Nairobi National Park

I am way behind (again). But I have a few minutes to see if I can catch up a bit.

In fact I’m in Paris as I begin to write this entry. If I don't have time to finish, I'll continue it when I'm in the US or when I'm back in Nairobi. Not always easy to find the time. I’m looking back at things that have happened over the past month or so. Thus, our trip to France will need to be written up later.

The first quarter of 2023 has resulted in a lot of time in Somalia. And then during Ramadan I spent a couple of weeks in Mogadishu, but it’s admittedly not ideal. People are fasting and I’m not. I don’t like people preparing me meals when they aren’t eating. Also, the pace of the day is different and many of my team, and some of our government counterparts, are on leave. As such, it makes less sense for me to spend a lot of time there.

2023 above - 1950s below

not radically different

So after a lot of time away, it was a good opportunity to catch up on time with my family. We had a nice Easter, albeit low-key. It was wonderfully rainy as it should be that time of year. We were nonetheless able to find a gap in the precipitation and spend a morning on a game drive at Nairobi National Park (NNP). Thanks to some road works in the city, the drive from our place to the gate was an astonishing nine minutes. Granted, it was early on a weekend morning but still, how cool is that?!

NNP is unique in that it’s butted up against a major city. It’s 45 sq. mi. in size and it’s amazing that the country has been able to preserve it. The downside is that it obviously has more vehicles than you might find in other parks and more non-4WD (which have a tendency to get stuck)

As I’ve mentioned in previous national park posts, there are pros and cons to driving yourself. The pro is that you can go at your own pace more easily. It’s not that you can’t communicate with a guide regarding your pace, it’s just not as easy. You don’t want to be constantly telling the guide what to do. I’m sure there are people who do but, putting myself in his/her place (there are some female guides), I wouldn’t want someone doing that to me.

vultures

The downside to driving yourself, obviously, is that you have to focus on where you’re going, choosing roads that are navigable, scanning for animals, watching for other vehicles, etc. Given that it is rainy season, some of the roads pass through gulleys that have water over a meter deep. Guides tend to be privier to the state of the roads. Also, game drive guides are generally connected to their counterparts either by VHF raido, phone or when they stop and talk to each other on the road. This often provides critical intel as to the location of animal sightings. All this is a distraction

As is always the case, when you head out on a game drive, you never know what to expect. Very quickly, though, we were not only spotting wildlife, we came upon a lion. It wasn’t super close to the road but it was a good start to the day.

Eurasian roller, wintering in East Africa

NNP contains no elephants. It’s a bummer but it makes sense given that elephants need so much land to thrive. But the park has most of the other animals you would expect to see. The one thing that it has more of than others, certainly per square mile, is rhinos. And we were fortunate enough to see some after only a few minutes in the park.

Rhinos really do look like something from prehistoric times. Given how rare they are, it’s a treat to see them. Africa has two main species of rhino: the white and the black. Each have subspecies of various degrees of rarity. The southern subspecies of the white rhino wild population of over 20,000, making them the most abundant rhino subspecies in the world. The northern white rhino is critically endangered, with all that is known to remain being two captive females. Interestingly, the white rhino is grey and there is no conclusive explanation of the name "white rhinoceros".

As you might guess, the name "black rhinoceros" was chosen to distinguish it from the white rhinoceros. This can be confusing, as the two species are not truly distinguishable by color.

We snaked our way around the park, discovering some roads we hadn’t been on before. Though it has rained the day before, we had generally sunny skies and the roads weren’t too muddy. We were out for about three and a half hours altogether before we decided to work our way out of the park and head to lunch. There’s no question, we are spoiled to have such a wonderful resource so accessible.