Kenya 2021/2022

Jan. 2, 2022 - Amboseli National Park

We met at 5:45am as planned still in the dark in the break­fast area of the camp. There we had fresh cof­fee and some cook­ies. Punc­tu­al­ly at 6:00am we board­ed the Land­Cruis­er and drove with Caleb the short dis­tance into the park. We could hard­ly believe our luck:

The slow­ly bright­en­ing sky was almost cloud­less and Mount Kil­i­man­jaro was even more vis­i­ble than the day before. At first morn­ing light, a lone­ly old and very impres­sive ele­phant bull stood right next to the track and looked at us with interest:

Then, in the slow­ly bright­en­ing dawn, the Kil­i­man­jaro pre­sent­ed itself in all its beauty:

As the first sun rays reached the top of the moun­tain, we saw a larg­er group of ele­phants com­ing out of the for­est in the dis­tance. High above, a hot air bal­loon float­ed by, from there the view was cer­tain­ly even more spectacular:

And here’s anoth­er close-up that shows off the moun­tain’s impres­sive height even better:

Slow­ly more and more ele­phants came out of the bush and moved across the track to the swamp:

Con­tin­u­ing our trip, we saw to our sur­prise a lot of crowned cranes. Har­ry was very enthu­si­as­tic, he likes the beau­ti­ful birds very much. Caleb told us that cur­rent­ly in Amboseli there would be some­thing like a dat­ing exchange for crowned cranes. The birds had come here to look for a new part­ner and pre­sent­ed them­selves to their poten­tial future mates in the prover­bial best light. This result­ed in very nice pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ties with the many attrac­tive birds.

Here is anoth­er pic­ture of a cou­ple who had appar­ent­ly already found each oth­er in hap­pi­ness. It remind­ed me of the famous scene from the clas­sic movie “Casablan­ca”:

“Here’’s look­ing at you, kid!” 

Rick (Humphrey Bog­a­rt) to Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman)
in Casablan­ca (1942)

We then drove on to the vast expanse of water at Lake Amboseli to observe water­fowl. The water of the lake is strong­ly alka­line and there­fore very appre­ci­at­ed by the flamin­gos. How­ev­er, it is not suit­able as drink­ing water for the ele­phants. They are drawn to the swamps, which are fed all year round by the melt­wa­ter of the Kil­i­man­jaro glac­i­er. At first, Kil­i­man­jaro was reflect­ing very pho­to­geni­cal­ly in the lake:

The scenery remind­ed me strong­ly of my pic­tures of Mt. Fuji, which we vis­it­ed in Japan in 2014. At that time we had sim­i­lar luck with the weath­er. This time we could observe a lot of water birds in the lake. First a series of a pel­i­can slow­ly pad­dling by in front of Kil­i­man­jaro in the background:

After­wards we found flamin­gos again. This time a group of greater flamin­gos, which are much larg­er and rar­er than the less­er flamin­gos, which we have seen more often in large groups - most recent­ly in 2017 at Lake Bogo­ria.

But this time a large group of less­er flamin­gos had gath­ered in Lake Amboseli, too, which made a very nice scene again with the mighty Kil­i­man­jaro in the background:

After­wards we used the favor of the hour and com­plet­ed our col­lec­tion “ani­mals in front of Mount Kil­i­man­jaro” fur­ther with a pair of tawny eagles, water bucks, zebras and giraffes. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as the day’s tem­per­a­ture increased, the haze at the foot of Kil­i­man­jaro slow­ly returned.

Then we left the park in increas­ing heat and drove back to Kibo Safari Camp for lunch and sub­se­quent relax­ation. On the way to the camp, some of the very numer­ous ele­phants posed for us next to the track. Here is a small selec­tion of detailed pho­tos of the pachyderms:

After anoth­er very rich and tasty lunch buf­fet, I again secured the many pic­tures of the morn­ing. After­wards we relaxed on our tent ter­race look­ing at the Kilimanjaro.

In the after­noon we went again to the gamedrive. We met for cof­fee in the bar at 3:50 pm, then we start­ed again right away. Caleb was already wait­ing for us in the car.

The after­noon was ded­i­cat­ed to the ele­phants, which we encoun­tered in large num­bers. They move in large herds in the morn­ing from the forests at the foot of Mount Kil­i­man­jaro to the swamps, which are cen­tral­ly locat­ed in the park and always car­ry water, and in the evening they return to the forests. On their way they pass a large dirt road in the park cross­ing their migra­tion path, from which they can be observed very well. There were vast num­bers of ele­phants of all ages to be seen. Some groups con­sist­ed of more than 50 animals.

At a lat­er hour we dis­cov­ered a state­ly old ele­phant, which made a very nice motif in the light of the evening sun. I have edit­ed these shots in part in B&W and liked this atmos­phere of light very much:

Then we went back to camp, where our usu­al evening rit­u­al pro­ceed­ed as planned. Around 10:00 pm we retired in our tents again. Tomor­row, after a short morn­ing game dri­ve, we will con­tin­ue to our last sta­tion of the trip, Lions Bluff Lodge in the Lumo Conservancy.

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