Tag Archives: conservation

Kenya, Travelinds, Travelinds Destinations

Two Days in Nairobi

September 2016

We had two days in Nairobi and wanted a fairly relaxed schedule.  This is what we did:

The Sheldrick Elephants

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust had us captivated from the first moment. The 11 o’clock feeding was surprisingly endearing, not commercial or money-grabbing, but educational and fascinating. It was wonderful to see the babies and their caretakers interacting. The love that goes into raising these orphans is amazing to behold.

This is a great initiative and needs loads of support to keep on going. I would recommend reading Dame Daphne Sheldrick’s memoirs (An African Love Story) for a deeper history on how this work came to be and the struggle to protect the Kenyan elephants.

The highlight of our trip was to go back (by appointment) and meet our little adoptee, Ambo (a ten-month old elephant rescued from Amboseli), put him to bed and meet his caretakers. Ambo is just one of many orphans at the Trust and we were happy to know that we have contributed something to his 24 litres of daily milk for the next three years, as well as the countless other costs of running an establishment of this nature.

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Keepers like Meshack, who has been here almost 30 years, love their jobs and their orphans.
Keepers like Meshack, who has been here almost 30 years, love their jobs and their orphans.

Thank you to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust team for all you do for these gentle giants, for Kenya, for Africa and for our children’s future with elephants and rhinos.

Giraffe Kisses

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Having watched the Giraffe Tea movie as a child (with the little girl who feeds baby giraffes), I had always wanted to meet these majestic creatures up close and see the famous Giraffe Manor Hotel. Taking a few hours, we headed over to the Giraffe Centre in Karen, Nairobi – The African Fund for Endangered Wildlife.

Cost: As at September 2016, it cost 1000 KSH per non-resident for feeding, viewing and trails for the day.

There were nine giraffe altogether, including two small babies that were too cute for words, and a pregnant mama who was grumpy (and HUNGRY) stealing all the other giraffe’s vantage point for pellets.  There are also warthogs and birds to see from the platform if the giraffe allow you a view around their enormous heads.  Like a horse, it has a long nose, almost the length of your entire upper body, so the Afrikaans word ‘kameelperd’ (camel horse) seemed strangely appropriate up close.

20160908_152843 20160908_125653Kissing the giraffe seemed unthinkable, but we were assured by giggling giraffe centre educators of the ‘antiseptic properties’ of their saliva and the kisses were indeed great fun to photograph (because only one half of Travelinds was brave enough to do it after watching a few people get plastered). A 45cm tongue is rather adept at twirling the pellet right out between your thumb and forefinger and the head butts signal a demand for more!

20160908_143051It was a hugely entertaining, and most of all educational visit, where we learnt about the subspecies of giraffe in Africa and how to identify them.  Before this, we were not even aware that we had seen different types of giraffe (Masaai with splotches, Rothschild with white legs and  the Southern Giraffe which we have in South Africa).

Nairobi National Park

This was a fun day out, twelve hours of driving around, picnicking, watching animals and enjoying nature. We arrived at sunrise, paid the exorbitant non-resident fees, and within the first minute of our drive through the gate saw a huge male lion walking in the road, roaring his head off and looking right into our car window. Wow!

We also saw more than a hundred ostriches over the day, all the antelope, black and white rhino, a couple of hundred Maribou storks, 10 secretary birds, a family of crowned cranes, Malachite Kingfisher and a bounty of other small creatures and birds.

Lowlights: Trash covered Kingfisher Picnic Site after the public holiday long weekend party and a brazen Sykes monkey stole our banana (out of the car!) at the one picnic area while we were stretching our legs (this might have been a highlight though).

These are the Kenya Wildlife Services park fees.

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At the end of the day, we visited the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust to meet our adopted elephant and put him to bed. We had to drive out of the Banda Gate (get a special letter to exit) and then go down to the elephant orphanage through the secure area.

Goodnight, Ambo!
Goodnight, Ambo!

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A wonderful end to a magical Kenyan trip!

 

Kenya, Travelinds, Travelinds Destinations

Tiwi Beach

August 2016

We arrived at Ukunda Airport (Diani) having been warned of blistering heat and humidity; and told to definitely wear shorts and leave the jackets at home. As soon as we landed, however, it started raining and stayed wonderfully cool for the whole two weeks we were in Diani.  Daily rain showers kept things fresh, settling the dusty surrounds and covering the landscape in a lather of clouds against the harsh equatorial sun.

The taxi driver kindly took us shopping (at the supermarket) so that we could fill up our grocery bags and then we headed over to Sand Island Cottages on Tiwi Beach.

Surprise! Turtles!

Arriving on the first day at Sand Island in the pouring rain, we were excitedly told that green turtles were hatching, so naturally we ignored the torrential downpour, left our groceries in the taxi, and ran to watch the stragglers, as they tenaciously found their way to the blue ocean in front of our cottages. Drenched and happy, it’s something I will never forget – what a special thing to witness this brave fight to survive against all odds. And it happened twice during our stay!

The cute little creatures had to fight against sand, grass, dogs, birds, a hungry octopus, hunting fish and all sorts of other obstacles to freedom; just so that they could reach the big wide ocean beyond the reef and face the real dangers of life underwater.  The survivors of this family will then head straight back to Tiwi Beach in a few years time to carry on the generations of green turtles and the cycle of life.

Nest 8Baby Turtle

Nelly the Elephant (Twitter: @Nelly_Says) celebrated as the last baby turtle finally reached the ocean!
Nelly the Elephant (Twitter: @Nelly_Says) celebrated as the last baby turtle finally reached the ocean!

Saidi is the turtle conservationist for Tiwi Beach and kept us well-informed about the turtle protection efforts here.  Smiling and friendly, he carries a great respect for the turtles and strives to educate everyone he meets about their qualities and needs.  The training he received has given him the skills and conservation knowledge he needs to save Tiwi’s population of turtles. He relocates the nests to safer distances from the sea (or from people) and monitors the progress of the nests that are labelled and recorded by Watamu Turtles.

Sand Island Cottages

These quaint beach cottages are a great choice for a quiet getaway and a couple of days (or weeks) of rest.  North of Diani, it’s about a fifteen minute drive from Diani Beach and well away from the hustle and bustle of the town itself.

Named for the sand island that appears during low tide, Sand Island Cottages are the perfect location to see the coastline open up as thousands of birds descend of Sand Island to pick up the crabs and sea titbits left exposed by the receding waters. Watch out for the abundance of spiky sea urchins when you walk across the bay!

The self-catering cottages were comfortable, airy and clean, with views of the beach and shady verandahs with soft cushions to nuzzle into a gripping book from their library (all proceeds from the small book rental “fee” go towards providing books for the local schools in the area – initiative I thought was fantastic!) Our friends and family stayed in Simu, Pono and Tewa.

Sand Island Cottages

Tiwi beach was clean and pretty much private to those staying at the handful of resorts along the shore – no beach boys or tour operators in sight. The beautiful Kenyan lady at the resort, with her colourful outfits and a smiling baby strapped to her back, kept us in abundant supply of samoosas and ‘mandazi’ when we needed it; and there were people to buy fish or kikois from if we needed.

Mandazi is something like the South African ‘vetkoek’ (fat cake, in English) and is a mouthful of deep fried, doughy deliciousness somewhere in between a donut and a bread roll.

The staff and management were professional, attentive, kind and friendly – it felt like we were part of the family and being looked after with great care.  Arty and Cheryl provide excellent service and information about the area,  being happily available whenever needed and concerned with bettering both the environment and the community around them.

One initiative we like is the Book Hire system at Sand Island Cottages. There is a library of books available for rent by guests, with a small fee paid and a deposit that you get back when you return the book.  The small amount kept by Sand Island goes towards providing books and materials for the local schools in Ukunda that need it the most.  So get reading!

Kenyan Hospitality

Running through the local communities along the beach road under the watchful eye of some ancient Baobabs, it was easy to see why the Kenyan people are known for their smiles and friendly greetings.  Those commuting to work on their bicycles gave a friendly wave and a happy “Jambo, jambo!”; and there was always singing somewhere on the wind.

There are locals around to lend your support to: like turtle-volunteer Saidi who also has a small wooden boat in which he takes guests to see Starfish Bay.  We hired the congenial Ali for the week and he cooked superbly for us, providing freshly baked bread rolls, scrumptious curries and Kenyan-Western fusion dishes.  The favourite of the week was difficult to choose, but it was either the hand-pressed coconut milk fish curry with chipatis or the delicious American-style pancakes he whipped out; or was it the daily supply of hot, home-baked bread rolls?

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We miss Tiwi Beach already!
Kenya, Travelinds, Travelinds Destinations

Masaai Mara: An African Dream

August 2016

Waking dream!

Stirring from a night of solid sleep to the sounds of a thousand different birds, I focused lazily on the rays of orange sunshine streaming through the tent and wondering on which alien planet I had landed.  I remembered the crazy rush to book a last minute flight with an hour to get to the far-off King Shaka airport, paying our entrance fees online on the way to the airport, the flight from cold South Africa to rainy Ethiopia to sleeping Kenya in the dead of night, the two hours of sleep before the alarm jolted us from our beds and the mad rush to pack nine of us into two cars, heading out of Nairobi at a prompt 6.30 a.m. sunrise.

With delight I recalled that we had made it through the six-hour journey, the Great Rift Valley opening up below us with its geothermal steam vents and slow trucks between Uganda and Mombasa, the wheat fields and pockets of livestock mixed with random antelope as we climbed out of the valley of volcanic rocks and trundled on through the dusty bushveld – its acacia trees and euphorbias astoundingly huge and beautiful – and the shocking corrugations on the pothole-infested dirt roads that claimed our entire exhaust fixture on the way home (it survived its trip back to Nairobi tied to the roof racks, but normal conversation pitch during the journey was next to impossible and we roared on home lost in thought and memory of the captivating experience).

I was finally here, somewhere I had dreamed of since childhood, unbelievably happy in an unfenced campsite along the Mara River, in a little tent, in the world-famous Mara Triangle, part of the Masaai Mara National Reserve – and hundreds of thousands of animals were here with us, too.

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The Great Migration

The herds arrived in the Mara Triangle the day before we did and it really is something you need to see with your own eyes to believe it. Beautiful and fascinating!

“Follow-the-leader” took on a new meaning as we watched the blue wildebeest lines stretching all along the base of the majestic Oloololo Escarpment, winding their way towards the Mara River to see if the oat grass really is greener (redder?) on the other side.  Apparently following the rain, the wildebeest spend their whole lives moving, an epic circular journey that starts down in the Serengeti of Tanzania and ends on the vast plains of the Masaai Mara in Kenya, where it starts all over again.

The wildebeest are joined by zebra and tommies (Thompson’s Gazelle) and solemnly face the predators at every step of the journey – an inevitable game of roulette as each night brings certain death, and each dawn a sense of victory at having beaten the odds.  Carcasses litter the savanna with evidence of the nocturnal carnage and the rotund lions we saw were too stuffed to bother with anything, eating only the choicest rumps and leaving the rest of it for the scavenger feast.  Even the scavengers turn up their noses at the drowned carcasses that fill the rapids of the Mara River after the senseless ‘crossings’, already filled to capacity from the pickings of abundant meat left from the kills.

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The animals converge on the river to drink, egging each other on to be the first to brave the threat of crunching jaws of the enormous Nile crocodiles.  Twice we watched as a wildebeest fell in, swam wildly to the nearest bank and was assisted by the curious hippos with a nudge towards the relative safety of dry land.20160821_123203

Wild and Free

The zebras with their exquisite black and white (a much cleaner contrast than the brown-smudged South African zebras) gather together to graze, some rolling in the dust, some playing catch; and even a naughty zebra male that suffered a thumping hoof kick (a ‘snotklap’ for you South African readers) from an irate female who had had enough (followed by whoops and giggles from the inhabitants of our vehicle as we cheered her on).

We camped at the private campsite, Dirisha, alongside the Mara River. Leopard, hippo, buffalo and elephant came into our campsite each night (the tent walls seemed thinner then) and the birdlife was amazing, too (including a rare Bar-tailed Trogan right outside our tent).  It was a proper bush experience with no ‘facilities’ to speak of, emphasising the fact that we were in the real African bush, humbled by our defenselessness and respectful of the ruthless ferocity in the daily life of wild creatures.20160821_174448

The week’s sightings also included herds as far as the eye could see (estimated between 750,000 and a million wildebeest alone), fat cats and scavengers feasting on carcasses lying everywhere, river crossings galore and even three black rhino fending off a pack of brazen hyenas.  One hyena also tried to catch a comical Ground Hornbill, who casually walked away knowing its fearsome beak was enough to deter its attacker.

Little Governor’s

Most evenings we headed to Little Governor’s for sun-downers and water refills (campers cannot afford to be shy about essential needs like drinking water, even if the lodge was as posh as could be). Looking out over a small water catchment, the luxury tents are set in the cool of the forest and can see all the surrounding beauty from their beds. More than once, we were delayed in returning to our campsite by the 7 p.m. curfew because of the elephants that roam about the lodge within hand reach of the restaurant patrons, who are swiftly ushered away to the other side by the staff and have to wait patiently until the giants have moved off.20160822_17442620160821_102002

Once in a lifetime

At the tip of the Mara Triangle map, Little Governor’s is one of many lodges that does hot air balloon rides across the Mara – a spectacular sight as the multicoloured behemoths transport mesmerised passengers silently across the plains, often just  a few metres above the herds on the ground below.  A future bucket list item for sure!20160822_065327

Honestly, this was one of the best weeks of our lives.  To be able to have seen this phenomenon firsthand was an awesome privilege and an unforgettable experience – even for Travelinds who have grown up in the beautiful wild places of South Africa, travelled in tiny boats through the jungles of Borneo and swam with ocean giants.

20160821_184628Masaai Mara – just wow!

 

 

 

South Africa, Travelinds

iMfolozi-Hluhluwe Game Reserve

30 January 2015

 

One of our favourite pastimes – and one of the things we miss the most about South Africa – is game viewing.  Not in a zoo, of course, but in a reserve.  The natural habitat of the animals is somewhere you are not guaranteed to see anything at all; but it’s all about the search!  Nothing compares with driving around all day scanning the bushveld, trees, slopes and ravines for animals and then catching a glimpse of the flicking white tail-end of a leopard, or the majestic mane of a ferocious (or lazy) male lion in the shade of a bush.  Reversing away from an approaching elephant or speeding to get away from a protective rhino mother is all the adrenaline you need!

So, this week was spent basking in God’s awesome creation at iMfolozi-Hluhluwe Game Reserve. What a fantastic place to see interesting, dangerous, funny, wild, crazy, big, tiny, rare and fascinating African wildlife in their natural habitat. Four hours from home,  this game reserve is a perfect getaway for long weekends.

Accomodation

We stayed at Nselweni Bush Camp which is down the road from Mpila, where we were supposed to be staying. Thanks to a misunderstanding and a booking problem, the management kindly allowed us to move over to Nselweni – a beautiful bush camp right on the bend of the river. We woke up with the birds and fell asleep with the night sounds of lions, frogs, hyenas and cicadas. It was perfect for a romantic getaway in a private “half tent/half cabin”that looks on to the bush. Conveniently, it was at a central iMfolozi location, about 20 minutes to Mpila.

Nselweni has fully equipped units with a braai place (that’s barbecue for non-Saffers), a gas oven, a fridge, kitchen utensils, an outside table and a semi-covered verandah. The shower window can open right up and the bathroom and bedroom both look out into the bush. We enjoyed the nyala that graze outside your hut during the day and its a colorful bird paradise.

We stayed here three nights in Unit 2 & 3 – both are lovely, private and quiet, especially Unit 2. Units 4 & 5 have half views of the river but only the Conference Centre deck gives a panoramic view of the river; and this is open to anyone who wants to use it. We saw buffalo, kingfishers, crocodile, trumpeter hornbills, impala, vultures and many others right from the deck.

Wildlife

At any wildlife reserve, you need to respect nature and remember that wild animals don’t follow the rules or take heed of the ‘boundaries’ us humans expect.  Watch out for the opportunistic hyenas at night who steal meat right off the braai or pinch anything left out on your verandah while you sleep. It’s best to take a torch and maybe a stick if you’re walking around the camp at night.

Our highlight sightings were a pack of wild dog, lion, puffback, bathing yellow-billed kite, a huge elephant breeding herd with little babies, so many white rhino and a metre-long vine snake on the road.

Night drive

On the last night, we treated ourselves to a night game drive (which leaves from Mpila camp) and we were so impressed with Bheki, our guide, who found us lion (up close and roaring), genet, chameleon, vine snake, crocodile, buffalo, rhino, nightjar, bushbuck.

Ezemvelo Wildlife

Thanks to Ezemvelo KZN wildlife, it was a wonderful stay.  They are doing a great job protecting Kwa-Zulu Natal’s wildlife, especially the precious rhinos!  We never did see that elusive Black Rhino on this trip, but the Whites were magnificent.