Sweetwaters
Getting There
The drive from Nairobi took about 4 hours and was on decent divided highway. We stopped at the equator for the obligatory photo op and swirling water demonstration (pretty much the same as we’d encountered in Quito, though hotter and more talk about Barak Obama).
Sweetwaters Tented Camp
Sweetwaters is part of the Ol PajetaConservancy. I have to admit that I was lukewarm about the concept of traveling all the way to Africa to visit what I thought was essentially a wild animal park, but now I understand the concept a bit better. For example, without the fence, a cheetah might wander into a neighboring village where a farmer might kill it and rhinos and elephants might fall victim to poachers.
Sweetwaters is a tented lodge, but this was hardly roughing it. The tent had 24-hour electricity and hot and cold running water. It was indeed a tent though and at night it got COLD and we were thankful for the hot water bottles left in our beds as part of the turndown service.
For those of you who know me, I bet you don’t see me as one who embraces the whole tenting aspect of this adventure. 1) I’m not sure this even counts as tenting, but 2) it is SO awesome, amazing, indescribable to be woken up in the middle of the night to hear LIONS and Zebras, and other things you can’t identify but they sound very close!
The lodge has a pool, which always seems so unnecessary but it’s a great way to spend time between game drives. There’s also a watering hole right outside the dining room, and it was always busy with warthogs, zebras, gazelles, and a giraffe every once in a while. We left word with the night watchman to wake us up if anything exciting made an appearance at the watering hole overnight. Other tents asked to be woken up if the usually cloud-shrouded Mt Kenya was visible. On our last morning, we were treated to this glorious Mt. Kenya sunrise. Instead of a looming mountain, it looked more like a dark purple stripe above a black stripe that looked like a cloud. But it was indeed Mt Kenya, a 17,000 ft mountain that was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1978 and a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1997.
The Game
While at Sweetwaters, we visited Morani, a 33-year-old black Rhino who was orphaned when his mother was killed by poachers. The conservancy twice tried to release him into the wild, but both times he was injured by adult male rhinos so now he lives in an enclosure and is greeter of tourists, and spokesbeast for rhino conservation. I thought the “touch the rhino” stop on the tour was going to be hokey, and it was, but it was amazing to be so close to this creature.
We also visited the 250-acre chimpanzee sanctuary, home to over 40 chimps with heartbreaking stories (orphans, victims of civil war in Burundi, rescued from the bushmeat trade, or kept as pets in horrifying conditions). The sanctuary has two parts and uses water as a natural border because chimps don’t usually swim. One side has a viewing platform and although the chimps were quite close the fence made photography challenging. A short walk took us to the other side of the sanctuary where we were able to observe the chimps from across a small river bank. They seemed at ease as we watched them groom each other, and climb trees.
We went on a few daytime drives.
We went on one night drive at Sweetwaters. This was our first night drive, as they are usually prohibited in the areas where we have traveled before. I absolutely PANICKED when I saw a family with a feisty two-year-old in the waiting area, but luckily our vehicle mates were two very entertaining fellows from southern California. Sweetwaters is at about 6000 feet and, as I mentioned previously, the nights were cold, so I purchased a pashmina in the gift shop (sadly, it was not decorated with animals in any way). We departed at 9 pm and the drive lasted about two hours. Mohammed, the spotter, constantly scanned the brush with his spotlight looking for the reflection of eyes. We saw spotted hyena, water buffalo, a really big male lion, and lots of elephants. It reminded me of diving with the mantas in Yap, because you couldn’t see these GIANT animals until they were so close to you. There was a lot of trunk-shaking and ear flapping, and one bull charged the vehicle but our driver Justice handled it like a pro. not the best for photography, but fun none the less.
Next part of this trip – Samburu.
