School Break & Nairobi National Park

Our daughters have been on break for the past two weeks. The French system, like the Swiss system where I taught for several years, divides the school year into trimesters. There are 2-week breaks in October, February and May which serve as separators between each term. It’s a positive and a negative that the May term is separate from Easter. A negative is that our vacations don’t mesh with those of our friends whose children attend other schools. It’s often nice for the kids (and parents) to go on holiday together – particularly since siblings tend to tire of each other after a few days of life with no school.

2025 Easter eggs

 

The upside of the different schedule is that it’s much easier to book travel when you’re the only school on break. So much changes in this country during the official school breaks. Traffic in Nairobi decreases noticeably as thousands of people are not ferrying their kids to school, often sending the kids "up country" to stay with extended family. National parks and hotels on the coast experience sharp increases in bookings. It’s always worthwhile to consider this phenomenon when planning anything involving travel in Kenya.

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mountain biking

This May, all of that was less of an issue for us. As the humanitarian sector has taken a huge funding hit over the past few months, thousands of jobs have disappeared. The positions that so far remain are less certain. Financial prudence is paramount for anyone in this line of work, particularly until the dust settles a bit more. So we continue to tighten our belts and try to be more careful in the weeks and months ahead.

laser tag

For the kids, this translates to a bit less excitement than they are accustomed to this time of year. I have to say, compared to some kids, our girls do quite well when they are afforded some down time. They have non-screen-related hobbies and interests that sidestep the abyss of social media. But it does take some creativity to infuse some much-needed physical activity each day. 

girls' first every cake made all by themselves (for Mothers' Day)

 

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Nairobi National Park

As the past two weeks wound down, we were able to find some time to venture out to Nairobi National Park. Each time that we go, we wonder why we don’t do it more often. It’s reasonably inexpensive and the gate, in the wee hours of the morning, is about ten minutes from our door. It’s an amazing gift for residents and visitors to Nairobi.

We have our game drive routine down to a science. We’re out of bed in the dark of early morning. Coffee is brewed. Hot chocolates are prepared and thermoses are filled. Priya usually focuses on the drinks and snacks and I assemble cameras, binoculars, wildlife books, etc. The girls tend to enjoy these outings so they are pretty good at dealing with the early morning and the stagger down to the vehicle. They get more excited as we approach the park, pass through the gate and head out into the green countryside.

It's not always verdant, of course. We are in the midst of the rainy season so the vegetation was at the peak of its lushness. In fact, we had had a couple of days of heavy rains and we had some concern about the roads. Some of the minor roads in the park can become impassable, or barely passable, either because of thick mud or the deepness of the streams or both. Generally speaking, however, if you stay on the main roads you usually don’t have any problems.

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At first I thought this was some kind of owl given that it had a wide head. Turned out to be a black-winged kite.

It was a beautiful morning. The sun was up by the time we were in the park. Dawn is often a good time to be on a game drive since you can sometimes catch the tail end of the night’s activity. Dusk is often good as well, but the parks close at 6pm and limit you from staying out until the sun fully sets (remember that we’re near the equator so there isn’t much variation in the timing of the setting/rising sun year-round). An exception to the rule about being in the park at night is when you are on an approved, guided night safari which I’ve done only once.

male ostrich - Masai race

I’ve mentioned before that there are positives and negatives to being on safari without a guide. The positives are that a) you can leave the driving to someone else, b) you can tap into some interesting facts about the animals, c) they know the parks better than you and there’s less guesswork when coming to forks in the road, and c) since they carry VHF radios, you can benefit from their networking regarding key animal sightings.

African spoonbill

We’ve done a lot of both, but I tend to favor being guideless. I like the freedom of being at the wheel and making my own decisions. I know some of the parks quite well by now and can navigate fine without a guide or map. As for the interesting facts, having done this for two decades now, even the kids are steeped in knowledge about the animals. It’s not that we don’t have anything to learn. You can always expand your knowledge on the animals and their behavior. But it’s not like it was twenty years ago when we were hanging on the guides’ every word.

giraffe - Masai race

The challenge is always the last point about awareness of animal sightings. That’s the one that can put you at a disadvantage compared to the vehicles with guides. We did find out, however, that there are some limitations to the information sharing. In most parks, guides tend to communicate more with other guides from their respective company or, as we experienced in Masai Mara, guides from their own tribe/language. Multilingual guides can broaden their awareness on the radios if they’ve learned to understand other tribal languages.

wattled starlings on a rhino's back

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great white egret

Within fifteen minutes of entering the park, we saw our first lion. Shortly thereafter we saw our first rhinos. Nairobi National Park is a home to the highest density of black rhinos in Kenya with about 76 indigenous black rhinos and 13 white rhinos. We saw some of both.

white rhinos

As you might guess, rhinos are neither black nor white. In fact, they are not distinguishable by color. They’re all some shade of gray. “Black” rhinos are browsers, with a pointed, prehensile upper lip for grabbing leaves and twigs, while “white” rhinos are grazers, with a wide, square-shaped upper lip for feeding on grass. They also differ in size, with white rhinos generally larger and heavier. You can see that the ones in these photos are white rhinos given the shape of the upper lip.

white rhino

We were told by a friend that the rhinos in this park are doing so well that they have begun relocating some to other places. Part of their survival depends on them having enough territory of their own. As big as NNP is, there is a limit to the numbers of certain animals.

savanna baboon

We would be out for about 3-4 hours before we decided that we would head out for some food. I could spend all day hanging out in the park but we all had other things that we needed to do that afternoon. We generally go to the same restaurant not far from the gate for a late breakfast. As I said, it’s such a great way to spend a morning. Hopefully we won’t wait so long before we do it again.

Nile crocodile