For a couple of days Tom witnessed us getting comfortable in his house – sleeping late in the morning, reading magazines and newspapers in English while consuming his premium Kenyan coffee (for my part at least), dumping our dusty backpacks in his garden while washing every single item inside them in his washing machine and then attacking the bags themselves with his garden hose, going through pretty much his entire record collection (including the “One Hit Wonders” cds) with way too much enthusiasm and volume, surfing through the movie, news and sports channels on his wide-screen TV, sipping through a healthy five Tuskers each per day, and running to the supermarket and cooking him dinner like a pair of good house elves in return for all of the above. Then, on our fourth day in his place he took us to the Nairobi National Park to prevent us from becoming completely institutionalized.
M inspects her kingdom. And she sees...
...Stereotypical African panoramic view #8472794827
At around 6.30am on this beautifully misty Sunday morning we arrived at the park, situated right on the southern edge of the city. Tom led us through the gates like he would be taking us on a tour of his own backyard, casually checking from the gatekeeper if there were any lions out and about to dance and prance around for us. We made a mental note about those viewpoints where some had last been sighted and started making our way towards the open plains through the forest bit of the northern end of the park where the entrance is. I declared out loud that I had a good intuition about seeing leopards instead of lions and started gazing up towards the trees right from the beginning. Tom cordially noted that he'd never seen a leopard in this park, which made my intuition even stronger about catching that spotty tail somewhere in the midst of the branches.
It really is that close. Wow.
Tom took us first to the picnic site where in 1989 President Moi torched ablaze some 12 tonnes of ivory to make a point against illegal killings of elephants. This was followed by another stop at an opening with good views over the plains. Both T and Tom quickly spotted some zebras and giraffes in the distance. On the other hand, not being used to spotting any kind of life around me even if it hit me flat in the face, I had to borrow Tom's binoculars and still have the exact spots pointed out to me before actually separating the creatures from the grassy background. Back in the car and driving on, I heard mentions of at least five different birds that the frontseaters had sighted, while I was just spotting bush and more grass.
Burn! Burn!!
Once my eyes started getting hang of the process of having to look in order to see something, I started spotting things too, even if I was mostly hedging my bets between potential alive wanderers vs. lifeless lumps of land. At least I wasn't the only one playing the wild guess game as T proved while proudly announcing to have spotted something moving in the bush which was seconds later confirmed by Tom and I to be a harmless breed of pile of dirt. Cutting right across the plains towards the south end of the park we saw plenty of antelopes (mostly impalas but also Thomson's gazelles, hartebeests and a couple of elands), more giraffes and zebras, buffaloes, a lone hippo wandering out of water, waterbucks, ostriches and obviously a lot of smaller birds: secretary birds, hamerkops, bulbuls, guineafowl, kori bustard, crowned crane, hornbill (=Zazu!), marabou stark, etc. Knowing how disappointed Tom will be to hear that I had to get help from T's memory to even scrape up a list this long, I'll publicly promise to take notes next time, just like Tom suggested.
At the other end of the park there is a small river bend titled 'the hippo pool' with paths to go walk around in the surrounding forest habitat, ideal for birdwatching and for those leopard enthusiasts such as myself. We got out here to have a snack and to stretch our legs after the morning's efforts at the goggles. The park ranger approached us to say there was a buffalo somewhere around the woods so we should keep to one side of the path. Pfff. At least if it would have been a leopard, this would have been justified... never mind that the buffalo is the biggest people killer in Kenya (someone please correct these LP originated details again if holding more accurate stats yourself). Apparently there had been a leopard on one of the trees the previous night but s/he didn't show up to say hello to us. Instead we saw a (rubbery?) crocodile which was too busy sunbathing to move a muscle for more than half an hour, a couple of happy turtles and some hippo foot tracks – both my feet easily fit inside one of these hoofprints. The less blind members of the party also spotted yet more birds and instructed the more blind member to their whereabouts.
On the drive back across towards the entrance we scanned the plains again for the big cats, but nada, not a thing. Tom joined T in the hallucinating club by jamming on the brakes and grabbing his binoculars to spot a grey rock. He casually tried to drive on to save the situation but this time I was just and just accustomed enough to the spotting game to blow his cover completely and expose him to some gentle but deserved ribbing. Soon after, however, T did spot a white rhino mom and kid grazing, as well as the four other vehicles that had also spotted them and were zooming and crawling as close as possible to spy on their lunch hour. Later we spotted some six more rhinos on the other side of the plains, plus more of the staple antelopes, buffaloes, zebras and giraffes. On our way back towards the park gates I got frustrated enough with my intuition failing on the leopards to switch to trying to spot something even more difficult: “How about a snake, then! Have you ever seen any of those here?” It must get heavy for Tom at times to drive wildlife tourists around...
To finish off the nature-hugging tour we parked the car outside the gates and walked into the adjacent restaurant for a shared grill platter and some cooler than cold Tuskers. Interesting fact of the day: Tusker was named after the elephant who killed the founder of this tasty brand of lager.
Rarely have I seen a happier-looking turtle than this.
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