Olare Motorogi Conservancy: Day 5

Olare Motorogi Conservancy

Day 5: Friday 14th of December

Today's Map, Game drive and flight

This morning was to be our last game drive in the conservancy, so we were up at 5:30am, bags packed and ready to go for the day ahead.

Today we drove past where the cheetahs were the day before, but as they don’t have a territory they just move. So we went looking for the lion cubs but again they were again partially hidden in the scrub, so whilst we could see them feeding off their mum the opportunity to photograph them was nil.

 

We did see a very large, old bull elephant wearing a radio tracking collar. He had quite a pronounced sway back because of his age, which John estimated at about 40 years old.  He was doing a lot of stretching for tasty branches as high as his trunk would reach.

We again searched for a leopard but again we had no luck. Because we were flying out at 11am today we only had a short game drive, 6:15am to 8:30am. We did get to see lots of other animals however.

 Bat in tree

Lion claw marks in the spare wheel cover

We headed back to camp for breakfast and then we were off to catch our flight back to Nairobi. This time we had to share our plane with a whole bunch of other people, one of those other people was my doppelganger. We realised his name was the same as mine as he was disembarking the plane because the pilot said this wasn’t his stop. Who would have thought I would meet a wannabe me.

Once we landed at Nairobi we were picked up by one of the Gamewatchers guys, this time the car wasn’t so flash. He was really proud of his country and said when we come back next time we should check out more of Kenya. He also suggested there was no need to go to the Serengeti because the Masai Mara was better.

Our next place of residence was the Wildebeest Eco Lodge, it appears to have been a colonial residence at one stage but was then converted into a tourist lodge. It was actually a great place to stay as the gardens and glamping tents looked great. We stayed in a room which was okay except for the amount of light it let in during the night. For some reason the exterior of the cottage rooms was lit up like an operating table, and the curtains were unfortunately not up to the task. It was odd because the lighting on the paths and around the tents was really dim.

We went up the restaurant deck to get some lunch and met the Lodge dog Fatty. He was as plump as his name suggests, also elderly and very friendly and sweet. He was a fluffy golden retriever type of dog, and we enjoyed spending some time patting him.

Sign we saw along the way - apparently hanging off the back of trucks is a bit of a problem here!

After lunch we  hung around until it was 4pm - time to head off to the David Sheldrick Centre which is an elephant orphanage. As Lisa sponsors a baby elephant there, we were able to go in the evening between 5pm and 6pm. The general public can visit between 11am and noon. First of all we listened to a talk about the work that they do there. Then we were able to line up along a path and see the herd of orphaned baby elephants as they came in from the forest for their dinner and bedtime. They come down the path in little groups, and rush along as they know their bottle of milk is waiting. It was really cute to see them all running along in such a hurry.

Once all the babies had gone past, we followed them down to the stable area. They had all finished their milk by then, as they are greedy guts. Each baby has its own stable, with a bunk in it for their keeper (companion) to sleep on. It is a 24/7 job, raising baby elephants. The smallest babies had fully enclosed stables, but the bigger babies had a lean-to and yard arrangement. It was really nice to be able to see Mukkoka, Lisa’s sponsored baby. 

There is also a blind black rhino named Maxwell, who is a permanent resident due to his blindness. Nakita and I saw him 10 years ago, when he was much smaller.

 They also had a 1 month old baby white rhino at the centre named Mafaaifa. She has been found stuck in mud, and after she was rescued by rangers her mother rejected her. She was very tiny, but is apparently doing well, and is very cheeky, although she was fast asleep when we saw her. So Lisa decided to sign up for another sponsorship for a baby rhino. It was great to see the good work being done at the centre, and quite a few people signed up for sponsorships while they were there. Unfortunately the souvenir shop was not open, which saved us some money no doubt, but seems like a missed opportunity for fund raising.

The following day we went to the Giraffe Centre, which is on the grounds of the Giraffe Manor, a high end hotel where giraffes can out their heads in the windows and join in the meals. The Giraffe Centre aims to educate and conserve giraffes, which are actually fewer in number than elephants, although they get less publicity. 

You can go up onto a giraffe head height viewing platform where they give you some pellets to feed the giraffes. They are quite polite, and will happily accept one pellet at a time. They have very long tongues, and very thick sticky saliva, so the pellets pretty much stick to the tongue, and they rarely drop one.