Elephant chasing...or not!

My friend Maria from Holland (we met in Diani Beach) lives in Maungu (2 hours west of Mombasa). She is here working on a youth soccer (football) program. She is living on a wildlife reserve, so we decided to go and visit her and go on some game drives.
There were 7 of us: Kevin and I; Suzie and Lee (our roommates who were heading to Mombasa anyways for their next placement); Cheryl (the other Canadian volunteer I see often); Danny from Ohio (our new roommate who arrived Thursday night - so we dragged him along!); and this girl Laura we had never met, but I got her number from another friend so invited her - she's living in Voi, which is 20 minutes away from Maungu (it's really fun how us volunteers connect!). Laura is an Italian who has been living in Ireland for the past 5 years - her accent was quite interesting!!
We headed out at 5:30AM Friday morning to catch the 8:30AM bus in Nairobi. It was a 7-1/2 hour bus trip.

 

When we got to Maungu, Maria had what we thought was "pink eye". We headed out on a game drive in the evening and the Land Rover died halfway into the bush! We sat on the roof, had a beer, and watched the sunset.

We did see some impalas and dic dics...but no elephants. The best part was the night sky! It was like being back in Zambia - millions of stars!! We finally got the Land Rover running and headed back to the house

Our "backyard"

On Saturday morning Maria was in a lot of pain and couldn't really see out of her left eye, so she was taken to the hospital. Turned out she had developed a fungal infection (it looked like a mimi-mushroom growing out of her eye! yuk!). We barely saw her after that, as she was given 5 kinds of drops and drugs, so she slept the majority of the weekend. It really was too bad. We never made it out on another game drive, but it didn't stop us from having fun. The 7 of us relaxed, Lee played guitar and we walked into the nearest village for meals (45 minute walk!).


                                                                                                             


                                                                                         View of our house from top of cliff

We stayed in a beautiful guest house on the reserve and our "backyard" faced a cliff. We climbed the cliff (some did it a few times!) and had an awesome view of the landscape. The reserve, which is HUGE, lies between Tsavo East and West. Some of you may have heard the story of the "Tsavo lions" who were responsible for killing and eating many workers who were building the Kenya-Uganda railway in 1898. (1996 movie: The Ghost and the Darkness). That's where we were!!

Cliff view of wildlife reserve


 Another cliff view of reserve

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

 3 Baboons                                                                   Colobus monkey 

Colobus monkey
 On Monday morning, I was up at 5:30AM, and sat alone for a few hours on our back patio sipping Chai tea and watching baboons and colobus monkeys play in our "backyard". How surreal is that!! The colobus monkeys came within 6 feet of me, but the baboons kept their distance (which made me happy 'cause they can be quite vicious!).
On our bus ride home, we passed zebras and giraffes along the road. So all-in-all, we may not have seen any elephants, but certainly enjoyed much wildlife, nature and made new friends.
It was back to the grind on Tuesday morning - working in the slums!!  :o(