27 Jul 09 Narobi After 16 hours of flight, we finally arrived at Kenya, a place that tourist from all over the world are attracted to come for it’s remarkable landscape, unique local culture and large diversity of animals. The guide of Twiga Tour await us outside the airport and we were welcomed with a gift for everyone—a safari hat. And we headed to the Naiorbi Safari Club, a hotel in Narobi where we will be staying tonight. Kenya is more of a economically flourished country than its counterparts in Africa in which tourism has been contributing a large part to the country income. My first impression of Narobi, the capital of Kenya, is also a busy city with vehicle running across resembling busy cities in Mainland China. Dusty air cushioned the city and highrisers are standing all around. And our dinner was a long table candle light meal in a quiet and nicely decorated dining room. There were waitors explaining the menu and making the order for us. The way of living tourists are having here was far better than the life outside the hotel where there are more than 30% of the people in Africa still living on less than USD$1 a day. This is the first night in Kenya which is really something a bit unrealistic for me. Looking forward to visit the huge savanna and the animals tomorrow. 1 28 Jul 09 Amboseli National Park I It takes about 5 hours driving for us to go to Amboseli National Park which locates 240km away from Narobi. “Amboseli” means “devil dust” in Masai Language. As we approach the park, the roads are becoming quite rough with yellow dust raising and flying all around the air, coating our vehicles with a layer of soil film. This dust is mainly the volcanic ash of Mt. Kilimanjaro and we can see several small dust tube spouts spinning along the way. Sheep and cows begins to come into sights as we go. Finally we see zebra for the first time in this trip, there is a young one walking in front of our vehicle. It is actually some kind of brown and short hair lining along the markings in juvenile zebra. I guess we look funny to our driver that we are so excited because of a zebra, one of the most common animals that we encountered. But it is the zebra that signal to us the first time that where we are now standing on is the Africa Mainland. With an area of 392 sq. km, Amboseli National Park is known to be the smallest National Park in Kenya. Despite so, it attracts about 200,000 tourists from all over the world. Apart from the concentration of wildlife here, it is because of its location next to the Mt. Kilimanjaro, which is the highest mountain in Africa. The weather today is clear which allow us to see the snow cap of Mt. Kilimanjaro. However, there was 2 news report from NASA that the snow cap is quickly vanishing due to the increasing temperature of the area in the past few decades. And the snow cap is expected to be completely melted by 2015*. We went away with tones of photos of Mt. Kilimanjaro as this is probably the last time we can see the snow cap of it. Another story we heard about the Amboseli national park was that the park is set up in expenses of the locals. When the area is bounded for the mean of preserving wildlife, Masai inhabitants originally live there were forced to move to the outskirt area away from the park. This has trigger some form of conflict before and some of the locals are now hired to be the staff of the national park in purpose of sharing the benefits with the locals in providing them with job opportunities. *[NASA news: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003100/a003125/index.html] 3 29 Jul 09 Amboseli National Park II We went for a pre breakfast game drive at 6:30 in the early morning. Birding in the early morning is exciting. Birds in Kenya are very colorful and do not really scared of people. Some of them can even be seen in arm length and we got loads of good photos! We got meeting every night to gather all the recorded species from each group. Apart from learning what other groups has seen, it is also the way how amateur animal watchers contribute to surveys about animal abundance. 4 30 Jul 09 Tsavo west National Park Leaving Amboseli after breakfast, we travelled to the Tsavo West National Park. An area which is entirely covered with black ore came into sight. We got off the car and had a small rest there. The ores are indeed volcanic lava from volcano activities few hundred years ago, cooled and solidified into the rough, sharp and brittle stones, named Sherani Lava Flow according to the notice board erected there. Mzima spring is said to be the biggest attraction of Tsavo West. There is an underwater tank there where we can see hippos, crocodiles and other underwater marine life. While the hippos and crocodiles are either on land or going up and down the water surface away from the viewing tank, we can only see fish and eels there with some kingfishers perching on the branches next to the pond. The Tsavo west national Park we were heading to was indeed part of the “Tsavo eco system”, which is the largest National Park in Kenya. It is divided into Tsavo east and Tsavo West National Park by a railway. The west part where we are visiting is more popular due to the fastasic scenery and the diverse wildlife species as well as a large range of habitats. 5 There was lots of screaming upon our arrival to the lodge rooms in Tsavo West. Same as the dining area, hotel rooms are as well opened to the animal habitats where we can look at herds of elephants and gazelles drinking water along the bank of water ponds!! The rooms located on the ground floor are even connected to the outer park in which you can walk out of the balcony and go straight towards the animals without barriers. According to the waitors, there was a couples of lions came recently and 3 buffalos were found eaten already. We were very excited because of this and many of us did sit on the balcony at night time holding binoculars on hand and searching for surprises. Even thought there was not hunting scene happens in front of us tonight, the elephant calls in the middle of the night was simply making this a remarkable stay for me. 6 31 Jul 09 Mount Kenya National Park It was a 10 hours travel from Tsavo West to Mountain Lodge in Mount Kenya. With its an altitude of about 2500m, the weather is quite cool here. There was no game drive today as we spent a whole day to get here, while there is finally a surprise for us during dinner time. Two civets came one after another to a platform for the meat baits placed by the staff there. Billy said it was also a kind of hierarchy that the civet ingests the food one after another. We are very happy about it as this is the first time we caught sight of the civets during our trip. 7 1 Aug 09 Mount Kenya to Samburu Travelled from Mount Kenya to Samburu National Reserve only takes about 3 hours. As the temperature difference is quite large again between the two places, a couple of us felt ill. After lunch, we went for game drive. The car suddenly accelerated with full speed upon receiving the call from other drivers. We hopped off the seat with our camera once the car stop. It was a leopard laying on a tree branch hanging it’s limbs down and making it looked sooo relax!! Another big sight to me today was that there were three Verreaux’s eagle owl ( They are known to be the largest African owl !!) standing on the same tree. Two were next to each other and one was alone on another branch, looking around with its head turning. They are among the few birds which prey on hedgehogs. 2 Aug 09 Samburu Game Reserve Early morning game drive starts at 630. A whole lot of birds show up in the morning and we did return with many new ticks! It is lucky to have leopard record again today. It went into a tree cluster slowly when we discovered it. Several dikdik were so alert and flee right away from the other side. We got oryx with very straight, long and upright horns on the grassland today as well :) They horns protect them as it is strong enough to kill lions. But in face of human, the horns of oryx have made them a prized item in hunting game drive. This actually has driven the northern species of oryx to the brink of extinction. 8 3 Aug 09 Ol Pejeta Conservancy Birds are everywhere in the early morning, it is such a paradise for bird watcher because of the large number and diverse species. We sat on the grass after lunch for a small sharing. We talk about the contrast of resources available to locals, and those we are consuming. Many local people is fighting with poverty, starvation or even for clear water, while water and food are still served to us in form of buffet 3 times a day. Tourists bought in money to Africa, while we consume their resources in a much quicker pace then what they are doing. This remind me of keeping an eye on how I’m consuming stuff and try to minimize it as resources are belong to all people in the world, rather than to people who are relatively well off. 4 Aug 09 Ol Pejeta Conservancy to Lake Nakuru National Park During the way to Nakuru we have a small break in the equator and got couples of photo as memory. There are a series of souvenir shops there and the local 9 shopkeepers are very keen to sell their goods, often with huge profit. They often start by asking for your name and said that “we are now friends, you come to my shop, okay?” After we enter their shops, and we cannot achieve the deal. It is not easy to get away from them as they will stop you and trying to convince you to take the deal with their prize. According to our driver, the main source of income for the locals who set up shops there was from the tourists. And their life can become difficult in non peak seasons or in years of global financial turmoil. And the locals will switch back to hunting to make a living. It may be helpful if conservationists could aid the locals to establish diverse source of income apart like agriculture with arid resistant crops or helping their exported goods to get a fair deal internationally. We went to visit a Chimpanzee Sanctuary afterwards. They are creatures who resembles human the most among all the animals. We happen to see a Chimpanzee holding a stick and scratching the gate like a child to produce loud noise. This is one form of catching attention according to the staff there. We went into a information center where displays some more detailed information about chimpanzee. Chimpanzee communicates by facial expressions, hand gestures rather than language. Same expression could mean quite differently between chimpanzee and humans. E.g. The angry face in human could means “fear” in chimpanzee☺ 10 5 Aug 09 Lake Nakuru to Masai Mara Lake Nakuru is fame for the scene that millions of Flamingo can be seen at a time in a Lake. This is actually because of the rapid grow of blue green algae (the favorite food of Flamingo) cultivated by the salt in Lake Nakuru. It is better to go to the lake in the morning as the view is much better with a denser population of Flamingos gather in the morning. This is one of the most memorable scene in my trip to see sooo many birds standing one next to another, flipped their wings and the sky above the lake was covered by Flamingos. We arrived Masai Mara after 7 hours of driving. This is a place where there is only electricity supply in our room from 7‐11pm. We’ve got to get all the battery recharges, washing up and writings done before the light goes off. ☺ 11 6 Aug 09 Masai Mara Game Reserve I It is a large park laying over the boundary of Kenya extended from the game reserve in Tazania. Masai Mara is named after the Masai People and the Mara river which run across it. Masai Mara is fame for the abundance of animals and the annual migration of huge population of zebra, gazelle and wildebeest to the north for better quality of grassland during July & August and will often return by October. We didn’t come on the right time when wildebeest pushing one another to cross the river but we did see the wildebeest migration on land. It is a smaller population compared with what people used to see which may due to a different time or some environmental changes . By the way, we’ve managed to see TOPI and ELANDS in groups ☺ There is also a group of 5 lions lying together on the grassland today. Two of them were couples and they’ve just had copulation according to our driver. The female lion stand up and walk slowing away, a rabbit hopped out suddenly, flee and vanish in five second. It is so funny that the rabbit was named by someone the “Peeping Tom”. 12 7 Aug 09 Masai Mara Game Reserve II Passing across this stone on our way, this is the border marker between Kenya and Tanzania. There is a river next to it where many hippos are floating and sinking in it. Some are calling (This is the first time I heard hippo calling) and blowing out air like what whale did. The animals here in Masai Mara is much more sparsing dispersed than the game reserves or national park we visited in previous days. Billy described that the animals are everywhere when he made his visit 5 years ago. And for this time, animals can only be seen in small cohorts occasionally. Hope that the photos we took today are not the only source for people to refer to after another 5 years. 13 8 Aug 09 Masai Mara to Narobi Our vehicle dashed in high speed to a bush area where many vehicles are already stopping at during the morning game drive, our last game drive in this trip. Two lion was sitting beside a zebra. One is eating and one has already finished with blood staining the fur around its mouth. Only the front half of the zebra was left. Same as the civet we saw in Mount Kenya, the lions also exhibit hierarchy among individuals. They eat in form of licking the blood rather than tearing flesh or cutting with big bites. The most exciting things is not all about taking good pictures, but holding the binocular and watching every movement and expression of the animals☺ Travelled from Masai Mara to Narobi, we have our dinner in the home of the boss (of the drivers). The boss is Italian people and his wife is a Kenya woman. They are very friendly and making every details fine. The atmosphere was good and we have wines and chat a lot with our drivers and exchange contacts. Apart from viewing animals, making friends with locals did make my trip a lot more meaningful. 14 9 Aug 09 Narobi to Hong Kong Back to the Narobi airport with our luggage. Time flies. It is somewhere which makes animal lovers scream. Billy said he went Kenya for the first time when he was 37. We are now year 2 students, and we are already visiting the National Parks here, witnessing Lion eating zebra in person and touching the trunk of Rhinos with our own hand. It is probably the first and only time that I am in Kenya, touched by the animals calling and looking into the eyes of giraffe. Without our sponsors, without billy, this is going to be another summer occupied with part time Jobs and watching animal videos online. I wish more students who love animals, who care about animals and our ecosystem could actually have the same opportunities as we do, manage to see the animals and feel them in person, and get to know that these animals, and these African people in discovery channels are something so close to us. What we are doing in our homeland can actually change them in certain way. 15