Okay, this is not an elephant, but, it was still exciting to see grevy zebras! We were on our way to our home for 2 nights (the Simba Samburu Lodge) when lo and behold, a herd of grevy zebras started crossing the road in front of us!!! What a very nice welcome to Samburu! Notice the stripe pattern on the grevy, the stripes are skinny and their bellies are white! Grevy zebras are only found in the northern hemisphere. We were lucky to get up close to a herd! Can you imagine our excitement at that point? It was shaping up to be a great day for animal sightings!!!
To be fair, the grevy zebras was not our very first animal sighting in Samburu... We saw a bunch of impalas and oryx! After that, we saw the zebras, and then finally, our very first elephant! The elephant was a bull by itself and it was kind of far so I didn't get a good photo of it... Har-har!
Once we were in our rooms at the lodge, guess what we saw from our lanai's.... You guessed right, elephants finally!!! Can you see them? It's a family of elephants! We also saw some baboons but, again, it was too far away for me to take photos... We were using our binoculars to look at the baboons... =) It was great that we could see animals even from our rooms!
We were on our way to our very first game drive, and look at what we saw while waiting for everybody else, a couple of horn bills!
Here's more oryx! Aren't their horns gorgeous? I think somebody said that the "unicorn" may have originated from people seeing an oryx from the side, notice how straight their horns are and if you look at their profile, you'd think they only have one horn, hence, a unicorn. Interesting, isn't it?
Have you noticed their butts? Gorgeous isn't it? And, do you think the pattern sort of looks like the letter "M"? This is a harem of impalas, or as we were calling them there, the McDonald gazelles! Hee-hee! The owner of the harem (bull/ male impala) was off to the side so you couldn't see him in the photo... Our guide asked us, what do we call a group of male impalas if the group of females is the harem, he said, "the losers"... Hahahha! Losers because they don't have any females/harem. Our guide was a hoot and a half!
More elephants!!! Isn't the baby a cutie? There was a herd of elephants crossing the road in front of us! It was close, a little too close for comfort for one elephant! There was this one elephant who was looking at our vehicle, and then trumpeted at us! It even lifted it's leg and we thought it was going to step on our windshield!!! Our guide floored the gas and got out of sight of the mad elephant as fast as he could! =D
Here's more photos of elephants! When we saw the bull, and then a family of elephants, we started telling our guide we want to see a herd! Wish granted! (Or, we are getting greedy huh? Hee-hee!)
More elephants crossing the road! These are different elephants from the one we saw before!!! It's unbelievable how many elephants there are! Our guide said that if we see an elephant by itself, it's usually a bull. If we see a herd, he said it's mostly females and juvenile males. Once the juvenile male reaches sexual maturity, the matriarch of the herd kicks out that male to prevent in-breeding. Isn't it smart of the elephants? Hee-hee!
Are you tired of seeing more elephants? Here's an elephant with egrets(the white birds on the ground) following around! Our guide said that the egrets are following the elephants because, when the elephants uproot grass on the ground, the egrets does not have to do much anymore to get their grub! Aren't the egrets smart? Or maybe lazy? Hee-hee!
I love the blue color of the guineafowl! Our guide said that the meat of this bird is sweet! And no, I did not try guineafowl meat. They're too pretty to eat! Har-har!
Our very first African lion!!! Did you know that the swahili word for lion is "simba"? Yes! Like the lion character in "Lion King", Simba!!! So, there you go, you learned another Swahili word! =) Oh yeah, we also asked for the Swahili word for elephant: "tembo". We're learning all sorts of things on this trip, aren't we? =D
It was funny when we saw our first giraffes... My friend was trying to spot animals and she suddenly started jumping up and down in the vehicle, excitedly shouting, are those giraffes? The funny thing is, we can barely see the giraffes she was pointing at even with our binoculars! When our guide started driving away, she was like, we're leaving already??? It turned out that our guide spotted a couple of giraffes a lot closer! Hehehe! It was a couple of reticulated giraffes! Our guide said we would see at least 3 types of giraffe in Kenya, and this, is one of them!
What a lovely African sunset! What a day too! We got to see lots of animals! I should mention that they say on the trip that animal sightings are not guaranteed!
So far, from the big five, we have seen the cape buffalo, the elephant, and the lion! Three down, two more to go! Of course, we also loved all the other birds/animals/plants we have seen so far! We are very thankful for all that we have seen!!! Of course, we still have like a mile long wish list of other animals to see! Har-har!
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