Kruger Mammals

Photo dump time! 

Our four full days in Kruger National Park was the best concentrated safari experience we have had in a single Park ever. The variety of wildlife and the quality of the sightings was just incredible. There was so much to see and other than maybe one or two times in the late morning / early afternoon when we started to feel that 5:15 a.m. departure time, we were engaged every minute of every day. The wildlife sightings were pretty much continuous.

I've covered some of our Kruger highlights in the past few weeks with posts about our number one species target (painted dogs), the Big Five (or four, as it turned out) and the amazing amount of birdlife we encountered in the Park. I'm done with lengthy written posts about what we saw there. 

But...I do think there is room for one more photo post showing off some of the looks we got at Kruger's mammals which are not painted dogs, elephants, buffalo, lions or leopards. So here goes. With minimal commentary. At least I've tried to make it minimal.

These photos do not show every species we saw in Kruger. Go out there and explore for yourself if you want that.

Giraffes

The first time I saw a giraffe in Botswana I was thrilled. This was was safari was all about. Tallest mammal on the planet! A few years later, we got an incredibly intimate look at these animals at Lake Manyara in Tanzania. They are still amazing to behold. So huge with a kick that can kill a lion. Our guide, Gareth said that he hated giraffes. We were shocked and asked why. "They are always looking down on me" was the response. Dad jokes. Who knew we would get these on safari?

Hippos

My former favorite African species. Their lack of social interaction has them way down on the list in 2025 but any time I get a chance to see them with their tusks showing, I want to take a picture. Still terrifying to me to be chased by one of these things in a small boat (Chobe River, 2015). Thankfully none of that in Kruger.

Impala

Impala are everywhere in Kruger. When we asked Gareth what we were going to see in the afternoon every day after lunch, his response was inevitably "impala!" and sometimes that declaration was amended with a guarantee. We DID see a ton of impala all over the place. We learned to call these animals "McDonald's of the bush" in Botswana in 2015 for their abundance and M-shaped markings on their hind quarters.

Shocker of the trip: who knew that impala smooched? At one of our impala stop, we watched a couple of these antelope alternately lick each other repeatedly on the neck. I have new respect for impala based on the smooching. Smooching is good.

Vervet Monkeys

Vervets are my favorite monkeys ever. They are just the most straightforward-looking, typical monkeys and I love that. As someone born in June 1968 (year of the monkey), I have an affinity for monkeys as a personal mascot. I have a monkey charm we picked up in Japan that goes on my backpack everywhere I go. The charm isn't exactly a vervet but in my mind's eye it is. If I had a spirit animal, it would be the vervet monkey.

Monkeys are mischievous and will steal stuff, especially food. Vervets are very adept at swiping grub. We saw it in Botswana in 2015 and again this year. Keep an eye on EVERYTHING you own around all kinds of monkeys but probably especially vervets.

Baboons

On the opposite end of the favorite monkeys spectrum...baboons. Just don't like them. I think it's the fangs and the fact that while vervets are mischievous, baboons look vicious. Baby baboons, however, are excessively cute.

Hyenas / Black-Backed Jackals

Shall we continue with the less-than-favorite African animals? Let's! 

Hyenas. Not good. Sneaky. Hunter-scavengers. Trying to steal from a lion or painted dog kill one minute but strong enough and organized enough to take down something big the next. And those faces. Ugh! UG-LEE! We did manage to see an almost newborn hyena playing with a stick on this trip but no pics. I just missed it with the camera and the moment was gone quickly.

I've included the black-backed jackal in this section not because there are loathsome to me (they are not) but because in the lineup at a kill, they slot right behind the hyenas. There's always one hanging around it seems looking for some scraps ahead of the vultures.

Warthogs

Done with ugly creatures for this post? Umm...nope. One more. Warthogs. Not pretty. But I do think if you are looking for a good picture of a warthog, these two are pretty darned good.

Zebra

When we first saw zebras in Kenya in 2018, we were thrilled. These animals are more impressive in the hundreds than in ones and twos and fives or so. The group below may have been the largest we saw on this trip. For a black and white animal, they really do blend in with the beige bush pretty well. This camouflage thing is amazing.

Kudu

Of all the antelope out there, kudu may be my favorite. It's the horns. I love these horns and these antelopes so much that I picked up a shirt from SENQU on our way back from safari one day. These are spectacularly gorgeous animals. Always excited to see kudu. We've only ever seen these animals in Southern Africa. It had been a full ten years since we'd seen any kudu I believe.

Wildebeest 

Excited about wildebeest? Not me. Not usually. But we were stopped in Kruger when these four wildebeest below started walking towards our vehicle. I waited until they got close enough to take a good picture and then waited a bit more for as many of the four as possible to hold their heads up. I got three. I like this picture. It's one of my favorites from this trip. And it's of a typically un-exciting subject. For me. I'm glad I watched and waited here. Sometimes it's cool when a species you are not necessarily always focused on surprises you with a cool moment.

Photo dump done! I feel better now. I'm glad these photographs can see the light of day.

My last picture note is about the cover photo of this post. It was taken at a rest area within Kruger. We stopped at a series of these during our four days in the Park. They were welcome because they had snacks, hot drinks, lunch (at mid-day) and most importantly...toilets. Way better to use the toilet in a rest area than just out in the bush. Most of the rest areas we stopped at were completely fenced with a heavy-duty gate at the entrance with daily opening and closing times prominently displayed. But on Kruger Day Four, we stopped at an un-fenced rest area and found the sign at the top of this post. Yeah...there's no way I want to be ordering a cup of coffee or tea and look over to find a hyena standing close to me with nothing between it and me. Nothing happened. Not on our stop. I need to see wildlife when I'm in the car, not on foot. 

That's all I have for this post. Apologies to the klipspringers, bush bucks, water bucks, nyala and everything else that we saw that didn't make it into this post. That's a wrap on safari posts for this year, but not for Africa posts. A couple of more of those to go.

Serengeti

Before I start this post for real, let me say that Toto got it way wrong. Kilimanjaro does not rise like Olympus (or anything else for that matter) above the Serengeti. Mount Kilimanjaro is about 200 miles, give or take 10 or 20, from the closest point to the Serengeti National Park. It's impossible to see the Mountain from the park, no matter how clear the day might be. Glad I could clear that up.

With that said, welcome to park number five in this blog. I'm sure if you've read all the other posts about our two week trip to Kenya and Tanzania that you must be thinking I can't possibly have any new stories to tell. I mean haven't I by this point seen and written about pretty much everything there is to see in East Africa? Nope. Not yet.

Serengeti National Park is one of the most famous game reserves in East Africa, if not the world. It's also massive. We were awed by the size of Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya at 580 square miles in size. Serengeti is ten times as big as Masai Mara. It's bigger than the state of Connecticut. Go ahead if you must and make fun of the size of my home state but I'm telling you a park devoted to wild animals (and maybe a few Masai as well) that size is pretty darned huge. Serengeti is enormous. There's no way in two days we could cover anything near the whole area of this Park. But we spent the maximum amount of time that we could giving it a shot.

Leopard chilling in a tree.

Serengeti, which means "endless plain" in the Masai language, was established in 1951 as a haven for the area's cats, elephants, giraffe, African buffalo and any other species of animal or bird in the area. Its boundaries preserve about half of the Serengeti plain's total area as an undeveloped environment which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Masai Mara Reserve we were driving around just a week prior to our stay in the Serengeti. There's a really good reason for that: they are the same place. Masai Mara lies north of the Kenya / Tanzania border; Serengeti is just south of the border.

As you might expect, a great deal of the wildlife we saw was very similar to what we found in Kenya. We got some amazing looks at cats in Masai Mara and we did exactly the same in Serengeti. The lions were more active, the leopards were less active and we got an incredible closeup view of a cheetah which was doing little more (although enough, really) than the five we saw earlier in our trip at Masai Mara. We saw two more failed lion hunts (targeting zebra this time), some leopards in trees thanks to our eagle-eyed guide Filbert and a pride of lions so stuffed after gorging on a recent kill that I exclaimed that one female must be about to give birth she was so pregnant. But then again, so were the others, including the males. Lions can eat I guess. A lot.

Lion on the hunt. Failed, again.

The best cheetah pic we got on the trip. May have strayed off the path here. Thanks, Filbert and Samson.

We also stayed in our first ever unfenced camp which happened to be located smack dab in the center of the Park where I suppose buffalo, impala and, yes, lions and leopards might roam. Concerned about that at all? Don't be. After all, we are staying in a tent made of fabric. Why would we be worried about any noises we hear at night after being walked to our tent by a Masai with a flashlight and being directed not to leave the tent at night without calling on our walkie-talkie?

To make matters worse, we ended up in the very last tent. Not the last free one available. The last one in the row. Meaning closest to the grassland and potential lions or herds of stampeding elephants that would surely flatten a tent quickly. That walk to our tent at night was long, even with our Masai with flashlight (and nothing else) leading the way. Because surely a flashlight will help a lot. Although if it acts like a laser pointer with a house cat, maybe it would be just what we needed to fend off a lion attack.

The camp had its lovable perks and quirks. We got a wakeup call each morning with our prearranged hot shower, they had the best bar on the trip (an open tent facing the savannah with plentiful Kilimanjaro and Safari beers) and the tents were each named in Swahili after African animals. The shower had to be prearranged because they had to boil the water to get it hot; the wakeup call was a dude shouting through the tent "your shower is ready!"; and for what it's worth our tent's name was Pimbi, which means "rock hyrax" in Swahili. Other people got Twiga (giraffe) or Chui (leopard); we got rock hyrax. Cool!

Our row of tents taken from our morning stroll to breakfast hoping there were no lions behind us.

Pimbi, or rock hyrax. Fearsome, no?

But enough about awesome cat sightings and lying in bed wide-eyed with fear of attack from some predatory or territorial animal. I said Serengeti had it's own story and it did. And it wasn't about rock hyrax, although admittedly it was the only park where we saw these creatures. Let's talk about the real story, shall we? The sleep I got at Serengeti was, by the way, at no time restless. After a week hearing hippo, hyena and other sorts of noises, I wasn't concerned, even if we were told the noise that we heard one night were lions.

Serengeti National Park is home to one of the world's great spectacles. Each July through September it is host to the great wildebeest migration, the annual 1,000 mile trek north by between 1.5 and 2 million wildebeest accompanied by almost half a million Thomson's gazelle, just more than a quarter of a million zebra and some other hangers-on. If you can afford to go to Tanzania and Kenya in the summer months to see it, and can stand the crowds of tourists while you are there, it's apparently one of the most spectacular sights on our planet.

We didn't go in July through September so we didn't expect to see huge herds of wildebeest on our trip. In fact, I think we only saw two wildebeest in our first two days of the trip when we were in Masai Mara and those two were on our way out of the Reserve. That's about what I expected to see.

What I hoped to see wildebeest-wise on that later parts of this trip were babies, since February is generally the calving month for this species. I expected those in Ngorongoro Crater, which was our stop after the Serengeti National Park. At Serengeti I was focused on hoping for some kind of lion or cheetah or leopard or hyena or something killing something else. 

Then we came around a bend on our dirt trail and saw the scene below.

That's a whole lot of wildebeest in a field. And they were moving as a herd along with slightly fewer (but not much fewer) zebra.

We'd seen herds of wildebeest and zebra before on this trip. But I'd say at most we'd seen groups of 20 maximum at any one time in either Amboseli or Lake Manyara. Nothing like the hundreds and hundreds of animals that we saw in our first view out over the open field shown above.

When we first laid eyes on these animals, all we could see was that they were in a part of the Park on the other side of a river. But as we drove on, it was apparent that they weren't just on the other side of the river but were on our side too. And there were many many more wildebeest and zebra than we first saw. They were everywhere. On both sides of the river and on both sides of our vehicle. They were almost in perpetual motion, pouring down the river banks and across the water that appeared to me to be not a whole heck of a lot different than where they had come from so who knows why they thought they needed to cross at all.

When they weren't in motion, they looked nervous as they stood still, as if they were determined to determine where they needed to go next before doing the whole thing over again. There were black and white stripes and hoofs and horns and beards seemingly as far as the eye could see and as close to the car as about ten feet away. There was no other kind of animal in sight and it was impossible to not be fixated on the hundreds and hundreds of skittish looking prey milling about so close to where we were.

It kept on going. And it got more chaotic as it did. After the scene above we headed down to the bank of a saltwater lake and watched wildebeest and zebra cross from left to right in what seemed like a panicked rush. When they'd finished crossing the shallows of the lake, kicking up water and mud by young and old creatures alike they headed up a small hill at the other side of the lake and up on to the savannah. 

Then, and for a reason not entirely discernible to us, they all headed back the way they had come, a torrent of hoofs pouring down to the lake again and then rushing two by two or in threes or single file back to where they had just came from. Bulls. Cows. Calves. All for no obvious reason now running back in front of us from right to left. No prey followed the end of the herd. They just went back to where they had come from just some maybe 15 or 20 minutes earlier.

I don't know exactly how many wildebeest and zebra we saw that afternoon because it's just difficult to estimate numbers when they are in such herds but let's say it was maybe 30,000 animals and even that seems too high to me. I can't imagine what a herd of more than two million animals would look like. It was exhausting watching this hurried parade for maybe close to an hour. I can't imagine how many animals would be in a herd of the sizes they can get to in the summer months. Our guide told us in July or August the herd of wildebeest would be kilometers long. I just can't believe how spectacular it would be to experience that number of animals flying by at top speed. It must be staggering.

I had absolutely no expectations that we would see something like this so to find what I can only refer to here as a dress rehearsal for the summer months was such a treat. These animals are not social in the way elephants or cats are. I would imagine this parade of thousands is about as spectacular as it gets with zebra and wildebeest. 

Zebra and wildebeest streaming down the hill single file (mostly).

Running in a pack. Not sure where to but there was lots of running.

Single zebra in full gallop. My best wildebeest pic is the cover photo of this post.

At least one zebra didn't make it though.

I don't know if the zebra and wildebeest we saw that afternoon running in large herds were on the run from predators but shortly after we left the shore of the lake where we watched our zebra crossing scene we got a very real reminder that predators are out there. No, we didn't see a kill like we'd been hoping to see but we didn't miss it by much.

What we found was a dead zebra presided over by a single hyena and at least 20 or so vultures. It was a scene not for the faint of heart necessarily but we were far enough away that we couldn't see much of the details or smell any of the smells. Our new super duper camera served as both our binoculars and as a recorder of the event for the better part of the next hour.

When a lion or cheetah or leopard kills its prey, the death will be fairly clean and fairly quick. They'll generally go for the jugular (literally) and make it a last as little time as it can last. Then they can get on with the eating the way they want to. Dogs, like African wild dogs, jackals or hyena, are not so efficient, probably because they lack the size and agility of the cats. They may take several bites at an animal to weaken it or even might use their nails on their paws to slash at the stomach area. Sometimes this last strategy might not kill the target of the hunt but might debilitate the animal almost completely. In this case, the hunters might actually start eating their prey before the animal is even dead.

What I've just described is typical of a pack hunt, where a number of pack members might be attacking a single animal. I'm not sure how the hyena we came across actually killed the zebra we saw it with, but I can tell you what it did after we came upon the scene.

The hyena with the kill. I guess the zebra behind are making sure they keep an eye on him.

We watched two things for what seemed like a very long time in this part of the park: (1) the hyena tugging at the carcass of the zebra as if it was looking for something specific and (2) the hyena vigilantly chasing away the encroaching vultures again and again and again. There's absolutely no way that hyena was letting those vultures anywhere near his meal, except maybe when they grabbed and fought over what was probably some entrails off to the left of the carcass, lending credibility to my theory about the hyena having slashed open the stomach of the zebra.

As far as I am aware, hyenas only have paws and a set of bone crunching jaws with which to open up an animal and get at what they want. But from afar, it seemed like the predator here was carefully peeling back the skin of the zebra to get at what it wanted. I'm not kidding, it appeared to be expertly skinning the animal (see the photo at the end of this post). Once the hide was separated from the rump of the zebra, we could see the ribcage of the animal and the hyena kept going. At this point, we began to speculate about what was likely a quest for some organ meat, right before the hyena emerged with what I can only assume was the liver of the zebra. It was bigger than the head of the hyena and when it had it between its jaws, it left the kill site to go feast. 

The final extraction all happened so fast that all I have to show for the this event is the picture below, which I debated including in this post because really the vultures are the only creatures in focus but ended up doing it because it shows the relative size of what the hyena was looking for all that time and it's just stunning to me still that this animal would get that size chunk of meat out of a zebra. Note some of the vultures are either enthralled by what the hyena has in its mouth or are actually just making sure that he's leaving the rest of the zebra for them.

What happened next represented the most voracious feeding frenzy I have ever seen in person. As soon as it was obvious that the hyena had abandoned the enormous fresh kill, about 20 or 30 vultures pounced on it with a kind of bloodlust that can only really be brought about by the opportunity to gorge on something while hungry knowing that the moment to get your fill would soon pass. The ferocity of the mass of feathers, beaks, necks and dust was shocking. It was every bird for itself and it didn't seem that they cared what they were tearing and jabbing at or what they were climbing over or stepping on to get at what might end up being a tiny scrap of food.

There were so many birds on top of the fresh zebra that you can barely see any tiny piece of what seconds earlier was a kill that had been touched only by the jaws and paws of a hyena. You can only just see a portion of the zebra's front legs in the photograph below and even then it is obscured by the dust that is being whipped up around the scene by flapping wings and talons tearing at anything they can get a hold of. The only vulture not focused on the carcass is the one in the foreground and that's because it clearly has a piece of zebra innards in its beak.

To see this happen live was impressive. I've never witnessed a scene so opportunistic as those vultures tearing at that zebra. It imparted in me a new kind of respect for these birds. Like a healthy respect that I don't ever want to go against a pack of these things in the wild. 

I'll say this: the vultures were right to act with the kind of urgency that they showed because pretty soon after the hyena had eaten just what he wanted out of the liver (or whatever it actually was), he was back chasing them off again, I guess back for seconds or to just hoard the kill for himself (or herself) for a while. We'd had enough. It was getting close to 6 p.m. and there was a Kilimanjaro or Safari beer (or both!) with my name on it back at our camp. We figured we'd seen all we could see in our time there and had to get back before dinner.

Five parks; five unique African experiences. Cats at Masai Mara; Rhinos at Lake Nakuru; Elephants and Kilimanjaro at Amboseli; birds and giraffes at Lake Manyara; and now a mini wildebeest migration, and the most gory kill site we'd seen to date, at Serengeti. This portion of the world is so rich in wildlife that I'm sure despite everything that we'd seen in the first five parks we visited in February, we haven't even scratched the surface. I know I could do this sort of thing every day for a month or more on end. I don't think I'd ever get tired of this place.  Unfortunately at this point, the end was in sight. One more park to go. After another night in our unprotected pimbi tent at the end of the row.

"Your shower is ready!"

Up and at 'em, a quick breakfast and off to Ngorongoro.

One last look at the hyena and its kill. Check out the way the skin is peeled back off the carcass.

Lake Nakuru

The last time we were in Africa, we failed to see a rhinoceros. If there was a place where we thought we stood a good chance of seeing one or two of those animals up close on this year's trip, it was Lake Nakuru National Park in Kenya, the second stop on our six park tour in Kenya and Tanzania. On our last morning at our camp outside Masai Mara National Reserve, we found out that Simon, our server at mealtimes, was from Nakuru. We asked him if we would see rhinos at Lake Nakuru. 

His response: "Yes. It's a fenced park." 

He's right. Nakuru is fenced.

It took us six and a half hours to get from Nairobi to Masai Mara, including the last 2-1/2 hours on a dirt road in the process of being converted to a paved road. We went out the same way we went in, meaning for the second time in three days, we'd get a two plus hours long African massage thrown into our vacation package for free. Score!

If we thought our ride to Masai Mara was long, we were unfortunately in for a slightly longer one to Lake Nakuru. If you ever make the same trip we did to Kenya, be prepared for a lot of sitting in cars. The trip to Nakuru took us about nine hours, albeit with a planned stop for lunch and an unplanned stop to change a flat tire somewhere on the 2-1/2 hour long dirt road portion. Luckily we had two spares. We stood within about 100 feet of some dude chopping trees on the side of the road with an axe in the middle of nowhere while our driver and guide took care of the flat. After maybe 15 minutes we were off again.

The edge of Lake Nakuru with the dead trees killed by the rising water levels.

Lake Nakuru National Park is a totally different sort of environment from the one we found at Masai Mara. No endless plains of grass here. Instead we found a lot of the same sort of African bush type landscape that we found in Botswana along with some more densely forested parts. It's also a lot smaller than Masai Mara; at just 73 square miles it's only about 15% of the total size of the endless savannah we saw from ground level and aloft just a couple of days prior. Oh, and there's a saltwater lake too. A big one. Hence the name.

Saltwater lake meant one thing to us: flamingos!!! In case you are not familiar with our history with flamingos in the wild, let me bring you up to speed. A little more than three years ago, we took a December trip down to the Florida Keys and the Everglades. We saw a ton of alligators but zero flamingos. Turns out we planned poorly and went to the wrong part. But that miss (and the associated accompanying regret) affected us. We were determined to see flamingos in the wild from that moment.

Fast forward about a year and a half to the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador. On our last full day in the Islands (after not seeing any in Africa the first time between those two trips I might add) we managed to watch two flamingos feeding in a lagoon for 30 to 45 minutes. I wrote at that time that seeing these two at sunset almost made up for the misses in Florida in 2014 and Africa in 2015. I lied. I still wanted more. So in what seemed like a sure thing, last January we made our way down to the Rio Lagartos Biosphere in the Yucatan in Mexico. They are supposed to have 50,000 non-migratory flamingos there. We saw less than 50. Not less than 50,000. Less than 50!

Lake Nakuru had the potential to make up for all that. But we got some discouraging news when we arrived. Over the last couple of years, increased rainfall and snow runoff due to climate change has irreversibly changed Lake Nakuru. As the Lake has absorbed more water, the salinity level has decreased and the water level has risen. Neither is good for the flamingos and the rising water level is especially not good for the trees that used to be by the side of the Lake but are now dead in what is now the edge of the Lake. They need freshwater; they can't survive in the saltwater. The scene (shown above) is eerie, especially in the light of a coming storm that we saw in our first hour or so driving around in the Park.

Despite the climate changed Lake, we did see flamingos at Nakuru. A lot of flamingos. But we didn't see them close enough to make out individuals and they weren't blanketing the Lake in the thousands like we heard they used to. I saw some fuzzy glimpses of the strange parading mating dances they engage in through my camera but not enough to even get a good picture of them with a line of pelicans in the foreground. The flamingo quest would go on. These things are elusive. This didn't satisfy my need to see them in the wild.

The best flamingo pic of the trip. The quest to see these things up close in large numbers continues.

We got a lot luckier with Nakuru's other famous residents. Simon was right. We did see rhinos. A lot of rhinos. And up close too.

There are two species of rhino living in Africa, the black rhino and the white rhino. They are distinguished from one another in a variety of ways, including how they walk with their young and the shape of their body. But the easiest way for me to tell black from white (because both are grey in color) is by the shape of their mouth. White rhinos are called white rhinos because of an English speaking misinterpretation of the original name given to these creatures; they were originally called "weit" which is an Afrikaans word meaning wide because the white rhino has a wide mouth. The black rhino, which was called black because there was a white one already out there I guess, has a hook shaped lip. Granted, this type of identification only really works up close, although the white rhino tends to graze on grass while the black tends to eat leaves off shrubs so if they are eating, you may be able to name one from afar.

Both species are endangered. There are approximately 5,000 black rhinos in the world today. 95% of these can be found in Kenya, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. White rhinos are a little more plentiful, although only in the southern subspecies. There are approximately 20,000 southern white rhinos out there in the wild and they, like their black cousins, are also most frequently found in Kenya, Namibia, South African and Zimbabwe. We were in a good spot to find both black and southern white rhinos, if you consider looking for one of 5,000 or 20,000 individuals across more than one million square miles an easy task.

A couple of notes on the white rhino. The southern white rhino was thought to be extinct in the 19th century, a victim of poaching for trophies and their horns, which some cultures consider an aphrodisiac. Then in 1896 about 100 were found in the wild in South Africa and the conservation effort to save the southern white rhino started in earnest. This species clawing its way back from 100 to 20,000 is for sure a huge success story. Unfortunately, the same thing can't be said for the northern white rhino. As of the writing of this post, there are only three known members of this species alive in the world and I read the other day that one of the three is sick. They are all in captivity in Kenya.

We saw our first rhinos (yes, plural) almost as soon as we passed through the gates of Lake Nakuru National Park. Two single white rhinos and a mother and baby which our guide told us were black rhinos but which disappeared soon after we saw them. Yes, we lost sight of what would likely be a 2,000 pound animal and her baby on what was mostly a flat piece of land. Africa's like that sometimes.

In my first post about this trip, I described the difference between a National Park and a National Reserve. We enjoyed a lot of freedom in Masai Mara National Reserve to follow animals, mostly due to the vast network of established or semi-established roads or trails. We did not enjoy the same freedom in the Parks and we felt the effects of the more restricted rules almost as soon as we arrived at Nakuru. Yes, we saw four rhinos, but by the time we had driven down a one way road to get closer to the closest two in our view, the mother and baby were gone.

For a first sighting of a rhino in the wild, having what looked to me to be a really good sized male walk slowly in front of our car and then graze leisurely about maybe 100 feet away was a thrill. These things are absolutely huge and they are like tanks. They are large like hippos (larger actually) but they don't look fat like hippos do. I'm confident if this animal decided to charge our car it could have easily capsized it. It's amazing they can survive and get this big just munching on grass all day.

We got to Nakuru just before 4:30 pm so couldn't linger too much around our first rhinos. We needed to make it to our lodge, which was located in the Park but a good distance away, before dark. So we left behind what we hoped wouldn't be our last rhino in the less than 24 hours that we had to spend in the Park.

Jurassic Park Moment No. 1. Late afternoon with Lake Nakuru in the background.

It wasn't. On the way to our lodge, we saw what our group referred to as our first "Jurassic Park moment" where we saw a number of different species of animals on the move together in pretty sizable herds, a reference to the first time Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler see the dinosaurs recreated in the movie for the first time. We had a similar experience in Namibia two and a half years ago when we looked out the front of our boat just after sitting down to lunch and saw what seemed to be hundreds of elephants walking and eating in large family groups. The scene at Nakuru, which featured African buffalo, zebra and seven white rhinos set between a gap in the trees with the edge of Lake Nakuru in the background, was no less awesome.

I had felt pretty confident that we'd see some rhinos at Lake Nakuru. It is, after all, what they are known for. But 11 in the first day? And on the move the way they were when we saw them? Nothing really set me up for a sighting this good.

A closer look at Jurassic Park Moment No. 1 showing three very large white rhinos.

The next morning, Nakuru would do better.

If there was any criticism to offer of our first day of rhino sightings, it would be that most of them were pretty elusive and the sky was kind of overcast. Sure we got an up close look at one as soon as we drove into the Park but after ambling in front of our car, he kept going away from us. I feel terrible even just writing these words. Most people would be lucky to see the kind of sight we saw that late afternoon and here I am complaining about it.

But then again, how does seeing two groups of rhino (both with babies) in the early morning sunlight with pretty much nobody else in the world around sound?

I wrote in my blog post about Masai Mara that I went to Africa this year with a top ten list of unseen species. Rhino was number one. The looks we got at a mother and baby and then two more adults and another baby were some of the best looks we got at any species on this trip.

There's a lot of value sometimes in getting up early for a game drive in Africa. There's also a lot of value in staying really near (or inside even) the park you are going to drive around in. Combine an early start with a camp really near some wildlife and you might get the kind of experience we had with these rhinos first thing in the morning. 

It is pretty difficult to appreciate just how big some animals on our planet are. You just have to get up close to them. For most large animals, that means you have to either get to a zoo somewhere or find a way to get to Africa. And zoos are in no way comparable to what you will find in the wild. There's no substitute for watching a large mammal free of captivity living without restraints or restrictions. It's amazing that there are people out there who want to kill these things just so they can say they killed one.

If you are a poacher, by the way, I don't really know how proud of yourself you can be for killing a rhino. These creatures are so gentle and docile that it doesn't seem like much of a challenge. We drove right up to the mother and baby shown above and watched them eat maybe 20 feet from our car. Sure, we were checked out by mom before she resumed tearing grass out of the ground (and it was so absolutely quiet that you could hear the sound of every bite) and went about paying like zero attention to us. It was the sound and the proximity that made this animal encounter perhaps the most intimate of the entire two week trip.

Three white rhino. You can see the wide mouth really clearly in the lead rhino in this picture.

Mother grazing.

Baby rhino. Maybe the best look we got at any baby of any species on the trip. And there were a lot.

Our rhino encounter in the early morning stillness wasn't the only incredible surprise we had on the way out of Lake Nakuru. I promised in my Masai Mara post that I would relate the details of any can't miss encounter with animals in any of the parks, even if those animals didn't fit into the major theme of the particular park. Nakuru's themes were definitely rhinos and another missed opportunity with flamingos. Before there were rhinos that morning, there were hyenas.

Depending on what species are around a kill, there's a pecking order to determine who gets a shot at the carcass in what order. Animals that can kill are the first to get their fill, followed by the scavengers, although animals that can kill other animals will happily slide into the scavenger spot if they are hungry enough or just feel like it. Hyenas can kill and they can scavenge. They can chase away the jackals and the birds and maybe even a cheetah and they are definitely no match for a lion. But after everyone has picked the skeleton clean, the hyenas are the only ones who can finish the job off. Because they can actually eat the bones.

Looking sneaky. They pretty much always do.

There are few animals with the jaw pressure of a hyena. And even those that have similar or superior jaw power, like crocodiles, don't eat the bones of animals quite the way hyenas do. They can survive on these things if they have to and have digestive systems powerful enough to draw nutrition from such a diet. If you are in the wilderness in Africa and come across some white poop, guaranteed it's from a hyena that's just eaten a meal of bones.

On the prettiness scale, the hyena has to be one of the ugliest animals out there. I've written in the last two weeks about the Big Five, the five most difficult animals to hunt on foot. The spotted hyena, which is the only species of hyena we saw, has the distinction of being one of Africa's Ugly Five, a far less notable and desirable list to occupy. Their sneaky, hunched nature combined with their scavenger's mentality and sometimes maniacal looking faces gets them on a list with the wildebeest, the lappet-faced vulture, the marabou stork and the warthog. Not exactly a great list to be on.

I was dying to see a lot of hyenas on this trip. I don't think they are that ugly but they are for sure one of the less noble looking animals we found. On our way down to Lake Nakuru that Wednesday morning, we came across maybe seven or eight of these animals moving through the yellowish grass that almost matched the color of their fur. We saw a lone hyena and then a group of two adults with a younger pup and then four more gathered around what had obviously been a kill site.

Although these hyenas were pretty close to our car and didn't scatter when we approached and stopped, it wasn't what we saw that morning that was notable, it was what we heard: the crunching of bones, a slow creaking of something solid followed by a crack as the skull of an animal gave way beneath the might of the hyena's teeth. If it was the late morning or afternoon, we likely wouldn't have seen these animals by the side of the road; it would have been too hot. But we for sure wouldn't have heard them breaking bones down into food; there would have been too many other noises, most likely from other vehicles with tourists like us in them. We got extremely lucky I think.

Breaking bones. Big bones. Look at the teeth!

After our encounter with the hyenas, some 30 minutes to an hour spent with rhinos as close as we could have wished for and another missed opportunity with the flamingos, it was time to say goodbye to Lake Nakuru. It produced an experience that was totally unlike Masai Mara in almost every way. It is almost unfair to compare the two places because they were so different. If Masai Mara was our favorite (and it was) our trip wouldn't have been anywhere near as good without Lake Nakuru. Oddly enough, we were able to say that about most of the parks we visited after Masai Mara. We'd never see another white rhino after Nakuru. It was a species totally unique to that location for us.

If you ever get lucky enough to see a rhino in the wild, you may see a little bird on each one seemingly inseparable from its large host. These birds (which you might also see on African buffalo) are red-billed oxpeckers, so named for their red bills although they also have yellow-rimmed eyes with red pupils which are pretty striking against their brown feathers. The cover picture of this blog post shows a closeup of the one we saw on the mother rhino in the early morning. These birds feed off the insects that they find on the hides of large herd animals, including rhinos. They will eat flies and maggots but their favorite food are ticks, which are typically filled with blood. I assumed that the oxpecker assumed a symbiotic relationship with the rhino, with the bird getting a moving cafeteria of sorts and the rhino getting rid of unwanted pests. Turns out that's not necessarily the case. The birds really want the blood and they have been known to keep wounds open on their hosts just so they can keep feeding on the food they love the most. 

Pretty macabre stuff. I'll leave you with that thought. On to Amboseli.