We started our safari in Amboseli National Park in Kenya. It borders Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and if the clouds had cooperated, Mt. Kilimanjaro would have been visible in many of our pictures. This was the first of four parks we visited to see animals. We also also went to Lake Naivasha, Kenya and Zanzibar, Tanzania to do things besides game drives. The parks for animal viewing we went to were Amboseli National Park in Kenya, Masai Mara National Park in Kenya, Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, and Ngorongoro Crater, a conservation area in Tanzania. Masai Mara and Serengeti both have mostly migratory animals. When Lydia learned about "The Great Wildebeest Migration" in 3rd grade last year, that is what Masai Mara and Serengeti are famous for. That means the migratory wildebeest, zebra, gazelles, and other antelope are hit or miss when you visit since they are only in residence part of the year, as they are constantly on the move, walking to greener pastures. In contrast, Amboseli National Park (and Ngorongoro Crater) have year-round residents. The animals don't migrate because the land is fertile enough to support them year-round. This made it easier to spot animals because they are in predictable spots that don't change from one day to the next, and Amboseli National Park was our favorite of all the game parks.
We stayed in a large family tent at Kibo Safari Camp. Tent is a generous word though, as many of the walls inside our tent were permanent walls, and there were tile floors, electricity, 2 bathrooms, 2 bedrooms, and a thatched roof. The outer walls and ceiling (below the thatched roof) were canvas tent material though. Most tents were for couples, so ours was double size. We were in the "Mbuni" tent, which means ostrich in Swahili.
From the outside:
Below are the camp's promotional photos of the inside of our exact tent. This side of the tent had a king bed and a bathroom.
The other side of the tent had 3 twin beds and a bathroom.
Identical bathrooms on both sides of the tent:
I should also say that the food at this lodge was amazing. As with every place we stayed, there were buffets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And if you were on an all-day game drive and wouldn't be there for lunch, you got a packed lunch instead. The girls liked the freshly made brick-oven pizzas for dinner, and Derek liked the sausages they grilled. Of course there was much more appealing food, of both African and foreign varieties, for the adults. The only negative about the food in Africa was that dinner was always served from 7:30-9:30pm. Everywhere. The parks closed at 6 or 6:30, so we would have wanted to eat right away and were always stuck waiting for dinner.
We started our safari with a bang and everyone was so excited to be there.
At first we had to stop at every animal because we were so excited. It doesn't take long before you start ignoring wildebeest, Thompson gazelles, impalas, other antelope, and zebras, because there are just too many. Our binoculars came in handy, and the girls and I each had a pair. Nate used the telephoto zoom lens on one of the cameras we brought. Derek wasn't interested in binoculars for a variety of reasons.
I liked looking at the cattle egrets who follow the elephants around.
Amboseli National Park is famous for being one of the best places in the world for free range elephants and there is a large charitable trust set up to care for them.
This elephant is showing its ears, so it is being aggressive and running toward our vehicle telling us to leave. While it does make for a better picture to have the elephant's ears out, once our guide Joseph explained that ears out equals danger, we were on board with leaving the area. Joseph was terrified of elephants. He never let our van get close to them, because as he pointed out, an elephant could tip the van over. The contrast in attitude was apparent in Masai Mara (a future blogpost) when we left the road, and stopped about 10 feet from a pride of lions to eat our lunch in the van with the windows open and van top open and he wasn't concerned in the slightest. Elephants made him nervous though.
Two wildebeests fighting for dominance:
Hyena just resting nearby:
On our second day in Amboseli, we were lucky enough to spot some cheetahs first thing in the morning. Lydia had gotten a cheetah necklace in Nairobi made from Kenyan Kazuri beads and she wore it for good luck. We joked the whole trip that her necklace brought us good luck in finding so many cheetahs in special ways. Below is when we initially spotted a mother cheetah and her four cubs. They were walking behind some bushes and were kind of hidden at first and we heard from another driver that some hyenas had spooked them. The hyena we had seen a couple minutes before (see picture above) was probably one of the hyenas to spook the cheetah family.
Lydia with her lucky cheetah necklace earlier that day:
After walking a couple minutes, the mother cheetah and her four cubs climbed a nearby tree. Joseph, our guide and driver, said that in the 10 years he had been a guide, this was only the second time he had seen a cheetah climb a tree. Unlike leopards, cheetahs don't have the claws to climb trees, or the strength to carry prey up a tree. We sat/stood in the car observing the cheetahs most of the morning. These cubs were several months old, and the mother was lucky to still have a litter of four as cheetahs are most vulnerable when they are very young. Since they had survived this long, they were unlikely to be killed by a predator in the future.
The below picture shows the entire tree, with four cheetah cubs and the mother. The mother is on a high branch on the right.
Below is a photo of mom.
The base of the branches where they join with the trunk could get crowded...
...but that didn't stop this cub from coming down to join the others on its way to jumping off to explore on the ground.
The other cubs eventually came down too and explored some logs even closer to our vehicle.
Unsurprisingly, there was a huge traffic jam of tourists wanting to see the cheetahs. The drivers all have radios in their cars that they use to tell each other about special finds so it could get crowded at sightings that were particularly interesting.
Finally we moved on to explore more of the national park.
Pelican:
We saw many cape buffalo on our safari. There are no water buffalo in Kenya, only cape buffalo.
We saw many hippos.
We saw some Nubian vultures eating the remnants of a zebra carcass.
Eventually, many more vultures came to dine on zebra leftovers. Apparently, a group of vultures in flight is called a kettle; if they are resting, it's a committee; but a group of vultures feeding is called a wake of vultures. This was definitely a wake.
We loved that Amboseli National Park had such green wetlands. Every morning the animals walk to the wetlands, and then in the evening, they walk back to the dry area to sleep.
The water in this part was deep enough to reach the belly of this elephant and halfway up its body.
Random wildebeest:
This is a secretary bird; they are known for their skill in hunting and eating snakes.
Flamingos didn't use to live in Amboseli National Park, but they do now. Recently, some salt-water lakes have formed there and the flamingos have come. They eat the algae.
There were many baboons around our lodging and some in the park. The baby baboons are particularly cute with their oversized ears sticking out.
These wildebeest were wading through the water.
We had a picnic lunch at the top of a hill that had been set aside for tourists. There were loads of Superb Starlings vying to steal everyone's food. They were so pretty that I didn't mind. We saw these starlings throughout our whole trip in Africa.
The view from our lunch spot:
The girls had fun feeding leftover lunch to the birds flying around. Derek was playing in some logs and digging in the dirt until a different guide came over and told him not to because there could be scorpions living under the logs.
We were also lucky enough to see a rock python strangling an unlucky Thompson gazelle. The gazelle was still alive and occasionally moving. We did not stay to watch it swallow the gazelle whole. The other animals nearby weren't even paying attention. Gazelles are incredibly fast, so I am surprised the python caught it.
Hippo:
This hyena was a couple feet from the road. It looked up at us as if it were a friendly dog. If it weren't for the incredibly awkward way hyenas walk (because their back legs are so short), they would look like dogs too. We felt bad for the hyena because it had open wounds on its legs and we could see the blood. We have wondered since then if it is ok or not.
We also saw a male lion and a lioness in the distance that afternoon.
In the afternoon, we went back to the cheetahs and were lucky enough to find the four cubs and their mother again!
Before our vacation during the school year, the kids and I saw a documentary where a cheetah was lounging under a Land Rover with tourists. Lydia remarked that she was excited for a cheetah to use our car for shade when we go to Africa. I had to tell her that the chances of a cheetah using our car for shade were incredibly slim and to not even bother to hope for it. Then, completely unexpectedly, we had cheetahs lounging underneath the car in front of us. It was really cool to experience. Must have been Lydia's lucky cheetah necklace! Cheetahs are apparently very friendly wild cats, and many rich Arabs keep them as pets (helping drive them to extinction). These cubs were beautiful!
The tufts of fur on top of the cubs' heads were particularly cute.
Back at camp, walking along the beautiful paths between the tents.
Our tent by night:
The kids had fun around a campfire.
Each night, some Maasai put on a little show around the campfire with traditional dances and songs. Derek was reluctant at first to participate, but soon had a blast. At all the camps/lodges we stayed at, Derek was eager to get to dance with the Maasai warriors. The jumping dance was his favorite. Each warrior has to showcase how high he can jump. Apparently, the higher you can jump, the lower the price you pay for your bride.
Nate tried to jump high too.
We found a scorpion outside our tent!
We probably weren't supposed to, but we wandered to the back of the camp. There was lots of garbage there and baboons eating the garbage. As with everywhere in Kenya, trash seems to just pile up. I suppose rural Kenya doesn't have trash collection, and instead they burn what they can.
We also met some kids just outside the camp's fence. We talked to the
kids and gave them some candy before an employee chased the kids off.
Karina remarked that in Maryland, kids learn that if a stranger gives
you candy you should never accept because it means that person is trying
to kidnap you or do you harm. Apparently, that is not a rule in Kenya,
because we gave away a lot of candy over the course of two weeks. Our
guide told us later that the kids at nearby Maasai villages might skip
school if they think they will get some candy from tourists. So we
probably should not have indulged.
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