At Nairobi National Park, the raised wooden boardwalk of the safari walk showcases Kenya’s Parks and Reserves. Impala, zebra, antelope and wildebeest graze on dry grassland under shade trees. The giraffes look out for predators, protecting their friends just as they do in the wide-open savannah and swampland, and they do so most of the day because they sleep with their eyes open for only 45 minutes a day. While on safari walk, I was disappointed we were missing out on seeing the cheetahs, hyenas, leopards and lions in the wild open spaces of the 117-square kilometer national park. Then one of our fellow travelers said, “This is a good introduction to what we’ll see over the next nine days,” and I understood.
I couldn’t help but think about the African Savanna area at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo back home. It’s our introduction to the flamingoes, elephants and rhinos in Africa. Our local savanna has the bird I liked second best (after the crowned crane) in Kenya — the bright, blue-green iridescent, superb starling whose belly is red-orange. Elephants really do make crossings from one environment to another; we were within 20 feet of herds that crossed from the protective woodlands near Mount Kilimanjaro to the open swampy savanna in the morning, and then near sunset, they crossed back to where the giraffe would watch over them at night. It was awesome.
Nairobi National Park, with its areas that are zoo-like, gave me an appreciation of the preservation and education provided by zoos. The park is also home to the Giraffe Centre, which breeds and protects the endangered Rothschild Giraffe (the type of giraffe whose bottom legs are white). The main attraction at the Giraffe Centre is a platform from which visitors can feed the black-tongued creatures and experience their behavior. Again, I thought of our own zoo where our granddaughters love to feed giraffes. The giraffe calves at the Centre are released into the wild when independent enough to survive. While we saw Rothschild giraffes at the Giraffe Centre, we saw the Maasai variety at Maasai Mara National Park several days into our tour of the parks and preserves of Kenya.
The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo does a great job of recreating what we saw in the real Africa. When one enters the zoo through the main entrance, the elephant exhibit is just to the left, the lions are straight ahead, the flamingo are just beyond. If one passes by the picnic area and over to the eastern black rhino exhibit, one can see the family, which includes Lulu and Nia, who were born at the zoo. I’ll not go to the zoo again without thinking about how close black rhinos are to extinction and how Solio Ranch, now the Solio Game Reserve, protects and increases the number of white and black rhinos in Africa and the world. The 17,500-acre reserve not far from Nyeri, is home to 200 rhinos, and we also saw several species of monkey, reticulated giraffes, elands, leopards and warthogs. Lions, leopards and cheetahs also make their home at Solio. We heard a baby rhino crying to nurse and saw large male rhinos sweeping their horns across the ground while sparring.
There are no words to describe the wonder and awe we felt during safari drives where as far as we could see, giraffe, zebra, gazelle, impala, elephant, water buffalo, rhinoceros and hippo shared grazing land and water holes. And the startling excitement we felt when we spotted a leopard perched on a branch to scan open land or were surprised when a cheetah zoomed past us in pursuit of a baby impala. We had the experience of seeing lions mating, oblivious to us humans in a motor vehicle, and female ostrich being serenaded by five flapping and dancing males who wanted her to choose them. The beauty of flamingo in shallow water at Lake Nakuru and at Amboseli was breathtaking, and when hundreds of them took flight and gracefully landed in another spot, we didn’t want to leave because we wanted to see it again.
After a couple days in Nairobi, we stayed at the Aberdare Country Club in the Aberdare Highlands where baboons, impalas, peacocks, zebras and warthogs roamed freely and we had a view of Mount Kenya. From there we traveled into the Kenyan highlands, one of the most fertile agricultural areas in all of Africa, where farmers grow corn, wheat, coffee and tea on our way to Lake Nakuru National Park. At Nakuru Sopa Lodge, we had a private balcony from which we could see the lake and the sunrise before we set out on morning game drives. Two days later, we drove to Maasai Mara National Park, which is famous for the “Big Five” — lions, leopard, Cape buffalo, elephants, and rhinos — and is located in the Serengeti ecosystem where the great migration of mostly wildebeest and zebra takes place each year. After a couple nights at the Mara Sopa Lodge, we went on to Amboseli National Park, which was my favorite because of Mt. Kilimanjaro, being home to over 400 species of birds, and the presence of Hemingway’s Bar, a museum and bar located in the house that Ernest Hemingway built late in his life, at Amboseli Sopa Lodge.
The people of Kenya were warm hosts who wanted us to know their culture and language — we learned twenty or so Swahili words, and “Jambo” was the greeting everywhere we went. At a Maasai village, we saw how the people who herded cattle, goats and sheep alongside the roads lived. While driving, we saw lots of motorcycles and tuktuks (updated motorized rickshaws) and lots of delivery trucks; we even saw a motorcycle carrying a couch. When we passed through Norak, a large city of 300,000, we saw lots of schools and churches, and the crowded streets and activity that takes place on market day. Along the main highways and dirt roads, we saw women draped in scarfs carrying babies on their backs and uniformed school children who waved to us as we passed.
Kenya and its capital of Nairobi are experiencing rapid growth, and neither infrastructure or the economy are keeping up. But tourism is now their second largest industry. The deeply grooved bumpy and treacherous dirt roads, the flash flooding during downpours, and the electrical and internet outages were balanced by the great care the people took to keep us safe and happy. We will always remember the beautiful buffets that featured a combination of Kenyan, Indian and British foods and the timbered dining rooms. We’ll remember how the darkness at sunset came quickly and how the animals looked spread out like shadows on the plains. Now when we visit the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo with our granddaughters, we can tell them how the younger zebra are browner in color and how the hippos look like rocks in the waterholes and lakes of Kenya. And all the other things we know because we traveled to Africa.
See more photos from Claudia’s trip here.
