Salt Lick Lodge

We arose (that's the way posh people wake up) early, were fed more good food and met up with Alfonse for our journey to Tsavo East, with only a quick stop at Taita Hills to pick up our packed lunches.

The journey to Tsavo East was quite interesting. Rivers had appeared under bridges that in the previous day were dry. In fact I did wonder what the some of the bridges were for. As mentioned previously, most of the road are dirt tracks and our journey was littered with buses and trucks which had sunken into the muddy roads. At one inundated river a few cheeky entrepreneurs tried to relieve Alfonse of some money by walking through the flooded road, showing the safe route. Alfonse was having none of it and was quite happy to charge across Victoria Falls in his bus if he thought it would shave a nano second on our journey time.

Red Elephants?

After entry to the game reserve the first animal spotted was a Tawny Eagle, he was happily tucking into a hare that he had either killed or found on the ground about 75 yards from the road. Then we happened across quite a large monitor lizard walking around along side the track. We found plenty of Impala and also Grants Gazelle as we travelled the game park. But it wasn't too long before we saw our first Elephants. I did start to worry about the quality of the Tusker beer had been drinking the previous night as the elephants appeared to be red in colour. This was not a hallucination, but was because of the soil that the Elephants had thrown over themselves to try and keep parasites at bay. The Zebra that we saw in this park also had a red tinge to them.

We headed off in the direction of the River Tsavo in the hope of crossing it at a bridge and moving on to see Hippo and Crocodile. However, because of last nights rain, the bridge was submerged in a good few feet of fast flowing river. Alfonse was in favour of trying to cross anyway, but we soon talked him out of that. It didn't look safe enough for a tank to cross let alone our little bus. We found a spot near the river and got out to stretch our legs and have lunch. It was at this point that I began to wonder about the sanity of our guide. Here we are, sitting next to a crocodile and hippo infested river, in a spot obviously used by elephants (dung everywhere) as a watering hole with lots of cover for the Lions and other wild animals to watch our every move without themselves being spotted. I think I was more worried about elephant than any thing else. We were in the only clearing in sight that gave access to the river, it was obviously used by elephants, and we were sat between them and what they wanted. I don't think I want to be in between an angry elephant and his drink.

Grants Gazelle

I was glad to get back into the bus. We set off following the river and along the way spotted Ostrich, Giraffe and more Red Elephants. Then we spotted something rather exciting. A Red Rhino. Lisa was the first to spot him. He was actually a Black Rhino, but he too was covered in red dust. He walked towards us for a few seconds and then promptly run off into the bush zigzagging as he went. Within a minute he was out of sight. Alfonse seemed to get more excited than the rest of us and he later told us that in 21 years of being a guide, that was only the second Rhino he had ever spotted in Tsavo. So well spotted Lisa!

The ride back to the lodge, was pretty uneventful, saw lots more Impala, Guinea Fowl, Lizards and common wildlife.

Arriving at the lodge we freshened up, fed ourselves more good food, and got to bed early as we had arranged to meet up at dawn for a morning game drive before getting breakfast.