Africa trip – Day 9: Ol Pejeta Conservancy

On 12/10/2024 we started our game drive early, for reasons which soon became clear.

As any photographer knows (I am not a real photographer, but I’ve talked with a few), early light is the best light and everything just looked better.

We got back at 8am to eat breakfast and to relax.

At 10am we left to visit the Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary (Chimpanzees are not native to Kenya, but their native habitat in western Africa is being lost to conflict and to deforestation).

As we were pulling into the parking lot, something unexcepted happened – the lead vehicle stopped, did a quick 180, and then sped off in the opposite direction. This could only mean one thing – a sighting! Minutes later we were treated to this:

While we were watching, a group of elephants decided to challenge the lion.

The lion initially retreated, but then decided that it would not surrender that easily.

After a convincing game of “you may have claws and teeth, but we can clearly crush you”, the lion retreats again.

The whole exchange was incredibly cool to witness!

Now that we have seen a lion, we returned to the chimpanzee sanctuary (where we mostly pretended to care about chimpanzees while thinking about lions). They had an impressive facility and the acreage to chimpanzee ratio was very high (about 5:1). As chimpanzees are very dangerous to humans, they were behind an electric fence.

After lunch, many people opted out of the afternoon game drive (mostly because it was so relaxing to watch the animals around the watering hole). But Amie and I went on the drive, and we saw the following:

Birds

I’m not sure what this is, but it was cute

Water Buffalo

Giraffes

Elephants

Rhinos

And great scenery

As we were about done, we spotted a rock in the distance near a heard of zebra. But the rock was shiny and wet and didn’t look normal. Komora had never seen this before, but he immediately knew what it was.

We all stood in silence while we watched nature unfold.