Samburu NR Safari

As a sort of final farewell for Pat and Eric, we decided to go for a weekend trip to Samburu National Reserve, which is only 60 miles from Nanyuki, but a bit of a journey by public matatu transport.  While at UF, I had attended a seminar by a professor from CSU studying human/wildlife conflict in Kenya.  Because this was interesting to me and b/c he was from Colorado and working in Kenya, I decided to go out to happy hour at the Swamp Bar with him and the group hosting him (The departments holding the weekly seminars often take the visitor out to happy hour or throw a bbq at a professor’s house.  I usually don’t go b/c I’m too busy).  He was a nice guy and we hit it off a bit since he is also from Larimer county.  He told me to contact him when I got to Mpala and maybe I could visit his field site in Samburu.  I had been in touch, and he ended up hooking us up with his field assistant, Apin, his little Suzuki Maruti (named the bushcar), and a HUGE discount on the reserve.  The reserve costs about 80 USD, and he had said he could get us the student discount of 40 USD, but Apin ended up getting us in for free the first day and the local price the 2^nd day (1000ksh=10USD).  And all we had to do was pretend we were CSU students and say Go Rams (forgive me dad).

Getting to Archer’s Post, the little town where a Samburu gate is, proved to be the challenge that you’d expect with African public transport.  We got a ride with James, one of Todd’s field assistants, to Nanyuki.  We got pulled over by the police at one of the police checkpoint and they took James’ driver’s license and were going to hit him with a big fine.  Not for any violation, other than they just wanted money.  The said something like Kermit’s alignment looked a bit out of whack.  But instead of paying the big fine, we could pay him a 2,000 Schilling bribe.  We ended up bartering him down to 1,000 ksh.  From Nanyuki we caught a matatu to Isiolo where we walked across the dusty, windblown town to the next matatu going to Archer’s Post.  As this matatu doesn’t run often, they really fill it up.  On the Matatus plying the main routes (like to Nairobi), they stick to the rules of the number of passengers for the vans that are painted on the outside.  But in remote areas, this rule is definitely not followed.  The van had written on it that it could take 14 passengers.  We ended up taking 21.  One guy was so tightly packed, that he was standing and crouched up in a corner with his butt hanging out the window.  It wasn’t the most comfortable ride and we were all happy to arrive to Archer’s post, especially Elisha who was feeling claustrophobic.

We were greeted by super friendly Apin with the bushcar and taken to our very cheap, but nice and clean hotel.  We then visited one of the local women’s villages (the men are gone for long periods of time herding their livestock to water and good pasture).  The women at the village danced and sang some songs for us and showed us their homes, and of course showed us their wares for sale.

On our afternoon game drive we saw some cool stuff including some gerenuks, lots of endangered Grevy’s zebras, oryx, crocodiles, and elephants.  The highlights were seeing a leopard up in a tree with it’s impala kill and a lioness just as the sun was setting.  Samburu is dry like Mpala, but very scenic.  There are some cool looking cliffs, mountains, and mesas in the area as well as a large river that runs through the park that is lined with palm trees.  In the evening, we treated Apin to some nyoma choma (roast goat) for driving us around in the tiny little bushcar.

Our game drive the next day was amazing!  We started off by seeing a pride of lions with cubs moving through the bushes.  We then spotted a leopard on the ground and got several really close looks at it as it moved around and tried to find a bush to rest under.  We then came upon a cheetah with her two cubs.  We watched as one of the cubs made a very poor attempt at trying to hunt an impala.  After hanging out with the cheetahs for a while, we went back to where the leopard was.  We watched it for a while again.  We even watched it climb up a big tree (the very tree I had predicted it would climb earlier that morning). Once it was up in the tree, we were quite close to it and got a very good look at it.

In the afternoon we visited a different woman’s village.  We then got a ride with some other researchers back to Isiolo so we didn’t have to take the cramped matatu.  Then it was matatus back to Mpala.

On this safari we had lots of great looks at cats (my favorite!) and some exceedingly amazing encounters with the rare and difficult to see leopard, so I have lots of photos of them!

The Bushcar.  Dr. Brett's ride that he so generously let us use.  Notice the CSU bumpersticker.  Also, note the Obama sticker, the Bush Car sticker refers to the African Bush as opposed to any former president..haha

Elisha feeding one of the worst types of monkeys--the Eric

Elisha dancing with the Samburu ladies

The group at one of the Samburu women's villages

Elisha would not do well in a Samburu women's village

The group with Apin our great guide

China is the largest growing tourist nationality in East Africa.  They are funny b/c they have giant cameras, don't let any part of their body get hit by sun, and wear surgical masks (for dust or ebola?  We used to purposely sneeze and cough when we'd go by them..tehehe)

Happy to see a group of Kenyan students got to see the leopard.  It is of utmost importance that locals learn to appreciate the natural beauty around them and understand the benefits of conservation as in the end, it will be up to them to decide on the fate of ecosystems in Kenya