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It was dark when we left the ship this morning, so we don’t have our usual deck photo to share. The following image was taken from the sliding door of our hotel room, about midday. Today, along with friends Greg and Kara, we embarked on a two-day, overnight safari adventure at the Taito Hills Wildlife Sanctuary. The following image is the next best thing.
Tour – Our trip started at 5:00 am because it was about a four-hour drive to Taito Hills. It included a late morning and afternoon safari, a night safari, and an early morning safari the next day. All meals, lodging, and transportation to and from the park were included. Here is a link to the vendor page. Note, there are two hotels at Taito Hills, the one on raised posts surrounding a watering hole, and the original traditional hotel complex. The newer, elevated hotel is called Salt Lick Resort, and we tried to stay there but couldn’t because the rooms were sold out. So we stayed in the original hotel, Taito Hills Resort, which comfortably met our needs and expectations.
This section covers the late morning and afternoon drives through the park.
Our trip to Taito Hills was in a more spacious Toyota Land Cruiser 4 x 4 vehicle, with only the four of us and our guide, Elijah. We passed East Tsavo National Park and continued on to this private reserve, which our guide said was community-owned (Wikipedia says Hilton International owns it). Taito Hills conservancy covers an area of 28,000 acres, with a diverse landscape of riverine forest, savanna wood and grasslands, and more than 56 large mammal species. We saw a large portion of the sanctuary and many different animals, though male lions, African Buffalo, and leopards evaded us, again.
Grazers – our hotel lobby had a chart of the various types of Antelope found in the sanctuary (see photo near the end of the post). Our guide had incredible eyesight to pick out the different species, and he had deep knowledge of how they live. We saw Hartebeest, Kudu, Wildebeest, Impala, Eland, and Oryx. The Hartebeest are “shy”, he said, and typically walked away from our vehicle as we approached. We joked that we took a lot of “butt” photos that day. The animals typically were in small to medium-sized groupings, and sometimes different species would comingle because they were not enemies (predators) of each other, and they had complementary survival skills. Our guide noted that giraffes are not considered very smart; however, they have great eyesight and will hang out with some of the antelope species. I thought the gazelles and impalas were stunning creatures to watch – graceful prancers.
Hartebeests – We saw many of these animals. They seemed to be the most plentiful of all the grazers. They were everywhere and very cool-looking.
Impala – We also saw a lot of these. Very unique and majestic horns.
Gazelle – We only saw a handful of this species. Hence, not as many good pictures, and the images are a bit fuzzy. They look very similar to impalas, but have a horizontal black stripe.
The next four images are videos of various grazers.
We found lion cubs again today (never a bad thing when riding well protected in a big 4×4). The first image sets context. The cubs were up on “Lion Rock”, and the adult females were sleeping below in the bushes and not visible. The cubs had a great time wrestling and sunning themselves. Two cubs were playing together, and they were joined by a third. It was great fun watching their antics with each other – they were played like domesticated kittens and puppies (sorta). They took some interest in watching all of us watching them from our safari vehicles, too.
Our guide said that lionesses raise their cubs communally, so if the mother dies, the other females will raise the orphaned cub. Therefore, it is likely that these cubs are not siblings.
The next three images are videos.
Like yesterday, I probably added too many images. The photographs are just too great not to share.
The baboons must have followed us to the park from the highway (more on that at the end of the post). The last three images are videos. The last video shows a young infant riding comfortably on mum’s back. Again, these guys weren’t too concerned about how close we were to them. They went about their day, walking around and climbing trees.
A really big Savannah monitor was sunning itself on one of the termite mounds. The two images are very similar, but they do not move much. Just sayin…
Two very happy safarists. The animals actually need no protection from us. These pop-up roof vehicles make animal watching easy.
After dinner, we went on a night safari, a two-hour drive through the park after dark, led by a local park ranger with a very powerful lantern, which she moved back and forth in a 180-degree arc, trying to catch a reflection off an animal’s eyes. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any of the big mammals. We did see a few smaller critters – a mongoose, a hare, one unidentified snake (the first two images), and two different poisonous puff adder snakes (one of which had just had dinner, shown in the last two images, both of which are videos).
Here are some images of the Tailto Hills Resort where we stayed. It was very pleasant, had a large infinity pool, and beautiful gardens. We slept inside a netted bed (just like in the movies) and were advised to never open the sliding door without having the screen in place, otherwise our “monkey neighbors” would pop in and take things from our room.
The round huts on stilts, called the Salt Lick Resort, were the other (newer) hotel where we didn’t stay, but I thought they looked fitting in this environment. Sometimes the big mammals walk into the watering hole by the stilted huts, and visitors can watch them from their rooms. Our guide said that two weeks ago, many elephants and giraffes visited this area and put on quite the show. Nothing that exciting happened while we were here.
The hotel had pretty flora and a blue bird.
The 4 x 4 Toyota Land Cruiser used during the trip. This old beast takes a beating every day, but it seemed to be holding up and got us to and from Taito Hills. Elijah, our guide, was a good driver and answered all our questions.
Troops of Baboons – On the drive this morning from Mombasa to the conservancy, we were surprised at the number of baboons that wandered alongside the highway. They tended to be in linear groups for social bonding, not safety reasons. I’m sure we saw hundreds of them. The last image is a video.
The last image above was taken by Kara.
A few more scenes along the Nairobi-Mombasa Highway – Many industrial hemp farms (see the first two photos below) were located in this area. The fiber and hurd are used for construction materials and textiles, and the seeds and oil for biofuel or nutritional purposes. Today, it is technically illegal to grow hemp, but a few companies have been given licenses to research and develop products. The industrial growers organization views this crop as an important economic development strategy that they are trying to scale into industrial production.
We noticed large bags of what looked like black rocks along the road (the last two images). They are everywhere and can be seen every mile or so, especially near populated areas. It was actually charcoal used by the locals for cooking. They are left unattended, purchased using the honor system, and apparently rarely stolen.
End of Post.