We have ALWAYS wanted to do a safari. That is something that made this trip attractive to us. We will be doing four of them! This is the first, and I think the longest. It was an 11 hour day - or was supposed to be! (More about that later in this post!)
We met our tour guide at 5:30 am at the gangway of the ship. We were a bit surprised because we were supposed to be traveling in air-conditioned buses enroute to Tsavo East National Park. Instead 40 Toyota 4x4 Landcruisers arrived, each equipped to take 6 passengers to the park. On the drive back after the safari we understood that decision too! (More about that later in this post too.). The off-road vehicles were fun and with all the windows open, it wasn’t hot at all!
Crazy trip there, though! Two lane highway with lines and lines of trucks. Our driver was very proficient with his passing skills! Yikes, the trucks coming towards us in the opposite lane usually were blinking their lights warning us to get over and somehow our driver always found a hole to tuck into!
I enjoyed seeing the scenery as we drove along. Children were off to school in their uniforms and they waved to us as we passed by. They were walking alone along the busy highway, something unheard of in the states! Moms were also walking along the roadway with yellow water jugs on their heads. There was no running water so everyday they would be out fetching water. As we moved along, I even saw several women in a pond filling up their jugs….. I would have liked to have gotten photos of all of this, but we were moving along too fast……
I did manage to get a few pictures of the shanties and shops along the route:
It was a three hour drive to Tasavo East National Park. This park is huge - 8,000 square miles and home to many animals including Africa’s big five. Once we got there we rode along the red dirt roads searching for the animals. It was fun when we were able to spot one! Unfortunately, we didn’t see as many of the big five as I would have liked and those we did see were pretty far away so it was difficult to get good photos - especially with my old iPhone 12 mini! We saw mostly elephants and zebras and happily a few were close enough to get a good photo! We also saw a few giraffes, antelope, kudus, oryx, springbok, ostriches and several types of birds including cranes and storks. My favorite sighting of the day happened at the very end of the safari when a hippopotamus raised his head out of the water, spraying water and letting out a big roar!
The red “pile of dirt” is a termite mound and they were everywhere in the park! From a distance I thought they were elephants and I got excited for nothing!
After the safari and before heading back to the ship, we were treated with a wonderful lunch at the lodge on the property. Grilled chicken and ribs, salads, pasta mashed potatoes, etc. we’re all on the menu along with Kenyan Beer. It was a perfect ending to a nice safari!
Then, off we went for our 2 1/2 drive back! Or, should I say 4 hours!!! The 11 hour day just turned to 13 hours! The drive back was an excursion upon itself and almost as fun as the safari was! It was rush-hour and the divided highway was so full of trucks that traffic was at a standstill. That didn’t seem to be a problem for our driver! It seems we spent more time on the berm of the road, in ditches and off onto the secondary road to go around the trucks and congested traffic than on the highway itself! There were no stop signs, yield signs, stoplights, as a matter of fact no signs whatsoever other than exit signs. It was total chaos!
Along the edge of the highway were homes, makeshift businesses, children walking home from school along with goat herders walking with their animals. Note, that we were dodging all of this too! This is the reason why we travelled in off-road vehicles! Had we been in a bus, we would still be on that roadway!
As we approached our exit we noticed that Kenyan police had stopped traffic for us to get onto the highway towards the port. There was a convoy of about ten or more vehicles that exited here and then we had a police escort all the way to the ship! Well done, Viking!
We were worn out after this long day and had seen enough of Mombasa, so we decided to stay on the ship the following day. Other than the safari park, we were saddened by the poverty that we saw in Kenya. People’s living conditions seemed awful to us, but the people that we saw seemed happy and for the most part were clean and well dressed. I thought that was an interesting dichotomy…..
As we departed that afternoon, we received a wonderful send off by the Maasai tribe. Their dancing, singing and jumping skills were amazing!
We LOVED our trip to Africa last fall. We spent 4 full days on safari, going out 2x each day - at 5 am and 4:30 pm. We saw all of the big 5 and more. It was amazing. There is nothing more humbling than to truly see the circle of life. A small elephant we saw one day was a meal for a lion family the next day. As you watch a lioness lick her cub, you almost forget that these are wild animals. Glad you enjoyed it. enjoying your blog.
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