Kenya 2021/2022

Jan. 4, 2022 - Lumo, Day 2

Our sec­ond day at Lumo start­ed very ear­ly again. At 6:00 am we met Caleb at the car and drove down to the plain. It was still cov­ered with ear­ly morn­ing fog - a very nice scene:

In the warm back­light of the ris­ing sun I first pho­tographed a har­te­beest and a buffalo.

The ter­rain in Lumo is very diverse. The area is sit­u­at­ed much low­er than the Masai Mara and Amboseli, which leads close to the equa­tor to much high­er day­time tem­per­a­tures. At noon the 30°C mark was exceed­ed. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there are also many hid­ing places for the ani­mals, which they made use of in the rapid­ly increas­ing heat. On top of that there was the cur­rent ani­mal pover­ty in the park after the long drought before. Thus we saw sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er ani­mals in Lumo than in Amboseli or in the Masai Mara.

Netherthe­less, at around 10:00 am Luise dis­cov­ered a lioness right next to the road in the high grass, which posed for a few por­traits and then dis­ap­peared into the shad­ow under a bush.

The fol­low­ing pic­ture vivid­ly explains why you should not just walk through the bush­es in Africa:

Due to the increas­ing heat, lim­it­ed ani­mal sight­ings and also gen­er­al exhaus­tion of the group of trav­el­ers after the busy days before, we went back to the lodge already at 11:15am.

Togeth­er we quick­ly decid­ed to spend the after­noon there as well and enjoy the ameni­ties of the fan­tas­tic lodge. Until lunch, we relaxed on our cot­tage ter­race and enjoyed the view of the vast plain. After that we want­ed to try the pool and wait for the sun­set. We planned the next gamedrive with Caleb for tomor­row morn­ing at 6:00 am.

Every­thing in the lodge is excep­tion­al­ly taste­ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed. Even the coast­ers for the water glass are beautiful:

Lunch was excel­lent again. We were par­tic­u­lar­ly delight­ed with the dessert this time: avo­ca­do cheese­cake. Super delicious!!!!

Andrea and Simone imme­di­ate­ly asked for the recipe. Then the chef came full of joy and explained it to us.

The recipe sound­ed quite simple:

• Mash avo­ca­do with milk
• Beat in cream and add gelatine
• Add some juice of lemon
• Spread crum­bled cook­ie base in a bak­ing dish
• Pour the avo­ca­do mix­ture on top
• Put in the fridge for at least 35 minutes

We will def­i­nite­ly try this at home!

Since the Lumo Con­ser­van­cy is a pri­vate sanc­tu­ary, there are also night dri­ves pos­si­ble. Since we had not expe­ri­enced such a dri­ve before and had tak­en the after­noon at leisure, we booked a night gamedrive at the recep­tion for 21:30 after dinner.

Relaxing by the pool

We delib­er­ate­ly did not plan any­thing for the after­noon. That was real­ly very relax­ing after the exhaust­ing safari days before and with the sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er tem­per­a­tures. Such a safari vaca­tion is quite exhaust­ing. We enjoyed the won­der­ful pool and relaxed.

The cot­tages have an addi­tion­al com­fort­able out­door show­er in front of the bath­room. It is an incred­i­bly great expe­ri­ence to show­er under the open sky with a view of the wide Tsa­vo plain and the dis­tant Kil­i­man­jaro. After­wards we wait­ed for the sun­set, which we could enjoy com­fort­ably on our cot­tage ter­race. With a clear view we could see far into the plain. From the dis­tance of a good 70km, the mighty Kil­i­man­jaro mas­sif (to be seen on the right in the overview pic­ture) seemed almost more impres­sive to me:

For us north­ern Euro­peans, the cres­cent moon is also unusu­al here. It is almost hor­i­zon­tal near the equator:

After the usu­al Gin-Ton­ic at the camp­fire (the fire is not vis­it­ed here to be warmed, it is rather some­thing for the optics) and the con­sump­tion of the again exquis­ite din­ner, we announced our­selves at 9:30 pm at the lodge recep­tion for our night safari.

Night gamedrive

Pleas­ant­ly sur­prised, we met Caleb there, who had orga­nized that we could dri­ve in our vehi­cle. Caleb was at the wheel and an employ­ee of the lodge was keep­ing an eye out for ani­mals as a “spot­ter” with a search­light through the roof hatch.

The prin­ci­ple is sim­ple: the noc­tur­nal ani­mals auto­mat­i­cal­ly look into light sources and their eyes reflect the light back. They just have cat’s eyes - like in the car tail­lights, but in the orig­i­nal sense 😉. So you shine a spot­light into the land­scape. If it shines back, an ani­mal is there. This made the search much more effec­tive than dur­ing the day.

Since the search­light was the exclu­sive light source with the moon already set, this was a pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly very chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion, but the Canon EOS R5 with the fast 400m f/2.8 at very high ISO val­ues still man­aged it impres­sive­ly. After only a short dri­ve, we spot­ted a pair of lions walk­ing right by the car:

After that I got some pre­sentable shots of a ser­val cat:

We also saw an owl as well as a bat-eared fox, but both were too far away to be pho­tographed in a mean­ing­ful way. Nev­er­the­less, we enjoyed the sight very much and used the “head cam­era”. It is an impres­sive expe­ri­ence to dri­ve through the wilder­ness at night in almost com­plete dark­ness under the mag­nif­i­cent African star­ry sky. But if the car has a break­down here…. it for­tu­nate­ly has­n’t had one.

In gen­er­al: you have to expe­ri­ence the dark­ness at night in Africa - at home it is nev­er real­ly dark.

The night safari was very impres­sive, we will cer­tain­ly repeat some­thing like that again if the oppor­tu­ni­ty aris­es. Around 11:30 pm we were back home and fell into the beds. Tomor­row morn­ing it is start­ing again at 6:00 am.

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