Greetings from the Samburu Game Reserve! We have had a fantastic first game drive. Our day started quite early. After a very nice breakfast in our hotel, we headed out at 7:30 for the long drive to the Samburu Game Reserve. We had a couple of stops, the first for a short break just outside Karatina for a bathroom break and shopping at the curio shop if we wanted, and a walk in the adjacent gardens. We didnt think we would buy anything, but we ended up getting a few things (one a batik print which Ill get framed and put in my home office). The curio shop is a cooperative selling many different locally made handicrafts.
The drive from Nairobi to Samburu was very bumpy! There was a lot of roadwork going on, plus there are very frequent speed bumps along the way so our driver Stanley would slow down to a certain extent and we hung on as we thumped over the speed bumps. We were sitting in the back of the jeep, and I think it was likely a bit worse back there. The funny thing is I think our fitbits registered a step for every
The landscape varied considerably throughout the drive. It took awhile to get out of the sprawl of Nairobi (I have to say what we saw of the city was not very attractive). There were lots of concrete apartment blocks, and small shopping areas with a series of very small shops, some just little shacks really. After we left the city the scenery became much more green and lush. Here they grow pineapple and other fruit including mango, and there are many eucalyptus trees. The jacaranda trees, which we‘ve seen all over, are very beautiful with purple flowers.
There was a lot of road building going on, and the highway was two lanes the whole time, so there was lots of overtaking and squeaking by other vehicles with very little room to spare! There were lots of roadside fruit stands, and stands selling bags of rice (its a big rice growing area too). After our stop at Karatina the scenery became more arid and flatter, with lots of cattle and goats grazing along the side of the road (there was a close call
with a few goats crossing the road right in front of us, thankfully Stanley managed to avoid them). We stopped at Nanuki (and we also crossed the equator at this point), to fill up gas and so Susan and I could get a SIM card for our phones. It was quite the process getting the SIM cards, but we successfully got them so now dont have to worry about always being on wifi. (There is wifi at our camp now, but only in the lobby, so Im using my cell phone hotspot for the ipad so I can do the blog). The landscape became greener and hillier once again, and the distant Mount Kenya was in the clouds (apparently we will be able to see it from one of our camps). We also passed through fields of yellow canola.
We were excited to finally enter the Samburu Game Reserve, although it was a very bumpy drive on dirt roads from the entry to the park to our camp, Ashnil Samburu Camp. We arrived a bit later than expected, at 2:30 pm, and went straight to lunch. I had a salad and a very tasty Indian vegetarian meal, along with
a White Cap beer (which I think I like better than Tusker). It is quite a bit hotter here than it was in Nairobi, and after our dusty long drive, I really appreciated the beer. We spent a few minutes checking out our tent (it is a permanent tented camp, with a big main area and a nice bathroom area, plus a balcony).
We headed out on our first game drive at 4 pm. It wasn‘t very long before the cry went out theres an elephant! OMG!! It was so exciting to see an elephant in the wild. This was the first of many elephants we saw as the reserve has a very healthy population of elephants. We saw adult elephants, Moms with babies, young and older males. It was very thrilling. Catching our first site of a reticulated giraffe was also pretty unbelievable. The reserve is home to the reticulated giraffe, not the Rothschilds giraffe, as we saw yesterday at the Giraffe Centre.
