We flew in the morning, this time on a single 30+ passenger plane. We landed on a airstrip in Ol Pejeta, a private animal conservancy near Mount Kenya. We left the airplane, boarded our Land Cruisers and off we went. We quickly found something new: reticulated giraffes.
Seems the different “types” of giraffes can interbreed, so I don’t really understand how animal scientists decide species, but whatever. Note the much larger spots than on Masai giraffes.
This is a private reserve, with cattle sharing the grounds with wildlife. We passed several pens where herders move the cattle into for the night. We also saw some antelope.
Here’s we finally got some closer pictures of warthogs, or “pumbas” if you are a “Lion King” fan.
This zebra-background shot happened so strangely I wondered someone had hypnotized them.
Side note: we found a Grevy’s zebra, but annoyingly could not get a good angle since the dirty so-and-so was mixed up with common zebra. However, we did find this baby zebra. The stripes start out more brown and darken over time.
However, the big deal in Ol Pejeta are the rhinos. We found both white and black rhino; the conservatory is a leader in trying to increase the number of rhino.
One of the distinguishing marks of a white rhino is its square mouth.
The black rhino has a more pointy mouth.
We then drove to our hotel and relaxed until dinner. This area of Kenya and its history was roughly described in the move “Out of Africa” (Robert Redford, Meryl Streep). The hotel’s location and equator and the slope of Mount Kenya, not to mention 7000 ft (2133m) elevation (so less bugs) make the climate great.
Tomorrow is a relax day, so the next post may be light. However, they have an animal orphanage…