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Africa » Kenya » Coast Province » Tsavo NP
August 11th 2008
Published: August 11th 2008
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So after a hard week at work, culminating in some very stressful hand and feet painting on friday, I boarded the mutatu to Mombasa to meet up with the guys before our safari saturday morning. Obviously we went for one drink, obviously this ended up with me in the casino, and finally crashing on the sofa of the volunteer house about an hour before we had to leave! Sensible Janiney...

But if you are going to have a stinking hangover, you might as well suffer whilst basking in the beauty of the savannah. We headed out as stupid o'clock saturday morning to Tsavo east national park, with our expert guide Jay aka hawkeye leading the way. First animal spot- leopard. Amazing. He was just laying in the tree chilling in the midday sun. It took a while to actually fathom the concept that this is not a zoo, this is their natural environment. And that's wierd... We saw so many animals on our fist game drive- all the big 5 in fact. We saw a female lion so close we could actually have reached out and touched her (not advisable). Then zebra, giraffes, buffalo, so many elephants I actually nearly got bored of elephants! They were absolutely everywhere, usually walking down to the waterhole in lines, which was really cool. And loads and loads of other mammals and birds that I had never heard of, some of which were bizarre in the extreme! We checked into our lodge in the heart of the national park where we had the most AMAZING lunch ever (I have been eating rice and cabbage for as long as I can remember!) We then sat for a bit by the waterhole, and watched as the elephants and zebra came to get a drink literally ten feet away from where we were sitting. The view of the savannah was just breathtaking- just wide expanses of red sand, mountains and plateau as far as the eye can see.

The next morning, we went on an early morning game drive. This was particularly exciting as we saw a whole pride of lions, including daddy, which is really rare to see. They were very far away so I couldn't get a picture, but just to see the lion cubs playing together was simply amazing. It was like a scene from the lion king. (At this point I feel I must inform you all that I have been entertaining my safari buddies with the entire soundtrack of the lion king throughout our journey. I am slightly concerned they may throw me out of the van and leave me in the savannah to get mauled by leopards!

That afternoon we drove through the park to Tsavo west, which has a slightly different landscape to Tsavo east. There was volcanic rock eveywhere, and the mountains were covered in thick black from where the volcanoes had erupted years ago. There was a huge lava flow that we passed on the way through, which just seemed so unreal, and very scary when you think about what it would have been like at the time. So the main attraction in Tsavo west was Mzimo springs, where we were lucky enough to see a very hungry looking crocodile, and some very very lazy hippos! So then onto our next lodge for the night, which was so much more beautiful than the first, if that was possible. We saw this humoungous porcupine when we were having dinner, and the whole place was just alive with wildlife- lizards skittering around everywhere, bush babies hanging from the ceilings, monkeys coming up to steal your food, bats fluttering around above your head. When the others went to sleep,

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