Days 76-77 - Mombassa, Kenya Day 2 & 3

Weather
Overcast and mid to upper 70's

Map

What we did
Today marked our first safari adventure. We started early with a 4:30 a.m. breakfast, followed by a 5:30 a.m. departure. Getting assigned to our jeeps (a modified Toyota Land Cruiser designed to hold seven passengers) was a bit chaotic at first, but once everything was sorted, we set off on the three-hour drive to Tsavo East National Park. About two and a half hours into the journey, we made a quick stop to stretch our legs and browse locally crafted items. Back on the road, we raised the roof of our jeep and officially began our search for wildlife.

Over the next three hours, we were rewarded with an incredible variety of sightings. We spotted Grant’s gazelles, bat-eared foxes, white-browed coucals, red elephants, zebras, baboons, red hartebeests, oryxes, impalas, dik-diks, and even a dung beetle. Every animal we encountered was beautiful in its own way. The roads within the park were rough and as it had rained there were huge puddles. Our jeep was called upon to pull another out of the mud. We paused for a one-hour buffet lunch at the Red Elephant Lodge before heading out again for a 90-minute afternoon game drive. Afterward, we began the journey back to the boat. Although the return trip is usually about three hours, it stretched to nearly four due to heavy traffic—this was the last day of Ramadan, and many people were in the city preparing for the evening. The road conditions added to the adventure, ranging from rough dirt tracks to sections that were barely roads at all. We were especially grateful to be in a four-wheel-drive vehicle as we navigated between paved and unpaved stretches. We had the back row of the vehicle and we're airborne a few times due to the speed bumps that seemed to be in every small town we drove through. We arrived back late as our driver was from Nairobi and did not know how to get back to the ship. After making a few u-turns, Tom thankfully pulled up Google maps and helped navigate us back to the ship. Overall, the experience was absolutely worth it. While we didn’t spot lions, giraffes, or rhinos (though others in our group did), we still saw an amazing range of wildlife. With four more safaris planned over the next two weeks, we’re hopeful those sightings are still to come.