Tuesday, 1 April 2014

From Loldia House to OlSeki in Masai Mara to Watamu

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is an elephant and sometimes baby rhino's orphanage. www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org I am writing the website down as I am intending to "adopt" one of these gorgeous babies. The names I recorded are Arruba, Kamok, Oltaiyoni.


So many elephant are poached yearly in Kenya alone (3000 -  4000 per year), more in Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa; let alone countries like Mozambique, that scores of youngsters are left to starve and die as they try to suckle from a dead mother or stay with her to guard her dead body. 

The thing to do is to convince those (Chinese, Vietnamese etc) to get over their penchant for ivory and ground Rhino horn. Instead the Chinese are swarming over East Africa, building roads without using local labour. They have even build an eye sore of an enormous glistening white camp in the Masai Mara. To better supervise the poaching?

Before
 returning

 to Nairobi, we spend a gloriously lazy week in Watamu. These are the ruins of Jede, where a Muslim culture had glass beads from Venice, fine porcelain pottery from China and scissors  from Spain. Amazing to think of all.

The view from our hotel bed was Indian Ocean via Palm trees; absolutely sophoriffic!

Very

 disappointing 
that people still kill magnificent wild creatures so that they can congratulate themselves for their great achievement. Truth is the staff on the boat; particularly the driver are the people who secure the fish. Then in theory the fish is tagged and allowed to go, whereas everybody knows that not only will the fish die after the horrendous fight it will put up, but often other predators (sharks) attack it whilst it is on the line.

It was great fun flying over Kenya in various sized small planes. You really have the sensation of flying as the engines roar and everything rattles and shudders before at last you take off. Feel a bit like the ungainly Comerants; the birds on Lake Naivasha ( the Little Lake) that desperately run over the water surface before taking off like an overloaded plane.

Our tent in Ol Seki was magnificent 
and private; except for the animals making munching noises at night and having a rub.

We saw several pride of lion, cheetah, a small group of elephants mourning their dead mother's body and many, many other species. We were not in the Masai Mara reserve proper just in the "conservancy" that Ol Seki shares with 3 other lodges. They lease the land off the Masai and have exclusive animal watching rights which means that there are a maximum of 4 vehicles allowed viewing any particular animal(s). A win win situation for tourists and local Masai. Joseph our guide did an excellent job.

Picnic arranged by cooks and Juma of 
 House. The food at Loldia House was consistently excellent. I am having trouble downloading photos onto this blog, so can't show you how delightful Loldia House was with our massive  1940s (built by Italian Prisoners of War) master bedroom with views across the Lake to Mount Longanot, and lush mature gardens full of delicate beautiful gazelle who nimbly leap over the electric fence and are safe from all the other animals just beyond the fence
And I can't somehow down load my photo's of the absolutely superb Hemingways Boutique Hotel in Karen Nairobi; luxurious, amazing standard of interior, furniture and landscape design; really beautiful, interesting and good fun. Food wasn't bad either!




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