Our flight landed early in the morning and within two hours we were seeing the amazing African wildlife! So, there were about 14 of us on this weekend to Kenya. I knew a few from other trips, but the rest I had never met before. We landed and got through customs .... well, not so quickly. But we got outside to meet our guides. Instead of the planned breakfast we had expected, they said we would be going directly to our first game drive, so everyone got a coffee (I got juice) for the road. We loaded up into three vans and were on our way. Driving out of the airport was interesting as there were pretty cool sculptures of various African animals along on the side of the road.
After about a 20 minute drive, we arrived at the Nairobi National Park. The park was established in 1946 on land previously set aside for conservation and became the first national park in Kenya. Some Masai were relocated initially, but now they work with the Kenyan wildlife services to use some of the funds from the park for the local people. In each of our
vans, our drivers lifted the center section of the roof leaving a gap of about 18 for us to observe the wildlife from the safety of our cars.
We saw animals as soon as we entered the park, the first being ostriches with the city skyline in the background. We continued on and could see giraffes wandering far in the distance, but instead of turning right towards them, we turned left. We saw gazelle and impala at various locations throughout the day. Additionally, we saw our first giant African buffalo wandering nearby. A couple of impala were seen in the distance. We also saw so many zebras! I was so excited about this because in my previous African adventures (Zimbabwe, Namibia), I only would see zebras a couple at a time and rarely. Here they were often in groups of about even more, at multiple locations. We even saw a few babies! I also loved how they just side by side with the gazelle and impala. Just a bunch of animals chilling in Africa.
The best encounter was the white rhino family that we watched for about 15 minutes. We first saw the papa rhino grazing,
with birds sitting on his back or following him as he walked - they seemed to enjoy when he peed. I guess the birds help eat ticks and warn rhinos when there are predators. Based on our safari in Zimbabwe in 2019, I knew that while rhinos can be aggressive, they are also almost blind, so the warning from birds is useful. After watching the father for a few minutes, we moved just a little further up (once the group in front had moved on) for a closer view of the mama and baby. So cute. I think between us, we had thousands of photos in our group. After about 10 more minutes, they all wound up walking away from the road together, a nice little rhino family. We later saw them as we were were leaving this area and they were hanging out in the distance.
We kept going and drove a few passes around this one area where there was supposed to be a lion/lioness, but due to the time of day and the hot sun, the guides said they were most likely resting in the tall grass and our chances of seeing them were very slim,
so we moved on. We stopped at a parking area (I did NOT use the bathroom - ew), and then we took a short hike along the little river here with an armed guide. He explained to us a few of these little areas beneath the trees were black rhino nests, but they were more nocturnal, so we probably would not see them. We continued for our real mission: Nile crocodiles. On the way, we saw terrapin chilling on a bank across the river. We also heard a giant splash below us, knowing that was a crocodile. We came upon a curve in the river and across the way, we could see two huge crocodiles sunbathing on the bank. Yikes.
We kept going, seeing some giraffe grazing on trees in the distance, but they were not all that close to us. We saw some warthogs and some very interesting birds in some places.
