Wednesday 17 Aug
Shem reminded us today that we needed to take a park ranger on our night drive, and culture in Kenya would make it appropriate to tip him. What would be an appropriate tip? “Whatever you think is right, it’s up to you” was Shem’s answer. I totally understand why it’s difficult to answer that question, but it really leaves me in a useless place. Is £1 an insult? Is £10 ridiculous over-tipping? For the record we went with about £8 which ought to be a good meal or a couple of rounds of beers with friends.
The night drive was only moderately good; we saw the other kind of small-spotted genet, a spotted hyena, a white-tailed mongoose and something that might have been a honey badger or might not. Night drives can be frustrating like that: you often don’t get a long or good enough glimpse of the critter in the light of a spotlight to be able to identify it properly.
Anyway, the morning drive was better, with plenty of game and a brilliant look at the Gerenuk. This is a very unique antelope with a tiny head built for pushing into thorn-covered acacia bushes to nibble leaves and the unique ability to stand on its hind legs to nibble leaves other antelope cannot reach. We got to see this! The amazing thing is that, if you look carefully, you can see that the acacia bush isn’t supporting the gerenuk’s weight at all – it is properly standing up on its hind legs.
The other cool thing we saw was a real needle in a haystack. Imagine a grassy plain dotted with scores of antelope and zebra. Now imagine that just two of those antelope have odd-shaped horns and a slightly different all-white tail. Those are the Hirola, a species of antelope on the brink of extinction with just a handful left in Tsavo and one other national reserve. I was expecting to spend hours searching and then maybe to not find them anyway. Maureen managed to spot them in less than five minutes! So that was good.
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