Kenya's Tsavo East - Galdessa Safari
We would be staying on the Kenyan coast afterwards so chose to visit Tsavo East staying in a luxury camp with just 11 thatched roof, semi tented bungalows on wooden platforms on the southern banks of the Galana River. We flew into Mombasa via Nairobi and it took around three hours to reach the Buchuma park gate. Tsavo East is wilder and much less frequented by visitors than Tsavo West, therefore fewer lodges and fewer vehicles in the park. It’s also one of the largest with an area of 13,747 square kilometres. Game drives always begin as soon as you enter through the park gates and this one was no different. We saw several different landscapes, kudu, dik dik & impala in the next hour and the winding avenue of doun palms in the distance showed us that we were nearing camp. The Yatta Plateau, the world's oldest fossilised lava flow, also overlooks the river and creates sand bars and dramatic backdrops along its 300km length. Lugard’s Falls is 15kms away from the camp and features an odd shaped eroded rock where the Galana River flows through and turns into rapids during the wet season. Below Lugard’s Falls are Hippo Point and Crocodile Point which are popular sites for wallowing hippo and basking crocodiles.
Tsava East is known for its black rhinos and 'red elephants' and these were what we most wanted to see during our stay. We also hoped to see one particular elephant close up in camp. Part of the charm of camps such as Galdessa is that they’re not fenced and this allows you to have a unique experience of local wildlife. At check in we were interrogated by the camp manager to ensure that we didn’t have any food in our bags or cases. There are no phones in your accommodation so if you have any problems you need to bang the jungle drum for assistance. During the day one of the lovely staff will quickly attend to you, but at night it will be one of the Masai rangers who patrol after dark. The beds are fairly low to the ground and the roof thatch reaches down to approx 1metre off the ground. This means that when you’re lying in bed you can still see the river and the surrounding vegetation through the mosquito net and the fine mesh on the canvas windows. You feel at one with the sounds of nature and you do sometimes feel that the trees are moving. When you look closer you’ll see that the ‘trees’ are likely to be elephants or hippos and that’s why you can’t afford to have any food in your tents at night!
The staff will agree the time to escort you to the lodge for pre-drive coffee and cake/cookies and you start out just after dawn on your morning game drive. On the way the staff will be able to show you tracks of the animals that have passed thorough the camp overnight. The morning game drive will usually last a couple of hours and you return to the lodge for a full breakfast. The rest of your morning is at leisure and a full service lunch is included. Late afternoon you go for your second game drive and the aim is to be back just as darkness falls. Dinner is usually fairly early in the evening due to the early start next day.You can arrange a full day out with a packed lunch at a supplement and we also joined one of the local rangers for the walking safari at Lugard’s Falls to see the crocs and hippos. Wildlife sightings are never guaranteed on safari, but we knew that Galdessa often has a bull elephant who visits the camp during the day. He’s affectionately known as ‘Mugabe’ and we were lucky enough to see him every day of our stay. He’s totally wild and the Masai are never far away to make sure that everyone keeps their distance. On our last day we took the full day out of camp and found our red elephants and also saw a glimpse of the black rhinos so we were very lucky! The red elephants were amazing and we stayed with them for miles.... they had found some of the buried water pipes that run alongside the park boundary. As it was dry season, they had dug down to the pipe and stamped on it until it cracked and filled the hole with water. After drinking, the red mud they made gives them their camouflage and you can easily lose sight of them at a distance. One of the babies had got stuck and we watched Mum rescue him - we were totally mesmerized! How anyone could harm these amazing animals is beyond me!