Shimba Hills

Over the past week, people from M’s lab have been arriving each day including M’s close friend from med school, A. Most people are here just for a few days though A and another person will be here for the next 3.5 weeks. To say M was a little excited about A’s arrival is an understatement.

Since A is only going to be here a few weeks, we have several trips saved up that we were waiting to do when he arrived. So yesterday we set out for an all-day tour to Shimba Hills, a small national park about 1 hour from Diani. The park is known in particular for the Sable antelope which is found within Shimba Hills and nowhere else in the world. We also knew there was a chance to see cape buffalo, elephants, and giraffes but these are much more rare.

We went on a short game drive in the morning and saw the Sable Antelope as well as a lone cape buffalo. The buffalo was simply sitting in the road and examined us with a combination of disinterest and disgust before moseying off into the bush.

The Sable Antelope was actually a complete herd including a mature male (he’s the black one) and several babies.


We spent the remainder of the morning hiking to a waterfall where we saw river cockroaches and a few tadpoles. What the place lacked in animals though was offset by the beauty of the waterfall. M and A in a romantic waterfall interlude are shown below.


As we drove toward the lodge for lunch, M spotted the rear ends of 2 elephants and as we neared we realized that they actually had a baby with them. They protected it by keeping it between them and disappeared into the bush without a trace. We were so excited to see two of the big five on our first safari. (The “big five” that everyone wants to see on safari are buffalo, lion, elephant, rhino, and leopard).

We ate at the lodge which is designed into the trees to look like an enormous tree house. It is frankly inexplicable that this structure has not been completely consumed by termites that roam the jungle (and let me tell you, the bugs here could join the big five...) but we’re glad that they’re holding off for now.



As we began our afternoon game drive, we discussed how amazing it would be to see a giraffe but that we knew it would be a long shot. There are only 6 giraffes in the entire reserve (the climate is not ideal for them) so it was extremely unlikely. We drove around another hour or so before we came upon a pack of baboons and saw this little guy riding horseback on his mama:



We started heading for the park gate and I randomly said “Giraffe yuko wapi?” which means “where is the giraffe?”. Clearly this was a rhetorical question but less than 30 seconds later someone yelled “Giraffe!” and we found Geoffrey:



He was pretty far away but we could see him quite well through the binoculars. (Yes, we confirmed it was a HE, I’m married to a budding urologist). All in all an amazing day.