Last stop, Amboseli

Our final safari destination was Amboseli National Park. It started with a daunting day-long drive from Lake Nakuru leaving at 7:30am, through Nairobi, and finally arriving at Amboseli in the late afternoon.

Amboseli is renowned for elephants, and we expected to see heaps. When we finally arrived, our guide explained that numbers were down because of the drought the previous year. After missing out on the genuine flamingo experience, once we heard this we were prepared to be disappointed. But we couldn't have been more wrong.

Within minutes of arriving, we were confronted by a mass migration of elephants. There are around 250 in total, and they crossed the tracks mere metres from our van. Having spotted 1 elephant there, 5 elephants here in Masai Mara, this was an unbelievable experience and probably the highlight of the whole safari.

The Sopa Lodge was swarming with really playful monkeys. Our first evening, we watched a couple of monkeys wrestling each other and this other one below casually kicking back and enjoying the action.

The next day we headed out for another game drive. We saw heaps of elephants, zebras, hippos, gazelles, warthogs, hyenas, and various cool-looking birds.

After lunch, everyone was pretty worn out and we retired to the lodge. The monkeys provided more entertainment, this time hurling themselves from the tops of trees and grabbing the lowest branch on the way down, which would bend down and slingshot them back into the air. Really fun to watch.

Amboseli provides great views of Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa. We were told not to leave without getting a photo of an elephant in front of it, but throughout our stay the peak was submerged in cloud cover and eluded us. But as luck would have it, once we'd left and were on our way home, the clouds lifted and we passed a few rogue elephants. We got our shot!

With our safari finally complete, we headed back to Nairobi for 1 more night in a resort before departing. I left for home, and Liz headed for Paris!

Overall, Amboseli was the highlight of the safari for me. The experience with 250 elephants was breathtaking. And while it didn't seem that there was much new at the time, that was because it was the last park we visited. The only animals we didn't see at Amboseli were lions, and the volume of most animals were more than the other parks.

Chris