In a round:- Wimoweh, wimoweh, wimoweh...
An Elephant
Ok so I wasn’t in a jungle but any excuse to get that song in (pop anorak alert, check out the REM cover of it).
Well it’s not all work work work you know. On my weekend I decided that I should head out to one of the national parks to see some wildlife. So off I ventured 3 hours south of Kola to Tsavo, there are two national parks in the area Tsavo West and East. I headed to the West as it was more accessible for me.
I thought that because I had seen nature programmes then I had seen all the animals before, but it’s not until you see them in the flesh that you really appreciate how fantastic, ridiculous and amazing they really are. Within 5 minutes of being in the park we drove by a giraffe, how do those spindly legs manage to keep it upright, I don’t know? Ostriches were another funny one, they are massive. The best sight of all was in the evening I sat down for dinner and was trying to choose my meal and looked out to the watering hole to see a herd of elephants having a bit of drink. After a few minutes they just wandered off in single file out into the bush. Beautiful.
A gruesome little tale is that the lions at Tsavo are famous for being the most aggressive. This was proven in the 19th century when 140 railway workers were killed in a single year by two man-eaters. The man who trapped them and killed them was Colonel JH Patterson, if you want to find out more he wrote a book called The Man-Eaters of Tsavo.
I was disappointed not to see a lion but then again maybe it was for the best, wimoweh, wimoweh...
Penguin.
I was lucky enough to spent time here over Xmas and was fabulous - I had a close encounter with a leopard at 4am! eek a very beautiful place.
Posted by: Heather | March 11, 2009 at 06:46 PM