Safari 2 of 2....Elephants!

 

In the late 1800's, a Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson was sent to Kenya to build a railway bridge across the River Tsavo for the British, to connect Uganda and inland Kenya with the port in Mombasa.  The "Uganda Railway" was also to become known as the "Lunatic Express", but that moniker came long after it's construction.  A pair of lions plagued the Colonel's project, killing some 135 workers before Patterson finally got the better of them. It's a well known classic story of hunting, "The Lions of Tsavo", written by Patterson himself, and Hollywood even made a movie about the story with Val Kilmer and Micheal Douglas, "The Ghost and the Darkness".   I wanted to see that bridge!  We figured if we got away early enough, we could make the 3 hour drive and manage to spend some time in the Tsavo area and still be back in time to cover the night shift, and they said there were many, many elephants!

So after our pre-dawn feed, we take the road once again in our trusty Toyota.  Traffic is light, apart from some large trucks with no cabs barrelling down the highway, right out of a Mad Max movie.  I ask about the reflectors in the bushes along the road from place to place, and I'm told they are to let travellers know there's fuel available there, cheap.  Truck drivers coming into Mombasa from Uganda, the Congo, Rwandi and Burundi know how much excess fuel they have on board, being so close to their destination, the ports of Mombasa, so they sell it roadside to these entrepreneurs who turn a profit with their old jerry cans.  Besides the fuel hawkers, in the brush and desert far different from the lush jungles to the south, you'll see families huddled around piles of coal for sale, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.  And as we climb the plateau to the Tsavo area, averaging some two thousand feet above sea level, you feel the cold, the first time I've even considered putting on a sweater in Africa.

Soon we are in Tsavo East, driving the dirt trails through the brush, when off in the distance I see movement, something large, dark, moving at a good clip, and it takes me a few minutes of watching  before I figure out that I've been looking at the backs of elephants moving through the brush parallel to our trail.  We gas it, hoping the road eventually curves in towards them.  Luckily it does and we stop, and wait.  We are all surprised when the herd comes out of the brush right on top of us, and we clear their path in a panic.  It was far closer than I had hoped!  We see more elephants that day than I could possibly imagine, even stopping to photograph a small antelope, and upon hearing a noise behind us, we turn slowly to find an elephant feeding twenty feet behind us, and we hadn't even seen him!   One mock charged the vehicle, kicking up dirt in our direction, and yet another trumpeted quite loudly, ears flapping, when he finally realized how close I actually was.  Please check out my photo album, with the link at the upper right, for photos galore.

All in all, I returned to Tsavo, spending a few days driving and walking, booking myself into a lodge right in the reserve, after the contract was over of course.  I awoke to elephants lumbering to the water hole just yards from my room's veranda.  And yes, we saw lions as well, a large female, mouth dark from blood, over a small zebra, while the parents bayed remorsefully a few yards off, and the wild dogs and vultures not far away, slowly making their way towards their next meal.

Walking from the toilet near the reserve gate, a huge male baboon headed in the opposite direction passed me by maybe six feet.  He seemed not to care about my presence, and I almost tipped my hat and wished him "good afternoon".   It was an adventure I didn't want to end.