Visitors 9
Modified 8-Apr-19
Created 16-Jun-09
111 photos
The two Tsavo parks (east and west) are very large parks along the east end of the Kenyan/Tanzanian border, and straddling the main road from Nairobi to Mombasa. The West Tsavo park is the less frequently visited of the two and to my mind is the nicer. It is more remote, fewer tourists and just as many elephants and lions as any park in Kenya.
One of the bridge areas in West Tsavo is the location of the real life "Man Eaters of Tsavo", (the lions that ate the workers on the rail line) made famous by the movies and the book. It did actually happen, and the lions that are in the area today are the descendants of the pair that ravaged the area a century ago.
This area is somewhat unique in that the soil has a high level of iron content and as the iron rusts, it turns the ground a reddish color. The elephants dust themselves with the dirt and end up completely rust colored.
We were fortunate enough to take part in an elephant study in an area adjacent to this park (the Taita-Rukinga protected area) and spent time tracking the elephant herds as they transited from East Tsavo to the West side looking for food and water. Barbera McKnight was the principle investigator and taught us more about elephants than a person has a right to know. She's been there for well over 15 years. Yea Barb !!
In West Tsavo there is a lodge called Kilunguni. This is one of my favorite places - there is a water hole right beside the main deck of the lodge. You can sit, have your "sun-downers" and watch the animals come to the waterhole to drink. They come to you .... you don't have to go to them.
And in the morning, getting up, looking out the window and seeing the herds of buffalo and elephants come and go gives a whole new meaning to the idea of "starting the day off right".
