The first thing that jumps into most minds when Africa is mentioned is "safari". I was more excited than a schoolboy on Christmas eve when I first found out I was headed to East Africa, but thoroughly disappointed to find out there were no animals to see anywhere near our base in Mtwara. Sure, Tanzania has some of the greatest wildlife areas in the world, but none within range of where I was posted, that the work schedule would allow....just the odd monkey and black mamba snake, and goats and chickens. Luckily Kenya had a couple of reserves within day trip distance from Mombasa, and some new high end binoculars I had bought with my Dad just previously in Toronto got put to very, very good use.
Myself and another pilot secured a Toyota offroad SUV, and after a bowl of cereal in the dark, we headed out of Mombasa into the Kenyan countryside. A ferry ride and an hour of driving later, we paid the required fees and hired a guide, totalling roughly $30 each, and headed into the hilly jungles of the Simba Hills Reserve on a foggy, drizzly Kenyan morning. Bouncing along rough dirt tracks, it wasn't long before we came across the first African wildlife I had ever seen outside of a zoo in North America, giraffes just off the track peaked at us from behind some tall trees. It was beautiful, and quite humorous, as their long necks slowly exposed their heads from behind the trees, quick to duck back when they saw us watching, but they eventually relaxed, and sauntered off with that famous seemingly uncoordinated gait of theirs. I was awestruck, and while we continued to come across giraffes throughout our stay in Kenya, I always stopped whatever I was doing, whatever I was thinking....and just watched.
And it just kept getting better. We came across fields of Sable, apparently an animal rarely seen, with their gorgeous facial marking and long swept back horns, and huge, menacing, snorting Cape Buffalo, who Ruark, the famous hunter wrote, "look at you like you owe them money", and multitudes of playful baboons swatting at grasshoppers then quickly stuffing them in their mouths, their babies frolicking and playfighting, totally oblivious to our presence. And we kept coming across giraffes, all day.
We then hired an armed guard to hike with us deep into the jungle to a distant waterfall, with an AK47 on hand for either irate buffalo or even worse, armed poachers, a serious problem in this neck of the woods.
I was really getting into the entire Indiana Jones aspect of it all when a school bus of French students showed up to hike into the waterfall with us. Their incessant chatter dampened the experience but they certainly surprised us by stripping down to bikinis for a photoshoot under the waterfall.
Fully aware that the human spirit is never satisfied, I got it in my head that I needed to see an elephant. We saw the ass-end of one sticking out of some trees way off in the distance, but I didn't think that really counted.
After asking locals where we might best find elephants, the next time we were able to sneak away from Mombasa had us heading down remote trails far to the south, where the bizarre image of a tall fellow walking along using an old faded and cracked traffic cone for a hat will never leave me. We hiked further into the jungle, when our guide spotted elephants on the move far across the valley, working their way down a steep mountainside. Even with my overpriced Swarovski binoculars, the elephants were tiny off in the distance, but watching the broken grey line of adults and babies, just occasional glimpses through the jungle and large baobabs, it felt like being a part of some time before man, and I was awed. It was surreal.
I needn't worry. I was to get very much closer.
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