Kenya 2021/2022

Jan. 5, 2022 - Lumo, Day 3

Our last day at the Lumo. Ear­ly in the morn­ing 5 tired fig­ures dragged them­selves to the Land­Cruis­er. We drove direct­ly to the Lions Rock, where we had found the lions last night. The rock lived up to its name again. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the 3 lions we spot­ted were appar­ent­ly just as tired as we were. They only lift­ed their heads briefly and then dis­ap­peared again in the tall grass. Maybe we should not have wok­en them up last night 🙂 .

All in all, there was no real motive - how­ev­er, we were very spoiled after the Masai Mara and per­haps a bit too demand­ing. But here at least one pic­ture for documentation:

As we still did not have much luck with the ground-based fau­na, we final­ly shift­ed more to the world of birds. There we had clear­ly more luck this morn­ing. First we dis­cov­ered a col­or­ful bee-eater, which flew eager­ly singing and prob­a­bly on search for a mate from branch to branch:

After that we found a bird with a bright yel­low neck, a yel­low-necked spur­fowl, which was unknown to us until then:

In a bush a lit­tle fur­ther on we noticed a red spot. Look­ing clos­er, we spot­ted anoth­er bird in the bush­es, a Von der Decken’s horn­bill:

And in the fol­low­ing pic­ture you can see why this bird of prey is called long-crest­ed eagle:

Now we come to the high­light of this morn­ing trip: On a branch sat a young mar­tial eagle, which we watched until it final­ly took off. I love the high con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speed of my Canon EOS R5 - did I men­tion that already?

With the heat increas­ing again, we final­ly made our way back. Around 11:00 am we were back at the camp. Here is a pic­ture of the last sec­tion of the trail over the moun­tain ridge to the Lions Bluff Lodge. The road is very bumpy and you get shak­en up a lot in the car. Caleb then always says, “Now comes the massage!”

At about 1:00 pm we met again for an excel­lent lunch, then we rest­ed a lit­tle. At 4:00 pm our last game dri­ve will take place. Tomor­row we will dri­ve back to the Jomo Keny­at­ta Air­port in Nairo­bi. Our night flight back to Frank­furt is sched­uled to depart at 23:00.

Recov­ered, we met as planned at the Land­Cruis­er and start­ed our search. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the yield was also low this time. We found a kudu, but when we got clos­er it quick­ly dis­ap­peared into the bush­es again.

There­upon, we focused on the birds again:

A grey-head­ed King­fish­er and a lilac-breast­ed roller

A pair of ostrich­es walked alongside:

Then we tried our luck one last time at Lions Rock, here is a pic­ture of the road lead­ing there:

After a short search, we found anoth­er pair of lions next to the rock. But the two were just lying lazi­ly in the grass and even after a longer obser­va­tion time made no effort to rise.

With increas­ing dark­ness we final­ly ter­mi­nat­ed the obser­va­tion of the two and made our way home again. We first went to our cot­tages to pre­pare for the evening rit­u­al. There we had a surprise:

Sud­den­ly a genet appeared on the cot­tage ter­race in front of our panora­ma win­dow and looked at us curi­ous­ly. Since my pho­to equip­ment is always ready, I was able to quick­ly take a pic­ture before it dis­ap­peared again directly:

The pho­to is of course only a snap­shot in the dark through the win­dow pane and with ISO 12,800 only suit­able for doc­u­men­ta­tion, but it was a real­ly nice event at the end of our trip.

After­wards, we met with our friends one last time around the camp­fire. After a final Gin-Ton­ic fol­lowed by an excel­lent din­ner, we spent our last night in Africa once again lying in bed in our cot­tage with an unob­struct­ed view of the Tsa­vo plains and the mag­nif­i­cent star­ry sky.

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