Impressions of Nairobi, Ol Pajeta Conservancy, Night Lion Encounter

Impressions of Nairobi

I packed up and left my apartment (will return on Saturday), and we started on the 4 hour journey towards Mt. Kenya and Ol Pajeta (which autocorrects depressingly to Panera?!). Nairobi is a sea of humanity. Everyone is walking, biking, riding in 12 person mini-buses with 15 other people jammed in them. I didn’t take any pictures as I was fascinated but also felt like it was a bit voyeuristic if that makes sense. Even as we left Nairobi and the business, apartment buildings, and shanty towns thinned out the buzz of activity did not slow down. Crossing over a railroad track or straight red dirt road, there would be people walking somewhere, as far as you could see.

Eventually the landscape changes, you pass through an agricultural area where they grow pineapple, bananas, mangoes, guava, papaya, you name it. Every couple of kilometers there are speed bumps so people can cross the highway and there are loads of people selling fruit and other things. As you continue to gain elevation and distance from the city, there is coffee, sugar cane, and you start to see cows, goats, and sheep, many grazing right by the road with individuals (sometimes very young children) watching over them. And finally it starts to thin out to large stretches of rolling grassland with mountains in the distance (but still, people everywhere you look, most walking somewhere!)

Ol Pajeta

We arrived at the conservancy, which is known for its efforts to save the Northern White Rhino and chimpanzees, at noon. It was (and still is) hard to contain my enthusiasm and I can’t help but think about how students have reacted to past trips and know that they will just go out of their minds with excitement! After settling in to our rooms (high-end tents on the edge of the park overlooking a watering hole where the wildlife is very active), we went for our first game drive and immediately got up close and personal with everything you would expect, especially the Reticulated giraffe. Other introductions included: Grant’s Gazelle, Thompson’s Gazelle, Impala, Pumba (kudos to Disney for using the actual Swahili words to name some of their characters!), Eland, White and Black Rhinos, grey crested cranes, African Buffalo, Guinea fowl and tons of other birds that I can’t capture on film and am getting better at identifying, then two female lions who will make an appearance later in the story. We drive out in specially outfitted Land cruisers where the top pops up so you can stand and look. The equator runs right through the park, so we made the obligatory stop at the hemisphere boundary as well.

Night Lion Encounter

One of the unique things of this refuge is it is privately owned so it is the only one in Kenya at which you can do a night safari. Myself and one other couple (same age, lifelong eagles season ticket holders!) were the only ones to opt for the 9-11 pm drive. The guide asked what we wanted to see and the woman right away shared that she was desperate to see a lion kill. This is something that is EXTREMELY hard to see, so we headed out hopeful but realistic. After tons of hares, a mongoose and lots of plovers, they said, “hang on” and drove off road to another jeep and sure enough, the two female lions we had seen way off in the distance lounging, were consuming a tiny gazelle. We arrived after the kill, and I should be clear that only one of them was actually eating. They were a mother and cub (though the cub was only slightly smaller than the mother. But mom would NOT let daughter anywhere near it and would let out a tow curling growl every time she came near. We were within ten feet of the whole thing. It was beyond description. I took so many videos that I am having a tough time finding the best one on an iPad, but the crunching of the bones was like a foley artist with an unlimited supply of celery, its hard to hear over the wind. She ate every bit of it, there was NOTHING left for us to determine which type of gazelle it was. We were there for a good 3o minutes and then watched as she exhibit all too familiar house cat behaviors cleaning herself up after.

It was the most phenomenal, awesome, thrilling, scary (insert your own over the top adjective here) thing I have ever seen. We were just ecstatic, watching in awe, laughing, crying (for those who know me too well). We got back around 11:30 and I couldn’t fall asleep from the adrenaline.

Oh, and as a side note, the sky at the equator was amazing, best Milky Way I’ve seen since our early days of summers in the Maine North Woods.

This was only day one. I’m not sure my heart can take it if it is going to get any better than this!