Rocky Hollow-Spring is in the air – the cold weather finished and delighted to be in the sunshine again.
How lucky are we to have lots of family safaris. It is incredibly gratifying to take several generations of a family on safari and have such a shared interest with everyone and 25 years of friendship. Their children, our children, we all still love safari and having an adventure and this year has been full of trips like that. Each generation coming through with an interest in wildlife, the outdoors and an understanding of the importance of conservation .Not to mention the ability to have impromptu swims, (after careful hippo and crocodile check) in the middle of the hot day.
As usual, the Mara was outstanding, if not rather busy in July and August, hunting lioness, leopards with cubs, cheetah, although they (the cheetah) are being bothered too by the huge numbers of hyeana at
the moment, who are prooving to be very succesful. The wildebeeste came in rather late this year, the change in weather patterns, and the very heavy rains that East Africa had for the first 6 months of this year, definetly played havoc with the migration switch in the wildebeestes brains. (hope that’s not an
oxymoron!!)
Camels and horse in Laikipia once again, provided us with the best adventure and we discovered some monkey genes in children on a rock climbing expedition, although they did learn about ropes and absailing too. The non horse riders either went on camel back or walked and we spent the night in a verysimple fly camp, eating delicious steaks under the huge African night sky and watchhed for shooting stars and satalites. The lions roared but kept their distance and everyone, exhausted after lots of exercise slept like babies. The baboons spent the night on the rock near us and we heard their cries of alarm as a large Tom leopard went by, but all seemed peaceful in the morning, so he must have had something else for dinner that night.
The massive bull elephants of Kilimajjaro and Amboseli were spectacular and their gentleness as they wondered past us extraordinary. The big rains we had earlier in the year has meant that Lake Amboseli,which normally is a large dry dust pan, was full of water, flamingos all along the shores and so many water birds I didn’t know I felt rather ashamed. They say the reason the elephants in this area are so much bigger is to do with the rich volcanic soil of the mountain and the large forests on the slopes of the mountain. The tourism sector in this area seem to work so well with the Masai communities and while they live their traditional life style of keeping cattle it works, however, the water in the pipeline off the mountain has bought in may agriculturalist growing delicious tomatoes which brings problems of raiding elephants, who also think the tomatoes are delicious. This is an ongoing problem across the whole world, so many people and not enough space, however, luckily there are lots of people working on ways to make elephant corridors and try and keep the peace between the people and the wildlife.
Spending life on safari is a wonderful thing, and we all agree that we are extremely lucky.
Mouse
