Our first safari

We'd planned out first safari about a month ago during the kids fall break from school, and a perfect storm of ailments came together for our departure last Thursday. First, Livi came down with a cold and fever the first day of the break. On Wednesday her fever was gone, and it was little Oscar's turn! We loaded up on the tylenol and gave him a day of rest. Oscar went into work on his bicycle to do a few things that day, and came home covered in scrapes and bruises… He was coming home going down a big hill and hit some gravel (aka "loose chippings") and took a nasty spill. He took a trip to the med clinic and was told nothing was broken, but he was in horrible pain and had minimal use of his left arm from the damage he'd done to his ligaments. It was looking to be quite a disaster of a trip, but with everyone medicated, we hit the road a few hours later than planned on Thursday morning and arrived at Sweetwaters Serena Tented Camp, in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, exhausted but happy after a 4 hour drive. We had originally planned to go for a game drive when we arrived, but with both Oscars in need of some relaxation, we decided to just hang out that evening. Our "tent" had an amazing view of the watering hole and and while the boys took a nap, the girls explored a little.

Livi in her element. The post is in a ditch and part of an electric fence to keep us in and the wildlife out!

A superb starling. Livi loved these guys! 

our "tent" was super cozy

Front porch view. Livi is drawing pictures of what we could see…

What we could see!  Different animals would just wander towards
the watering hole throughout the day.
Without even going on a game drive we saw elephants, zebra, impala,
wart hogs, rhino, jackals, and tons of different birds.

A rainbow that welcomed us. It ended up spanning the whole sky butI couldn't pick it up on the camera.

After dinner, we were met with warm water bottles in our beds.
Needless to say the kids loved it.

 After a good nights sleep, we woke up the next morning refreshed and ready to see some more animals! We hit the roads with a very basic map, and explored a little. We thought about having a guide come with us to help point out the animals but Oscar wanted his independence in the vehicle, and I obliged him since he was injured ;) We saw a lot, but a few near-misses over the next few days made us wonder how many animals we'd driven right by… I also ended up with a lot of animal butt pictures, but I suppose that's better than having them charging towards us!

Ready to explore! 

Mama and baby rhino, so cute! 

animals in the marsh - zebra, impala, and waterbuck

our beautiful lioness

Lone cape buffalo! Don't mess with that guy.

Fun at the equator… Yes, it was cool and drizzling!

playing king of the equator

Oscar may not always want to pose, but he loves his photo bombs

After lunch and a nap, we headed back out again to see the endangered rhinos. On the way we stumbled upon a mama and baby elephant. We kept our distance, and then noticed a lone water buffalo also right near the road. We were worried about being stuck between an angry water buffalo and an angry mama elephant… Oscar wanted to turn back, but it was the only way to get to the rhinos and I didn't want to save it for the next morning when we were planning to leave! We waited a few minutes and the water buffalo and the elephants moved away from the road a bit. We decided to go for it, and around the bend came across a whole family elephants!! We saw at least 7, but who knows how many were hiding in the bushes…. I convinced Oscar to stop so I could take a few pictures…

mama and baby

and another…

and more when we turned the corner!

After are awesome elephant encounter, we headed to the Rhino sanctuary to see Baraka, a blind black rhino. The black rhino is critically endangered with less than 2,500 alive today due to poaching, and Baraka is an ambassador of sorts. He was blinded in one eye in a fight in the wild, and lost vision in his other eye to cataracts. You're allowed to feed him and touch him from the safety of a elevated wooden platform. Livi was a little scared at first (rightfully so, as those teeth and not to be messed with!) but relaxed with a little direction from the guide. He was actually really cute coming from his enclosure, since he knows his name and comes in the direction of the guides voice when they call him! You could see his ears redirecting him as he headed towards us.

The pointed front lip of the black rhino distinguishes it from the white rhino (not their color!)

inside a rhino crate - they move them around to help
keep the species gene pool as diverse as possible

We also wanted to see Sudan, the last male white northern rhinoceros in the world. The price tag to go into his enclosure was pretty high, and while we know it's in the effort of conservation, we decided a distant view from the fence was good enough for this time around. With any luck he'll be around next time we visit! Poor guy… There are only 5 white northern rhinos left in the world!  Sudan, and 4 females. Two of the females live abroad (San Diego and the Czech Republic) but are too old to mate. The remaining 2 females are in Kenya with Sudan, and keep beating him up any time he tries to mate. They're also actually his offspring (daughter and granddaughter), but inbreeding is common with rhinos in the wild so they decided it was worth the effort. However, the girls aren't having it so with very little chance of mating happening now, the next step is in-vitro fertilization… More on Sudan…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/world/2015/06/16/how-the-fate-of-an-entire-subspecies-of-rhino-was-left-to-one-elderly-male/

The only photo I got since it took us a minute to realize what we were seeing!
Those are his back legs behind the fence to the right of the car.

The kids wanted to go home after our rhino encounter, but we decided to take a small detour to see if a lion was still hanging around the area that we'd heard about earlier. The detour paid off and we came across a line of cars watching a lioness dragging home her fresh kill. We decided to take another detour around the cars to try and see her from another way. While parked, a safari car came up and asked us if we saw the cheetah. What cheetah? The one 20 feet from our car we totally missed since we were so focused on watching the lion….

mmm…fresh impala… 

almost sunset on the way back to the camp

After a yummy dinner with a view of an elephant drinking from the watering hole everyone snuggled into bed with our toasty water bottles. We had a nice leisurely morning on Saturday, enjoying our breakfast and taking in some last minute animal sightings, including the mama and baby rhino at the watering hole. This pic just about sums up everyone's feelings about our experience at Sweetwaters:

zebras and rhinos in the background

mama and baby

last shot at our tent