Intrepid: the Overlanding tour begins

Intrepid: The Overlanding tour begins.

The below is the map that Intrepid supplied for the entire trip.

Last night we meet the Crew from Intrepid John (our guide) Phil (our driver) & Wilson (our cook) as well as the rest of our intrepid travellers.

Tracy & Daniela, two teachers who were travelling together

Isobel, “The Doctor” (not that kind of Dr) originally from London now working in Edinburgh.

Ulla, a retired teacher from Germany who’s into plants.

Vivian, originally from China, now living in Manchester

Dennis, the accountant from London

Helen, originally from Holland now living in London with Laurence

Christin, from Sweden (who was on the previous leg of the Intrepid trip)

Then there are the Australians…

Noah, from Vic, currently working in Nairobi his partner Samantha (vet nursing type stuff)

Marina, works for Bunnings

Carla, a teacher from Perth

After the formalities and introductions were complete Lisa and I got a big table for dinner so others could join us if they wanted to, It was a nice dinner with some of the new “family”.

Today's drive

Nairobi to Mto Wa Mbu

Day 2: Monday 17th December 2018 

If you looked outside our bedroom window which was on the 5^th floor you could see what effectively would be a shanty town just behind the hotel swimming pool wall. Which was amusing because at some ungodly hour a rooster started to call to his mates, which they would reply too. The rooster sounded like he was on our window sill, whilst his mates were at a reasonable distance. I had to laugh because it was pretty hilarious listening to them having there early morning conversation.

Once we were up it was breakfast and then the Intrepid part of our trip started with a 7:30am drive through the streets of Nairobi. The streets are crammed with people and traffic even at this time, traffic management and road infrastructure is not that great here, but it is interesting to see. However given the traffic chaos there is very little to no angst amongst the drivers, they simply just accept it and get on with it. We did get to see a car v’s power pole accident on the corner next to our hotel, other than that the drive was uneventful, its just one big traffic jam until you are out of the “metro area”.

Once we cleared the traffic it was onto the Kenyan / Tanzanian Border crossing which was really easy, John refers to it as a one stop border crossing. Which basically means you walk into the Tanzanian side show them your passport, visa and yellow fever documents and your good to go.

Lisa changed $300 US which turns out to be a gazzilion Tanzanian shillings. They really do seem to have thought about everything at this border crossing including having a bank / money changer at the border, who knew.

We stopped for lunch on the side of the road as is the tradition of overlanding trucks in Africa. It was the basic sandwiches and fruit with the local Masai cows. This is where you get to see how people work / or don’t work together when it comes time to help with the setting up and pulling down of the lunch stop, pretty much everyone helped out.

Once we arrived at Arusha it was a case of pile out for the toilet, coffee and for some snack shopping. Nakita and I went to Arusha back in the day and stayed in a place called Meserani Snake Park, lets just say it wasn’t a place I would recommend going to, the snakes were okay but the cultural museum was a place I could do without. However it seems that Arusha it’s a much bigger town now.

Once the shopping was done it was onto Mto Wa Mbu, (otherwise known as mosquito river) it’s a small town with a pretty decent campsite. Lisa and I upgraded (no real surprise there), we packed our day bags, cameras and snack foods for the 2.5 day Serengeti trip.

I tried the Wi-Fi, unfortunately it was a complete waste of time, my checkpoint anti-virus thought it was a phishing attack so I didn’t get to update any of the blog. Then it was off to bed for a big day’s driving in 4x4’s.

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.

Olare Motogorgi Conservancy: Day 4

Olare Motogorgi Conservancy

Day 4 : Thursday. 13^th December 2018

Today's Maps

Balloon ride

 Afternoon Game Drive

I know I say early start a lot but today really was, as it was a 4:15am wake up for a 4:30 coffee & tea then a 5am pickup, followed by a 1 hour drive in the dark to the balloon launch site.

To make matters worse Lisa was a bit under the weather, she got up and headed for the porcelain bus, and lets say she drove that bus for a while. Now I hear a lot of people saying how terrible, but rest assured I did bring her tea in bed.

On the drive out we had barely left the campsite when we nearly got bogged, James our driver for the day was a little unhappy, but we got out of the mud relatively easily in the end, just a little bit of wheel spinning. At 5ish in the morning there isn’t much to see, we crossed the river a few times but driving in the dark limits what you can see. Having said that last nights rain made it a bit more fun as we got to slide around a bit, but I was glad the rain was gone because we wouldn’t be getting off the ground if it was still about.

We arrived in time to watch the balloon get inflated, its hard to imagine the scale of them until you get to see them up close. These balloons are rated to take up to 16 people plus the pilot, so they are big. 

I got a spot next to the pilot which was not the original plan, I wanted to be on the corner so I could see in two different directions. However, I think it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the pilot and I chatted about a book that I read which he has also read. It’s a true story of a balloon crossing from Zanzibar to the mainland and which inevitably lead to ballooning in East Africa.

From the balloon you get a vastly different perspective then you do from a vehicle, we got to see Giraffe, 4 lions and the possible location of a leopard.

From the air you could also see where they had done some controlled burns, where the burn off had taken place the grass was now green whereas the areas that had not been subjected to the burn offs were dried brown grass. There are pluses and minus’s to burning off, the main reason it’s now needed is that animals like rhinos are no longer around to eat the grass.

From the balloon the landscape views are just spectacular, because of cloud cover we could see parts of the Rift walls, but we also got to see the other balloons in flight behind us, just brilliant.

Once we landed we drove to our breakfast site where the Champagne Breakfast was ready to go.

Lisa still wasn’t feeling the best so she used the Loo with a view and had a chat with god via the porcelain telephone.

During breakfast I had some more interesting conversations with pilot, it turns out if you take off from the Kenyan side of the Great Rift Valley and happen to miscalculate your landing and end up in Tanzania, it’s a bad thing. We also got to chat about ballooning in Turkey, (one of my bucket list things) the basic message was research, research, research.

After breakfast I asked James our driver for the morning if we could go back to the site of the leopard. It turns out that when you are in the actual Mara it’s a bit of a free for all. We got to see the leopard perfectly, but there were about 20 vehicles jostling for position around us. and on the way out from where we saw the leopard there was a small creek crossing and there were another 12 vehicles waiting to cross to get a view of that elusive leopard. I filmed it on the GoPro but that stupid device didn’t work.

For me this showed the difference between the conservancys and the actual Mara, in the conservancy we would be lucky if we saw 3 other vehicles on the game drive.

From there we basically made our way back to the Lion camp for a well earned rest…at 1pm lunch was served and we were reunited with Sarah.

After lunch Lisa had another nap whilst I worked on downloading photos, etc. it turns out I average about 1000 photos per day.

At 3:45pm afternoon tea was served followed by our 4pm game drive. Sarah said she would like to see some cheetahs as they are her favourite animal, so the search began. We probably spent 30 minutes looking but when John spotted them it was something special.

There was a mother and 4 cubs, the mother had got a baby impala and the cubs were basically playing with it. The best way I can describe it was like a house cat when it catches a mouse, it just plays with it until it’s had enough or the mouse gets away. On this occasion the baby impala didn’t get away, it was hard to watch at times because of the impala’s crying but it was something that people rarely get to see. Effectively the mother was teaching her cubs how to hunt. They would bat the impala around a bit, and let it run away, but they always caught it again easily.

Because Sarah, Lisa and I were happy to just sit around and watch the cheetahs and the other Canadians were not, William arranged another vehicle for them. (they had their 10 photos). From where I sit, if you’re always off searching for the next big thing then you will probably miss something spectacular and you will always be moving from one thing to the next.

We watched the cheetahs until just after they killed the baby impala, (all up about 2 hours) then we found 16 lions having a nap in the grass. The thing about lions is they sleep a lot during the day and are almost invisible when they are lying down, when they sit up we could see their ear markings. At first we thought that there were only a few around but they just kept appearing.

As the sun started to fall the lions started to stretch and move, they all started to gather in one spot so William moved the vehicle closer so we could get a better look. One of the lions decided to stretch out and claw the tyre cover on the back of the vehicle. We were so enthralled with them we decided to have our sundowner with them.

We then headed back for dinner, all in all it was a great days game viewing.