Samburu

As I wrote about earlier, Josh and I headed up to Samburu National Reserve over Labor Day.  We had never been there before and were excited to experience the different landscape and animal life.

A map of the park

Samburu National Reserve is located northeast of Nairobi about three hours "above" the equator.  The drive up there is beautiful as you pass the lush green highlands around Mt. Kenya and Nanyuki.  The landscape abruptly changes into a harsh desert-like environment with short shrubs and rocky soils.  What is really interesting to us was the change in the houses and basic structures.  Normally we see houses made out of mud and thatch but here these building materials are not available.  Homes were pieced together with sticks and had rice sacks for roofs.

The reticulated giraffe

Inside the park the landscape was just as interesting as it changed from dense shrubs around the river to rassland near the large hills.  The changing greenery provide a wide array of animal life as well.  Our first day in the park we saw the reticulated giraffe.  Like I said before, this giraffe is unique to this area as it is only found north of the equator.  A few days later we even got to see two of these tall creatures fight.  It was a dance of swinging heads and feet as they tried to trip each other and ram their horns into one another.

These guys walked right by our van

We were able to check off the rest of the unusual animals off our list as well.  We saw the gernuk, ornyx and Grevy's zebra.  All, minus the zebra, were pretty common sites throughout the park.  The last day we even got to see a gernuk family standing up on their hind legs feeding on an acacia branch.  These skinny antelope look so weird up on two legs! Also unique to the park we saw dik dik, small rabbit-size antelope, and birds of all colors and sizes.

Josh's first safari in a pop up van

Although our main reason for coming to Samburu was these unique animals, the biggest highlight of our trip where spotting the large cats.  Over the course of two days we saw 2 cheetahs and 2 lepords!  The leopard sightings were the most exciting because both times the cats were not in trees.  This is really rare for a leopard as they are pretty reclusive animals and like to hide when not out hunting.  Luckily we caught both of these guys while they were on the prowl.  Our second sighting was the most special as Josh caught the leopard just as we were ready to pull away.  Anyone who has been on a safari knows a leopard is a big deal and there is usually a huge crowd of vans around it.  This time we were all alone.  It was awesome!

The first leopard we saw

Overall it was a great trip.  We stayed at a really nice hotel and enjoyed cooling off in the pool between morning and evening game drives (it gets really hot in Samburu during the day).  Even though it was last minute I am really glad we were able to make this trip.  We had a blast and got to see some creatures we don't get to on a regular basis.  So that's one thing crossed off the list.  What's next? :-)

Our friend Tom got to come with us too!