I am SO behind….just got back from spending over a week in Nairobi for work…and still need to catch up on a host of stories from before I left….

The week before we left for Nairobi was quite extraordinary from a big game viewing perspective…you see, when you visit the Masai Mara, you can almost guarantee to tick off all the major big game species within a few days, but in Tsavo, this is quite unusual, due to the different terrain and thicker bush. That’s what makes Tsavo such an exciting ecosystem to me, the fact that you never know what you’re going to see…it has a certain mystique…that’s why it makes such a great destination for the seasoned visitor to Africa who’s here more for the excitement than for a guaranteed viewing of the big five in a day…

With the hinterland drying up, more and more of the big game is coming back to the river, and I think it is this which has made the last few weeks so magical. It started with the antelope – we’ve had regular sightings of Lesser Kudu, big herds of Impala (plus our resident young bachelors, including One-Horn), Waterbuck and of course masses of Dikdik. The Warthogs are back too.

Female Lesser Kudu across the river from the house

One of our resident young Impala rams just below the house

A mother and baby Waterbuck, part of a herd that regularly
drinks from the river just to the right of our house

As for our regulars, the river seems to become more and more crocodile-infested by the day. As well as some really big old boys, we’ve been seeing a lot of small crocodiles, so they’re obviously breeding apace and getting more than enough to eat, with all the fish in the river and the odd bigger meal as well. Talking of regulars, the baboons are around too, in great noisy troops – still coming down onto the sandbank at dusk to play and relax. The hippos too are thriving in their deep water pool at Hippo Bend. I'm planning to write a separate post about them before long.

A small crocodile basks in the sun, behind a trail of hippo tracks

The herd of buffalo that came onto the beach one evening at dusk was somewhat unexpected – over one hundred of them! We watched them from our balcony as they ambled across our sandbank and then crossed the river into the National Park…of course, as luck would have it, the light had already started fading as the sun had fallen below the tree line, but nonetheless I couldn’t resist taking some photos – it’s not every day we can say we had 100 buffaloes in our “back yard”!

As if that weren’t enough, a couple of days later, three old bull buffalo came down for a drink in the river, and one stayed behind for a what looked like a really good wallow!

A jolly good mud bath!

Following on from the buffalo, you can imagine our delight when I heard a crashing and crunching sound from the reeds opposite the house, again late in the evening in fading light: two bull elephants had appeared and were making a hearty meal of the reeds. They were literally right in front of the house and we spent a fabulous fifteen minutes watching them.

Then the two bulls lumbered off upstream, and a few minutes later, when it was almost too dark to make them out, we watched their great dark shapes wade across the river onto our property and disappear into the thick riverine vegetation.

Can you just make out the two dark hulks as they reach our beach?

But that’s not all! The following day – again at last light (oh - the photographer’s frustration!), we were sitting on the balcony enjoying the peace of evening, when suddenly, there on the beach below the house, was a leopard! How long had it been silently sitting there, without us noticing it? What a shame the light was so low, and my photos so fuzzy as a result, but I think you should be able to make out the spotted, feline shape nonetheless… (If you want to see some really great leopard photos, you can take a look here on my Dezine Design website, where photographer Sean Hartley has a wonderful collection of images.)

As I said, what a week that was!

With so much wildlife around over these last few weeks, it's impossible to include all my photos in posts, but if you want to see more images of the wild animals around and about our Kulafumbi home, you can take a look here:

Hippos are strange, unpredictable creatures. It was 8.15 last Thursday morning, and just as we were finishing breakfast, already sweating in the wake of another stiflingly hot day, a hippo emerged from the river. In the bright, scorching sunlight it walked up out of the water (at a time when most hippos were finding what shade they could in the cover of the reeds, or in secluded pools left in the shallow stream, which was all that was left of our river…). The lumbering beast made its steady way up the steep sandbank, and plodded away into the thick bush. It occurred to me that the hippo probably had a very good reason for its unusual morning meander, but I was none the wiser – perhaps the thick bush provided more respite from the heat than the dwindling river? Or perhaps the hippo had an inkling of what was coming?

A hippo leaves the river at 8.15am, and disappears into the bushland
Click any image to enlarge...

That afternoon, the first splashes of rain cascaded down from an angry sky, hard and stinging, bringing instant relief and releasing us from the clinging, claustrophobic heat. The shower was short and sharp, and did not last long, but while they fell, the raindrops were fat and full of promise… What joy! The rains have broken!

First rain - fat heavy drops promising more to come...
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Rain blowing onto the balcony above the river...
First rain on this Yellow-billed Stork

In the evening we watched the sky for hours, bewitched by the huge electric storms raging all around us, massive fronts of lighting illuminating the entire firmament like a giant fireworks display, on and on into the night. I felt awe-struck, and privileged, and very, very small before that gigantic stage. There is nothing quite like Nature for putting you in your place, for confirming that – in the big picture – you’re really not all that significant…

Fast forward to 3.15am and I am awoken from a deep sleep by a fantastic roar. For a moment I am disorientated, and don’t know what’s happening. And then, in the haze of my early morning mind, it dawns on me: the river is flooding. I stumble out of bed, the moon is large and luminous, and I can see the huge river tumbling and crashing below our balcony. The roar was from this wall of water, plunging its way coastwards in one massive flash flood, whipping yesterday’s placid shallow stream into a frenzied deluge.

From this...

...to this, in the blink of a sleepy eye...

There’s something quite awe-inspiring about a big river in full flood. Even though you know you are safely above its danger zone, you still have to fight your animal instinct of fear which makes you want to run from it, such is the power of that water and the thundering sound it makes as it crashes beneath you, red and muddy from its cascade through upcountry farming areas where poor land management has left the earth bare and vulnerable to erosion with every bout of rain.

It has rained ever since then (with the obligatory accompaniment of an insect invasion, including a very pretty moth that landed on our bathroom mirror, above), the stormy clouds obliterating all view of the full moon rising at the weekend. A foray into beautiful Tsavo West National Park rewarded us with muddy elephants, a herd of giraffe, a couple of elegant Lesser Kudu and more than a few buffalo…

Lesser Kudu doe in Tsavo West...
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A wonderfully muddy Tsavo West elephant bull
Haughty giraffes...

Yesterday, it was cloudy and rainy all day, the crocodiles starved of any sunlight and barely any warmth…then today we awoke to a totally different morning: back to the scorching heat and the crocodiles returning in droves to bask on the sandbanks, while the Goliath Heron, too hot even to finish washing, just sat down in the river and stayed there (and who could blame it?) I had to take a cold shower at midday, just to fortify myself for the onslaught of the afternoon heat.

Big croc, little croc...
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Happy to see the sun again...
But for the Goliath Heron, it's just too hot...nothing to do, but sit right down in the water!

Tonight, as might be expected, the thunder and lightning are raging again, huge storm clouds fomented in the heat of the day, now towering overhead…and the rain continues, and the bugs multiply, and the flowers prepare to launch into their reproductive cycles once again…the tiny pretty blue commelina flowers are already blooming everywhere you look (including on our nascent lawn) and the sanseviera we transplanted into our garden (both on the balcony and outside) are sending up a proliferation of shoots, the new spikes breaking the surface of the earth like spiky aliens, and reaching up towards the light…

Commelina colonizing our new lawn
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Garden sanseviera
New spikes emerging