As we drove to Samburu, the scenery was so different from what we had experienced in Kenya so far. It was so dry and everything looked so wild. When passing by a village, I was surprised by people’s clothes – so colourful and striking (I was wondering whether they dressed up for special events).
After two hours drive, we settled down in a Catholic mission in Archer’s Post, a town close to Samburu National Reserve (2km from the gate), which is the highlight of this stop. It is also the place where we met John for the first time (and the second, third, forth…). I wasn’t impressed by him at first as I though he is just another person who tries to sell us bead bracelets we saw everywhere. However, he kept popping up every time we came back to the church or had meals at Ripples restaurant (which is just outside the church). The thing is we had already bought something from him when we first met (Tom bought a bead bracelet for his brother with only 100 Kenyan shillings – good price!). It seems that he just wanted to talk to us rather than selling us bracelets, and we were amused by his funny accent. We were so impressed by his “Oh my God” and “Take it easy, Mate” that we kept following him. On the day we left the church, Lauren and I did buy another two bracelets from John, which suggested that his strategy did work! Moses is the chef at Ripples and he is so creative that he boiled rice with watermelon (we did check with Noreen that it is not an Kenyan thing)! The food was so good and I really like the fresh juice.
Samburu National Reserve is definitely the highlight of our whole trip so far. We only spent an afternoon and a morning there but we saw so many different things. The landscape in Samburu National Reserve is so amazing. Unlike the other two places we visited so far – Masaai Mara is open plains (and the grass is so high that it’s not easy to see animals), and Laikipia is more about a different experience that we can actually walk rather than sitting in the car. Samburu is so diverse that we saw hills, forests and rivers. We found a big herd of Grevy’s, a kind of zebra with fully round ears and white belly. Considering that there are only 3,000 left in the world, we must have seen at least 5% of the population! Meanwhile, Bhavik started a new ‘Animal Bingo’ that whoever finds leopard/cheetah/wild dog wins. With a little help from his friends through the radio, our driver David drove us to a rocky hill that was surrounded by cars. It was the place where we found a leopard and a cub. The leopard was taking a nap on a warm rock – so lazy. When we got to the back of the hill, we saw the cub trying to feed itself with a dead animal hanging in a tree. It tried so hard and it almost fell off the tree several times. We waited for about an hour, and when all the cars moved away, the cub just walked to us. We were so lucky to see it in such a short distance – definitely no more than 2 meters. It was worth the wait and David won the bingo (Bhavik didn’t give him the prize – shame)! It seems that we finally finished our “big five”: elephant, lion, black rhino, buffalo and leopard. The next morning, we came back with high expectation. Samburu didn’t let us down. We were so close to lions this time. There were 4 lions just passed by our car (we were alone at this sighting) one by one. One of them even stopped and rested in front of us. We also found three cheetahs resting under a tree. However, they were too far away from us and I couldn’t see them with my eyes. Bhavik and Brendan took several pictures, and when zoomed in those pictures, I saw the black tear marks on their faces. Because off-road driving was not allowed in the reserve, the only thing we could do is to wait and see what would happen next. We waited for a while, and it became hotter. Our cheetah experts thought that they were not going to do anything, so we decided to carry on to explore the other side of the reserve. David was informed that the migration was happening in Maasai Mara. What a pity! We were so close to it and it was just one week after we went there. Definitely need to come back next time!
In that afternoon, we went to Namunyak Conservancy for wild dog tracking. Unlike the one we did in Mpala, we were actually in the bush this time. A local guide was supposed to lead us to places where wild dogs have been seen. As they used to hiding behind rocks, we need to do some hiking this time. Hiking was a good idea as we spent most of our time in the car. However, the truth is girls were not in the right kits – we were wearing shorts and flats – which caused us a lot of troubles. We were trapped by a kind of tree, which have lots of spikes. I don’t remember the Swahili name Noreen told us, but I remember it means “wait a minute”, as it stops you. We all got scratches, but we didn’t see the wild dogs. We were actually not as disappointed as we should have been except Bhavik….
By Zheng