We bless the rains down in Africa, gunna take some time...

[bPeteb]

South African bubbly breakfast was excellent. A lovley young guy called Collins looked after us all. Lots fo interesting and funny conversation with the tour operators


a few too many glasses of bubbles were had, especially considering we were going straight out on a long morning safari. Jackson was at the gate waitng for us butu we didn't go into the park. We went back up the road towards the balloon base and veered off. There were some cheetahs up here somewhere

and here they are. Brilliant!!



into the park and Kili disappearing. We were so lucky


big tusker to greet us

more elephants



cattle are allowed to a specific waterhole for specific times. The Masai farmers are acompanied by armed Kenya Wildlife Service rangers


crowned cranes make another appearance


dusty elephants.


We were told Amoboseli translates to salty dust and boy was it dusty. I wore by snood all day to try to reduce the intake of dust through nostrils and mouth. This is at the end of the wet season too. It would be appalling in the middle of the dry. Huge dust devlis everywhere around us all of the time

 

[Seat0B]

Some of those photos of animals are just gorgeous! Loving it all.

 

[bPeteb]

flamingoes

saddle bill stork


we followed another vehicle through this. Jackson said they had just dumped rocks in it without any attempt to press them in. Gee was it rough. Right towards the end it dipped quite deep


this Hiace then came through and went way down as it hit the deep spot but miraculaously kept running


then he pulled over to supposedly let us pass and ended up like this


both the guide and passengers were beyond stupid. he left the passengers in the vehicle, and they just stood there smiling, on the low side through the extraction process. Lucky we had a V8 Landcruiser


the abandoned Amboseli Lodge. This is what happens because of family fueds. Two brothers fighting over repairs after flooding, nothing done, and it falling into ruin




and with that Amboseli was done. We were all glad to get out of the dust.

Two of our lovely restauarnt staff - Yusef and Amos


After dinner drinks in Hemingways with Emmanuel's story about the house to another new group of listeners. Waited until it was just us to get these photos


Day 17 draws to a close. Just two more days of this amazing safari to go

 

[kookaburra75]

I thought your earlier photos with Kilimanjaro in the background were spectacular, but those from your balloon ride were fantastic.
Although MrsK asked what was this, "... a few too many glasses of bubbles...", you spoke of? A foreign concept to us

 

[bPeteb]

I thought your earlier photos with Kilimanjaro in the background were spectacular, but those from your balloon ride were fantastic.
Although MrsK asked what was this, "... a few too many glasses of bubbles...", you spoke of? A foreign concept to us

No toilets out there although that's a bit of a white lie. We were taken to the Serena lodge for a luxury pee

 

[tgh]

All this brings back some wonderful memories; we covered the periphery of the Mara on horseback and had lots of "experiences"...
A visit to a Masai village was interesting.. very real and a tad sobering..
The head honcho came out and gabbled away in Swahili with Tristan.. he was very traditionally dressed but among the paraphernalia, knives at al..there was a woven pouch containing a brand new Nokia mobile phone..
I was a little surprised to learn that even then (20+years? ) the Mara had blanket mobile coverage

 

[JohnM]

I was a little surprised to learn that even then (20+years? ) the Mara had blanket mobile coverage

Leap-frogging wires and leading to the great success of innovative M-Pesa in Kenya: M-Pesa - Wikipedia.

 

[VPS]

Leap-frogging wires and leading to the great success of innovative M-Pesa in Kenya: M-Pesa - Wikipedia.

Great innovation

No toilets out there although that's a bit of a white lie. We were taken to the Serena lodge for a luxury per

Loving this TR but do sing the song every time it comes up in my unread threads

 

[bPeteb]

Day 18

Amboseli Sopa to Taita Hills Resort and Spa, Tsavo West

Some last shots around the Amboseli Sopa. Luxury late start of 08:00





Hemigngways towards the bottom right and our little bungalows just above it

the truly giant Masai who greets and says goodbye to you at Sopa


off we go again. The route shown below has Mzuni Springs in the wrong place. It was actually quite close to Lilaguni Serena Lodge.

In a straight line Tsavo West NP is not far away at all from Amboseli but getting there involved driving on the worst road of our trip. Absolutely cough is how Jackson described it


we started travelling along the edge of what was clearly lava


it was the edge of the Shetani lava flow, and it was quite amazing



red dust instead of brown/grey



the flow is home to lots of klipspringers


and bloody tsetse flies

 

[bPeteb]

we'd been in Tsavo West for quite a while and apart from the klipspringers we'd seen zero animals. We saw a couple of giraffes, a couple of lesser kudus, and oryx and some zebras having a huge kicking beano that we didn't manage to get any video of


then we arrived at surprise number two, Mzuni Springs


This place was just beautiful. We are given a guide, with a big gun
who walked us around and explained it all. The water is just flowing out from under the lava rocks and fills a couple fo largish lakes. It supplies a large proportion of Mombasa's water

there are some large crocs


quite small crocs


more of the cool blue lizards


there's an 'underwater observatory' that our guide described as the tank. Climbing down there you could see the blue fish that populate the lake


there's a bunch of hippos


and then our guide saw this. It's a croc apparently fishing


it was about now that Jackson realised that we weren't staying at Serena that was all of 15 minutes away. He realised we were staying at Taita Hills and that was hours away, involving a long crossing of a very corrugated road out to the highway

plam grove along a dry river


easter chanting goshawk and their lunch

 

[bPeteb]

We ran into an issue at the gate. The Kenya Wildlife Service ranger would not let us exit the park. We had the receipt that showed our entry, but for some reason he was not accepting it. Jackson was getting super angry as we were getting close to missing lunch (none of us was going to starve!!!). Eventually a KWS customer service guy appeared who told the ranger to let us out.

Beautiful scenery


It was 2:55pm and lunch was about to finish at Taita. Jackson drove fast, overtaking a police vehicle at one point. He was very disappointed to pull up at the resort closer to 3:30 than 3:00.


there are two lodges inside the Taita Hills Conservancy. Taita Hills Resort and Spa and Salt Lick Safari Lodge. You can be given rooms at either. While Jackson was sorting that out, we checked the cool 70s retro lobby and bar area


We were allocated rooms at Taita and they were great




room 1108

games sightings in the area


the what's to eat thing was super weird. We were told lunch was finished and that food was available at the bar. All that was there was cakes and sweet pastries. So we had coffee and cake


I felt like a swim and the pool felt warm and that's what we did. Out by the pool was a bar, and food to order. All sorts of things. They even had free snacks and coffee out on the lawns

we had cider and didn't bother with food, cider is fruit and carbs


on the way back from the chnage rooms bAlt was chased by a couple of vervet monkeys. He'd interrupted them as they were about to try to make more monkeys. The potential mum was right royally pissed and had a couple fo goes at him. It was very funny to watch!

Taita offered a couple of night time activities - star gazing


and night safari


The star gazing was at dinner time. Night safari was at 9. We asked Jackson and he wasn't too positive about the night safari. His comment - why try to see animals at night that you can see clearly in the day. Nevertheless we booked. We might be lucky

 

[Daver6]

This trip looks incredible! My only disappointment is you gents aren't in safari suits wearing a Sola Topee.

 

[bPeteb]

This trip looks incredible! My only disappointment is you gents aren't in safari suits wearing a Sola Topee.

Hahahaha. Many, many years ago I was one of the doormen at the Hyatt at Sanctuary Cove. We wore a ridiculous outfit of jacket and jodphurs with pith helmet. We're the dags in shorts and things most of the time.

 

[bPeteb]

Room already turned down when we decided to get out of the pool


buffet menu displayed. Not that there's anywhere else to go if you think yeh, nah


beautiful restaurant space, good food, and yet again lovely staff


tonight's wine


just us with driver and spotlighter

to be totally honest it was a bit of a bust. I'll give the two staff kudos. They stayed at it well past the 90 minutes but we saw very little

lots of impala, and water buck

then something new - bush babies. Amazed the camera could actually get a shot clear enough to see what it was


water bucks that we hadn't seen before plus an African hare that only comes out at night to avoid flying predators

then this. We knew what it was straight away but we're sure neither of the guys had any idea about what we said it was. Odd.

malanistic cerval


more common is the spotted one but here in Tsavo it's about 50%. It's ears pretty much spun around on it's head

the absolute highlight of the night was the stars. I just lent out and looked up and the Milky Way was there in all of it's glory. Amazing

Even later start agreed for the next day. 9.30!! Jackson arranged for us to have breakfast at Salt Lick at 7.30 so we could see it and experience it. He was 100% sure there would be no elephants

Day 18 ended with a bit of a diappointing whimper.

 

[bPeteb]

Day 19

Last night of the safari

Taita Hills to Ashnil Aruba, Tsavo East NP

Loving the late starts. We didn't have to pack before we went to Salt Lick. Plenty of time when we got back to Taita.

Full power available in the back of the vehicle whatever you wanted to charge


quite an amazing group of buildings. Built at the same time as Taita. Once operated by Hilton. Now by a Kenyan company Pollman. Pollman was just been bought by a member of the Kenyatta family that no longer lives in Kenya. Apparently the sale should have been blocked as it breached foreign ownership laws but was just waved through.



view of the waterhole from the hide. You reach it through a carpeted tunnel from the main building. In the dry season Salt Lick is a veritable zoo of animals. After the wet it's pretty much nothing but water bucks



Salt Lick is the first place we met a group of very disinterested, maybe jaded, staff. Maybe it was because we weren't staying. Maybe it was because they didn't like being treated like cough. I watched a couple of people order some staff around. Horrible people.

The Taita Hills were an important part of the Africa campaign in WWI. There is a sizeable museum in the lobby and a number of monuments in the middle of the drive


This amazing treehouse constructed on the side of the highway by a guy who wanted to move out of home. It looks like something out of Swiss Family Robinson

 

[bPeteb]

the entrance to Tsavo East that we used was just through Voi. Jackson had asked us if we'd be interested in catching the train into Mombasa from Voi instead of him dropping us off at our hotel. This meant he could head home to Nairobl much earlier.

I was a bit torn as Tapestry is responsible for getting us to Mombasa to end our trip. Putting us on the train absolved them of this responsibility and I'm sure done without the knowledge of Matt. We also then had to get from Mombasa's station, out in the boonies, into the city, and our hotel. He said he'd organise someone for that as well. More on this later

the red hued elephants made an appearence before we even got in the gate





the park is HUGE. We entered through the Voi Gate, down to the lower left of the map


what we think is a hawk eagle


this dirt is what gives many of the elephants their red colour


lesser kudu


gerenuk doing it's giraffe thing


both Tsavos are known for elephants. We saw none in West and it took us until we got to the entrance of our lodge to find some in East


Ashnil Aruba was surrounded by elephants on all sides. They were all over the swamp/flood plain that the lodge overlooked. They were in the scrub around the entrance. They were in the waterhole right in front of our room!!

As we were driving into the lodge Jackson took a call from the person he'd been organising in Mombasa. He would pick us up at the station, do a city tour before dropping us off at the hotel, take us to and from Tamarind Restaurant where we were going on a dhow dinner cruise, then finally take us to the airport. The quote was USD120pp. I was shocked. I said 360? Jackson said what would be acceptable. I said I have no idea but not over 500 for four movements. Maybe I'm unrealistic. Jackson explained that he would be on call for us but it's not what we wanted. We just wanted the transfers and nothing else. What made it complicated was that the Mombasa guy had to arrange a vehicle for the full four days.

Jacksom said he was thinking maybe 250. I looked for some idea from bAlt and bStut as to what they though. bAlt was not at all impressed as we'd initally just planned to user Uber. bStut was a yeh, ok.

Not happy, but I agreed so Jackson called him back to lock him in

Then it was how to pay. I don't have M-Pesa. All I could suggest was the same horrible process I'd gone through transferring money to Hilda for the Dhow. I knew what I was in for

Anyways, in a bit of a foul mood we checked-in to the lodge. The staff again more Salt Lick than Amboseli Sopa.

My mood improved the moment I walked into our room


room 114. Old, and the bedroom a bit tired, but the bathroom had recently been renovated




nice buffet for lunch and some really lovely staff in the restuarant


bAlt finally gets a decent picture of a hornbill

 

[bPeteb]

another long conversation with Remitly tryng to get the money transfer to Jackson approved. It was for the Mmbasa guy and the train tickets. They were only KES1500 each for first class seats.The wifi was terrible and just as I was about to be called by them the wifi dropped out. I found a spot with more reliable wifi and after another 40 minute got the transfer approved. Grumpy again.

As we'd first neared the lodge Jackson stopped and talked to a group of rangers as they drove out of the lodge. They said that there were lions around so our afternoon drive was in search of them. Pickings were slim

lilac breasted roller


a couple of very angry elephants fighting. I wish we could post video


impala


water buck


many more elephants coming up from near the river


the sun was going down and still no sign of lions but a beautiful sunset for the last night of our safari

 

[bPeteb]

as we got to the lodge we could see LOTS of vehicles down the road leading along the side of the airfield. That could only mean one thing. Here is what we were surrounded by as the light started to fade. A pride of 19 lions


in the oether direction bAlt was watching a very large group of elephants having a great time in the mud





what an incredible way to end the safari!

We had two elephants in 'our' waterhole when we got back to the room


Day 19, sadly done

 

[bPeteb]

Day 20

Ashnil Aruba Tsavo East to Sentrim Royal Castle Mombasa

around Ashnil Aruba Lodge. They have a small number of luxury tents that I have a feeling Jackson though we were in, the permanent units that we were in and 12 'club' rooms that opened the night we arrived

we really liked the baythroom products


common areas



spot the puff adder



back out on the road for our last game drive. I'd passed our tip to Jackson before we left Ashnil. He'd earned it even if this last day was not how it should really have been


bye baby impala


bye old tuskers



Piper Cub (I think) checking to see if the Voi Gate airstrip is clear to land on


bye baboons


bye amazing natoional aprks and reserves of Kenya. You've been incredible

 

[bPeteb]

It was a pretty short drive through Voi to the station.


As with most modern infrastructre in Africa, the train line and rolling stock were built by the Chinese. We had to pick up our tickets an hour before the departure time. We got there at 11, eight minutes before the hour.

With Jackson on his way back to Nairobi, it felt a bit odd to know that we wouldn't be seeing him again. It really had been an amazing nearly three weeks.

The train pulled in right on time


but it took a very long time for a very large group of young international people with a lot of luggage to get off the train.

Plenty of room for our luggage. Seating was two x two.


I guess bStu t wasn't comfy sitting in his seat next to a young women and plonked himself in bAlt's seat. As we'd been boarding one of the conductors said we could sit anywhere so that's what bAlt and I did. What we didn't reallise was that we should have sat on the left as straight away the line started running alongside Tsavo East NP.

On the right, civilisation


LOTS of elephants but no photos. The safari is over!

We shouold have asked straight away about the buffet car as by the time we did ask, it was closed

Buffet cart would have to suffice



another crazy over the top Chinese designed and built station


intt Mombasa station pretty much right on time, Crazy town! We had no idea whwre Mombasa guy, who I had been told was called Newton, would be.


I went in search of Newton and there he was with the Brisbane Musketeers sign that Jackson said he would have

Our van


It was a 40 minute ride to the hotel. Sammy, not Newton, gave a quiet and thoughtful description of what we were passing. We went past giant mountains of containers stacked near the new port



a roundabout filled with giant elephants


and stopped briefly at Mombasa's gateway, the giant tusks, where the moment we got out of the van we were accosted by hoards of begging children. We were back in pretty quickly


the hotel was not much further down the same road


It was only an overnighter here so worked out the timings for the next day's transfer to Voyager. Sammy would be at the hotel at 1pm