Not a restful holiday, this trucksafari through parts of Kenya; I don't remember how many times we broke down because of flat tires or engine problems. But the drivers of the 2 trucks we travelled with, managed to get us to our destinations each day (albeit with some delay sometimes).
It was all part of this Kenyan adventure!

Not being a person to go on organised tours, let alone with a group, this vacation was something of an undertaking for me. But, I must admit, we had a fantastic group and made friends for life!
The above photo depicts a day that was particularly bad: the other truck was stranded too, only 5 minutes from where we were! One hour later we had another puncture and with no more spare tires and the repairset in the other truck, we had to wait until the other truck would find us missing and turn back: it was already dark a quite some time when we arrived on our destined campsite that day... That was why it was called a trucksafari: the trucks were the main protagonists on this trip!
Fortunately there was a lot more to enjoy.

One of our fellow travellers labelled me 'a poor imitation of Clint Eastwood'.

The roads were bad most of the time, the trucks were old, we sat on benches facing each other and
the dust of the road landed freely on our belongings.... and ourselves !
Our routing was: NAIROBI - AMBOSELI - TSAVO WEST - NAIROBI - NAIVASHA - SAMBURU -
LAKE BARINGO - LAKE NAKURU - MASAI MARA - NAIROBI

This is what we came for and we were not disappointed !
The scenery was quite varied, from lush vegetation, to endless savannas and dusty, desert-like emptiness.
We saw all the animals we could think of and we learned of Common Giraffe (or Masai Giraffe, above) and the Reticulated Giraffe, which has a slightly different pattern. It was amazing to see them run!

 

Lake Naivasha has an island in it: Crescent Island. There are no predators on the island, so we wandered around quite freely. Our guide was quite happy to leave us there for a few hours, while he returned to the French lady with whom he had struck up a romance... There was a small group of French people, but fortunately they were not in our truck as they kept very much to themselves and spoke (or wanted to speak) only French. Meanwhile, we were very careful not to provoke animals like this Defassa Waterbuck: those horns look pretty deadly ! While there were no predators, we did see a very large snake (a python probably) slithering across the path we walked on in the woods. We did not see its tail (we stood frozen to the ground for what seemed an eternity !), we reached the conclusion it was a big one (also considering its diameter) and turned on our steps...

Small birds

Somekind of fowl

An eagle on the lookout

"Jambo !"

Near Lake Baringo we went to a settlement, showing the living conditions of these people. While I had a feeling of invading their privacy, I was hoping that our visit, and visits of other tourists, would raise their standard of living in some way. These people looked healthy and well-fed, but one can never be certain about it being representative for this area, it could be a government program of some sorts to show people are doing ok. The man of the house had 3 women and each woman had her own house within the bush-fence. He moved from house to house, moved when he made one pregnant and so he moved on to the next... We learned a few words of course, Jambo means good morning/afternoon/evening, habari? means how are you? and kwaheri means goodbye...

Many mouths to feed

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Wildebeest

Zebra

Zebra and Wildebeest often travel together

The trek on the Serengeti, seen from a midday visit to a lodge plus swimming pool!

Scenery varied from lush vegetation to dried yellow grass

It is rare to go on a game drive in Southern Africa and not see one of the most abundant fauna on the continent, the antelope. But I find it hard to name them apart.

I thing this a a springbok, 'springbok' is also the callsign of the South African national airline!

The oryx, also known as the gemsbok, is a large species of cow-like antelope with incredible endurance and
strength. The oryx is at home in the vast shadeless desert or landscapes with near-desert conditions.

Another springbok

This photo was taken in Samburu Nat'l Park.

The buffalo is not to be underestimated; most often they travel in large herds

Marking the entrace to one of our camp sites

Quite a different way to travel here!

There are, of course, more than one way of watching the wildlife... By balloon is the luxury way: you get treated on a champagne brunch when you land! The lodges looked really nice too, but of course much more expensive than sleeping in tents (and less adventurous !). Best viewing for wildlife is at sunrise, so we had early starts each day; but quite often we enjoyed lunch and relaxation at one of the lodges and before sunset another gamedrive. The trucks were a good platform for photography, we found. Mini-vans were lower and often could not deal with the rough terrain, where the trucks had no problem. There was a disadvantage to our tents: they had no zippers and could not be closed.... At night I put my dirty socks there to scare off animals, until I heard hyena's could be attracted to them! Each night we had to inspect our tents before entering them, check them for snakes and spiders and suchlike. Someone found a large toad sitting right on his face in the middle of the night, the woke us all up!

It is a thrill and a privilege to encounter impressive animals like these...
It is so obvious that animals rule here, that human beings are vulnerable creatures here.
This Black Rhinoceros was not impressed by us and stood its ground. Two more were dozing in the high grass.
We had one scary encounter with a rhino.. When we were delayed and drove though the park while darkness fell, the truck was hit from the side by a rhinoceros! Fortunately it hit the solid steel ladder which we used to climb
into the back of the truck; the ladder was bent a bit, but the damage could have been much worse.

A rhinoceros, commonly abbreviated to rhino. Quite unpredictable.

The hippopotamus, also shortened to hippo.

If I remember correctly this was at Tsavo West National Park, not much else to see besides submerged hippos.

Perhaps surprising to note that the hippos are responsible for the most human casualties!

A leopard, resting high in a tree and doing its very best to ignore us. Cats are all alike...

The fact that we saw this leopard was a bit of luck, the gamedrive hadn't been planned but due to technical difficulties with the trucks sometimes gamesdrives were cancelled or done with one truck: forcing half of the group to stay behind in camp or at the lodge. Our guide had to improvise and did an extra gamedrive here, compensating for the other drives.
It certainly made for one of my finest photos this trip, I think.

We saw various lions in Amboseli NP and Masai Mara NP, old and young males as well as hunting, growling females. They seemed to ignore us mostly, like all cats seem to do.
Our guide and rivers were careful with animals like these and read their 'body language' like a book.
My family name meaning "lion", I hardly could go home without photos of these powerful predators...

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The lions roars... Or yawns.?

Game drives were most often done in the early mornings and afternoons, sometimes coinciding with making our
way to the campsite. Hence the colours may vary from bright sunlight or warm colours by the setting sun.

A low throaty warning growl made us keep our distance

Vultures and Maribou Storks

One side of the river camping tourists, the other side lounging crocodiles!

A much smaller version, baby crocodile

A weaver bird

A small water tortoise

Flamingos and pelicans

Girls from our group trying to get closer to the birds

Some kinf of fox I suppose..? Note those large ears!

Black-backed jackal, quite far in he distance so I had to crop the photo and make the best of it.

That's some landscape, eh?

Hyena

Did you note the second hyena? Probably at their den.

 

Ostrich

A giant-sized turtle hiding in the shade

Baboons are primates comprising the genus Papio, one of the 23 genera of Old World monkeys, in the family Cercopithecidae. There are six species of baboon: the hamadryas baboon, the Guinea baboon, the olive baboon, the yellow baboon, the Kinda baboon and the chacma baboon. Each species is native to one of six areas of Africa and the hamadryas baboon is also native to part of the Arabian Peninsula. Baboons are among the largest non-hominoid primates and have existed for at least two million years!

I did not like their presence much, they got too near the campsite and bared their teeth.

The entire trip took 2 weeks and some of the group went on to Mombasa to enjoy the beach; we went home,
things just couldn't improve... (except for the trucks).

Off into the sunset!