man could not stop looking at them in his review mirror and was pretty tongue-tied.

So we got underway but were doing all the animal hunting ourselves because our guide wasn't looking out the car much. There wasn't too much to see at first though. What I didn't expect was red sand! The guide accompanying us in the bus had cracked a joke about there being two species of elephant in Tsavo - one black and the other one red. He eventually told all the gullible folk that he was joking but that the elephants colour was dependant on the colour of the soil where they live and that the ones we would se would be red. Somehow I just never considered just how red the soil would be.

The first animal we came across was a Masai ostrich. These ostriches have pink skin on their necks and legs unlike the Somali ostrich which has blue skin. We then saw a small herd of oryx. It always amazes me how different their colouring is to those I saw in Namibia. At this point I must explain how we were introduced to these animals by our guide. We drove up to the herd, he stopped and said "Oryx" and that was the end of it. No descriptions or little anecdotes, NOTHING! The two Kenyans, Candy and Sheila, were on their very first safari so learnt absolutely nothing on their first game drive.

The first sighting of elephants produced great excitement in the back of the land rover even though they were quite far - little did we know then how bored we would get with the elephants. We saw some gazelles and after some serious prodding Jeffery (our guide) eventually told us that they were grand gazelles and these particular ones were females. They look a bit like a cross between an impala and a springbuck! The males (which we only saw later) are a whole different story and have some impressive horns on them.

After the gazelles, we got our first close up of some elephants and they are indeed red. Below is a photo of a mom and baby.

They are seemed quite relaxed and did not even seem to pay much attention to us but I did see that Jeffery was watching them a little anxiously. Not long after this sighting, we got to Satao camp. It is really nice - it is a set of safari tents set in a half moon shape around a waterhole. Unfortunately the waterhole was undergoing some repairs but even though the view was mostly of a digger excavating, there were still some animals around (impala, waterbuck and 3 elephants just past the digger). Tents were assigned and lunch was served under a huge tamarind tree in a lovely breeze. Each tent has a verandah, a bedroom and an en suite bathroom at the back.

Our next game drive was from 4 until 6:30 pm and what we saw was elephants, more elephants and even more elephants. It felt like elephants were in Tsavo what impala are in Kruger! The statistics are that there are 10000 elephants in Tsavo and we saw 9990! There were the solitary bulls, then small family herds and then herds that stretched as far as you could see.

There were some other animals along the way too, such as zebra and hartebeest but really what we saw was elephants! Unfortunately the hartebeest were quite far away but it was great to see them.

We returned to camp in time for a warm shower - hot water is delivered to a bucket shower only in the evenings but cold water is available all day. After the shower and a change of clothes, it was time for dinner. Now the camp has some rules, guests must stay on the paths, not go beyond certain signs and, at night, call an Askari to accompany you where ever you go. This is done by flashing your torch (provided in the tent) and the guys come and get you and take you to your destination, in my case the restaurant. Apparently they sometimes have leopard walk through the camp looking for the impala to snack on so take these precautions.

For dinner I was placed once again with Candy and Sheila and at first it was a little awkward but eventually we got chatting and it turned into a very pleasant evening.

The morning began bright and early and with some amusement for me. A troop of baboons had slept the night in a tree in front of my tent and they started their day off investigating the digger. Forgive the dark photos but this was just after 5am! I really hope you can see the one inside the cab in the first photo!

For our 2 game drives today, the animals seemed to have moved on. We saw very little - not even the hordes of elephants that we had seen on Saturday! We did get to see a Somali ostrich though, quite a few kori bustards, a few korhaans, a yellow-necked spurfowl and 2 giant eagle owls.

The journey out of the park was uneventful but we did see some warthogs and a Masai giraffe which is characterised by the white face.

All in all, I enjoyed my weekend very much. I think the guide could have been a lot better but that did not really influence my enjoyment levels much. Tsavo is great but it isn't Kruger!!!!!!!!!! My overall take is that we didn't see a huge diversity of mammals - the birds were great but the guide was definitely not into birds so I just had to look at them and enjoy them without finding out anything extra about them.  The reason given for not seeing many animals was that it is the rainy season so the animals have dispersed - but Kenya is experiencing a very bad drought so that didn't really cut it for me. I know that these game drives are about luck and right place, right time so I'm not really complaining about it.

The closest that I came to the Ghost and the Darkness ... some ant lions in the sand.

So now I am back in Mombasa and am gearing up for the last bit of work for the year. GeoNetwork training begins in the morning and the group will be growing in size as we are joined by a few more scientists from the region.

After this mammoth posting, until tomorrow, good night. XXX