The April Files: Voi Lodge and Tsavo East

Voi Lodge watering hole

We have just gotten home from an amazing trip! We travelled to Mombasa to start a four day safari tour of three national parks in Kenya with some all inclusive resort tacked on each end. It was incredible. I absolutely loved it. We have somewhat of a poor record in seeing wildlife together because Taylor notoriously repels wildlife on our trips together. She still hasn't seen a raccoon for goodness sake!

The view from the pool at Voi

We left Mombasa at 5.20 in the morning to start our trip. That was the beginning of a lot of time spent in the car. There were two other people in the car with us, an Italian man and his Polish girlfriend. The roof of the van lifted up so you could stand in the van as we drove around the parks to look for things. The first park drive around was in Tsavo East National Park. It was our first time to see lions, elephants and various deer. They were all really distant though and we shouted for the van to stop at everything distant animal silhouette. By the end of the trip we didn't ask to stop for elephants or zebras because we has seen so many. I was really excited to see lions because I didn't think we would see many. It was interesting to learn that some of the animals names in Swahili were already familiar to me thanks to the Lion King. The word for Lion is simba. File that away for your next pub quiz. My favourite animal viewing was the warthogs. They are so funny when they run with their tails straight up in the air.

An East African Rainbow Lizard sunning itself with a less
attractive lizard

Massive vulture eating some thing's leg

Our first nights stay on the tour was at Voi Lodge. It had signs on all the windows reminding you to keep them looked so that baboons didn't get in. While we were in the pool, we witnessed a baboon break-in as a big baboon came out of someones bedroom holding the contents of their fruit bowl. The pool, bar and dining area all beautifully overlooked a vast plain filled with paths worn by elephants and cape buffalo. There was an underground tunnel that lead to a viewing point right beside the watering hole so elephants and buffalo passed within a few feet of us. It was boiling hot there but we stayed fro a long time because it was such a great opportunity to view them. The rooms had mosquito netting all around the beds and were cooled with a fan. I thought we were going to melt there but the evening really cooled down because of the elevation. We saw a lot of great lizards sunning themselves and some big ground hog type things called hyrax. We met a bunch of people there who were traveling in our convoy of vans. We didn't see each other on the road or at any of the crap gift shops you are forced to have toilet breaks at. People were a lot younger than I thought they would be on a an escorted tour and many of them were teachers or related to school somehow. We went out for another drive that afternoon around a different part of the park and saw a lot of elephants and buffalo. There was also a distant cheetah but I couldn't see it. The elephants in that park were all red because of the dusty soil that they rolled in. We saw another huge group of elephants during the afternoon drive. There are so many babies around that it is obvious that the elephant population is doing well there. I would say we saw at least 200 on our four day tour. Here are a few other photos of our time at Voi and Tsavo East.