Tsavo East and West (Day 11-12)

TROPICAL CATS TOURS AND SAFARIS - MOMBASA +254716006330

- 6 day tour Tsavo, Amboseli,Lake Nakuru, Lake Naivasha. Masai Mara

-Rating (Tour) 4/5 (Guide) 3/5

-$1650 USD a peice

"Bless the rains down in Africa." Not just a song from Toto, but not something you think of when going on a trip to Africa either. We went when it was supposed to be the end of the rainy season, but it rained just about every night we were in Kenya.

Once we were picked up for our tour we had a four hour drive to Tsavo East. We had our itinerary printed out already for our trip and when we asked our tour guide about some of the things on it, such as going to a rhino sanctuary shortly after being picked up. He just told us that he wasn't aware of these things, even after we gave him a copy of the itinerary we didn't get to do everything. Originally we were supposed to be with the owner of the tour company but he got called away for a meeting. This made it where we missed a lot of little details on our trip and stayed at hotels that were a lot cheaper quality then the ones promised on the itinerary (and of course we had prepaid already).

Once in Tsavo East we were greeted by the larger then life, baobab tree known as the tree of life, with good reason. They provide shelter, clothing, food and wear for both animal and humans in the African Savannah. The bark is cork-like and the huge stems are fire resistant making them great material for clothes and rope. After the rains of the night the trees were loaded with birds if you looked closely enough. This park would be perfect for any bird watcher! We didn't know much of what we were seeing and our guide would only tell us a few here and there. We did see a bunch of horn bills though!

Tsavo West is known as the land of the man eaters. In 1898 between March and December there were dozens of deaths of conduction workers on the Kenya- Uganda railway caused by two mane-less man- eating lions in the Tsavo region. They are known for their unusual behavior of killing men and the manner of their attacks.

Tsavo is also the only park that dose not have elephants. Because of this the hotels and resorts offer night drives to see the lions, we missed out on this though due to it raining really hard that night.

On our way to the hotel we pasted by a watering hole where we got to see a bunch of animals drinking and wallowing in the mud. Here we also got tot see a young giraffe chasing a antelope around the watering hole! It was really cute seeing how they run with their knees going the opposite way of how ours goes.

Once we got to our hotel we went and had some lunch, and waited for our guide to take a nap (we assume) and be ready to go out again. The dinning room was out doors under a patio we spent time outside after eating. On the other side of the railing it opened up to a watering hole where we got to watch some marabou storks feed in the water.

At 4pm we got to go back out on safari, it was still raining but we still drove around. It was very overcast and for a while the rain slowed down we got to get some amazing pictures of the storm coming in. With all the rain we didn't get to see any large animals, but we did see a jackal and a monitor lizard.

In the morning we were heading out there were lots of giraffes and zebras, around the road leading away from the hotel. We were trying to take some pictures our guide said we could not stop because we were behind schedule. (This was after we waited almost two hours for him to be ready to leave the hotel.) Before we even left the long road leading away we heard over the radio that on the other side of the road from where we were looking right next to the hotel gate were seven cheetahs. We of course still couldn't go back and missed out on seeing them.