Mombasa to Tsavo Day Safari – Sunday July 29th

When I woke up at 4am I was itching like crazy and counted 23 mosquito bites, at least the once that were visible. Lovely start to the day!

Aziz from the safari company was waiting out front at 5am and ready to bring me to Tsavo which is about three hours from Mombasa. It was still dark as we drove out of the city and I watched folk everywhere starting out for the day. Life is hard for most of these people but they seem to push on regardless with a sense of purpose and dignity.

We turned off the main road at a place called Buchama after about 150km. Et voila, Tsavo National Park spread out before us way past the horizon. Driving on safari is a bone rattling experience but nonetheless it is fantastic to witness so many magnificent animals in their natural habitat.

Aziz explained that going on safari is like fishing, in that you can be lucky or unlucky with what animals you get to see. They are not there perform for you and quite often are too deep into the bush to be seen.

However today turned out to be one of the lucky ones and as well as seeing several lions it took a keen eye to spot two leopards on the edge of the bush. Aziz was well pleased, as was I because, having been on safari a few times previously, I had never seen one. He told me that he had recently taken a group of Japanese tourists on a seven day safari and they didn’t even see one lion.

We drove through the reserve all morning and eventually stopped for lunch at a game lodge. Animals in the wild generally sleep under shelter from the hot sun in the afternoons so we then took about an hour and a half to make our way out back to the entrance gate.

I dozed off on the drive back to Mombasa and woke up just as we were approaching the new railway station outside the city. This is where I was to have taken the train to Nairobi from before I changed my plan and booked a flight.

It was about seven o’clock by the time we got back to Nyali and I thanked and said goodbye to Aziz for a wonderful day. I was too tired too bother leaving the hotel again so I ate there and off to bed….