Kenya 2017

August 9_th to 11^th - Amboseli Nationalpark

August 9_th 2017 - Driving to Amboseli National Park

African safaris are not for the late ris­ers: At 5:15 the alarm clock rang again - first for Simone, then at 5:45 for me. After a good break­fast Eric expect­ed us at 7:00am in the hotel lob­by for our first dri­ve to Amboseli Nation­al Park, which we reached at 11:00am at Iremi­to Gate. Eric did the for­mal­i­ties for us and then we went through the gate into the park.

So our first game dri­ve already start­ed. After a short dis­tance we already saw the first impres­sive ele­phant bull:

Around 1pm we left the park and Eric drove us to Kibo Safari Camp, our home for the next 3 nights. After a very friend­ly wel­come with exot­ic fruit cock­tails and hot tow­els we were accom­mo­dat­ed in tents 8, 9 and 11 with a view from the ter­race direct­ly to Mt. Kil­i­man­jaro - if it were vis­i­ble. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it was almost always hid­ing behind clouds.

The tents were extreme­ly spa­cious and com­fort­able with en-suite bath­room, show­er and toi­let and very taste­ful­ly fur­nished in the typ­i­cal local style. Warm water and elec­tric­i­ty were avail­able in the tents at any time of the day. The Kibo Safari Camp is rel­a­tive­ly large with 80 tents, but the tents are far apart so that one does not dis­turb each other.

In the fol­low­ing some pho­tos from the camp:

Kibo Safari Camp is locat­ed out­side the Nation­al Park, but only about 5 min­utes from the gate. It is locat­ed in a rel­a­tive­ly large fenced area, so that we could move freely with­out fear of being eat­en by a lion 😉 Con­trary to our first infor­ma­tion, it was also pos­si­ble to enter the park sev­er­al times a day with­out any prob­lems, so we can rec­om­mend the camp with­out reser­va­tion. After a very good - and very exten­sive - lunch buf­fet we had a sies­ta. In the after­noon we made the sec­ond gamedriveat 4:00pm and among oth­er things we dis­cov­ered a big ele­phant group:

Short­ly before sun­set we observed a large pride of lions with a some­what scat­tered look­ing male lion, who appar­ent­ly had some trou­ble with one of his ladies:

There­upon he had to shake him­self first:

And after that we final­ly enjoyed a sun­set in Africa again:

Back at the camp after sun­set, we first had a Gin-Ton­ic at the oblig­a­tory camp­fire (“Bush­man-TV”) and then enjoyed the din­ner buf­fet. So the first great day of our safari ended.