2017/09 Part 6 Samburu - Sun am Travel to the lodge |
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Dear All,
At the end of part 5 of this journal, we were on our way from Masai Mara to Samburu conservancy area/park. Nzuki, our guide in Kenya, had left the previous day to drive the van up to Samburu, while we had the easier option of flying there.
Sunday September 24th continued
Our previous three parks are all part of the same ecosystem, with similar animals, but Samburu is quite separate. Our visit there was suggested by Elvira of TANO Safaris to add some variety to our trip. It is located just north of the Equator and, at 2700 feet, is much lower than the other parks. As a result it is hotter and more desert-like, and some of the animals there have evolved differently.
Samburu is one of a number of parks in the area, which has been famous since the 1960s as the home of Elsa the lioness and George and Joy Adamson, author of “Born Free”.
We’d also be staying in a tent at the Elephant Bedroom Camp rather than in a Serena Lodge, so we were looking forward to a different experience.
Our flight to Nairobi stopped at three tiny airstrips in the Masai Mara on our way to Nairobi. This gave us a scenic tour of the Mara at the expense of a few bouncy landings. At the last stop at Olare Orok, a film crew came on board with massive cases and cameras, filling the plane. I was suffering from lens envy.
When we came into Nairobi we had our first view of the city from above: some very English-looking terraced houses, concrete apartment blocks, a few skyscrapers, some shanty towns, and a pleasant amount of green space. We landed at Nairobi Wilson, home to mostly propeller planes, both private and regional airlines.
After about an hour we were off in a flight to Samburu in a similar Cessna. We seemed to 
be following the main road north. To our surprise we flew over a large complex of greenhouses. We didn’t expect to see greenhouses at the Equator, but apparently they are for watering control, to smooth out the differences between the wet and dry seasons.
Somewhere along the way we crossed the Equator, our first time in daylight. I was 
disappointed to find that there isn’t a dotted line going around the world.
We landed a couple of times. By this time we knew to shout out “Where are we?” as the pilot’s mumble before landing can rarely be heard. At Leva, we saw this rather rustic terminal and waiting room. We passed over this winding river and bounced in to land at Samburu. 
Some Samburu people came out to greet the passengers; they seem to dress differently from the Masai, but we didn’t know how much of their dress was normal and how much was just for the tourists.
Nzuki was there with the van to meet us. He said we had to 
drive around the mountain with about an hour to get to the Elephant Bedroom Camp. At the time I didn’t realize how many airfields there were around Samburu; perhaps this was actually the Kalama airstrip; I forgot to ask.
The landscape was definitely desert-like, with distorted trees and spindly and well-spaced shrubs.
At the end of our ride we came to the lush, green vegetation around the Ewaso Ng’iro river; this flows northeast out of Kenya into Somalia and the Indian Ocean. The Elephant Bedroom Camp is right on the river bank, and we were promptly whisked onto the verandah for a very late lunch. This time we were definitely hungry. The food was good and the view was beautiful, out across the river.
We were in tent 1, one of twelve. It was a large tent on a wooden frame and base and we had two queen beds, a private bathroom, and a deck with a small plunge pool and a view over the river.
We were told to padlock the zips on the tent’s screens to keep the monkeys out; they’d learned how to open zips. We were also warned that the camp was unfenced so we would need an escort at night to and from dinner. As there were no telephones, we’d have to signal the escort with a flashlight.
We just had time to look around our tent and then it was time for our afternoon game drive.