Isiolo is hardly one's idea of an attractive northern town. In a word, it's a dump, acrawl with Somali "tradesmen" who descend upon your vehicle like vultures to a carcass when you stop to sign in at the police check at the end of the tarmac road. But the nice thing about going to Samburu is that the road up to Isiolo is tarmac, and in good to very good (by Kenya standards, of course) condition.
We went around the western side of Mount Kenya, passing through Naro Moru and Nanyuki. The latter remains a pleasant, well-organized northern town. Both my partner and I have a certain affection for it. We stopped for petrol and had tea and mendazi in a shop off the main road. We had left Nairobi very early in the morning to avoid the traffic. Clouds covered the sky. Mount Kenya was completely obscured. But as soon as we were as far north as Naro Moru, the clouds disappeared and we had beautifully clear skies. Even the Mountain came out to make a brief appearance.
The road beyond Isiolo is a terror: washboard and rutting that shakes loose every screw and bolt in the car. It is a six-aspirin drive from Isiolo to the campsite in Samburu. Some stretches of the road have a bush bypass running parallel that offers some relief, but the road into the Buffalo Springs and Samburu Reserves is also terrible. The main road is the truck route to Marsabit and on into Ethiopia; one might think they could at least grade it once in a while, but no. And, of course, the big trucks and even the tourist minivans fly down the road at 100 kph, making the corrugation even worse.
Samburu was dry. Dust dry. The trees and plants of this northern region had received no rain in eighteen months. Some of the acacias around Isiolo were flowering--lovely white and yellow flowers, but for the most part the landscape was a rugged expanse of dried limbs, scruffy tufts of tough grey grass, tangles of desiccated twigs and limbs. Everything, flora and fauna, was under stress from the ongoing drought. The acacias were reduced to bristling fortresses of branch and thorn. Only along the river did the towering Acacia Elatior provide an overhanging canopy of green shade.
The river, the Ewaso Ng'iro, is the life-sustaining thread of muddy water that begins hundreds of kilometres away in the Aberdares. When Ralph was in Samburu in March, the river had stopped flowing. All animals depended on the elephants to dig deep into the sand of the riverbed to reveal the water that seeped through the soil along the river's course. Just before our safari to the north, the Aberdares had been getting heavy rains. The Ewaso Ng'iro was proof of that: a swiftly flowing, wide and, in places, deep river now cut its way across the Reserve. This was fortunate for us, because the continuing dry conditions forced the animals to come to the river to drink. Even such hardy desert creatures as the Beisa oryx were coming to the river in the mornings.
You don't get a good view of the river until you reach the bridge just before the campsite. It was a relief to see it flowing so high. Our buddies amongst the rangers were there at the gate and we had an easy time dealing with the bookkeeping niceties of registering and paying for the camping. They also turned a blind eye to our comings and goings outside official Reserve hours (6:30 a.m. is far too late to go out for a morning's shooting). Since our 1990 safari there have been changes at Samburu, good and bad. On the good side is the completion of pit latrines. It's about time. On the bad side is the extension of the permanent tents even into the campsite we used in 1990. There is almost nothing left for the private camper along the river. The permanent tents and staff serve the large groups that come in by cattle truck (twenty and thirty to a truck). Unfortunately, Samburu is on the route for the trucks--they come down from Lake Turkana. Not our idea of a way to see Africa.
We travelled north on a Friday, the day before Moi Day. That meant we had an unusually large number of private cars coming up for the holiday weekend, even though it's a six and a half hour drive. Just downstream, Saturday night, we had a Wahindi troop. They did not forget to bring their ghetto blasters.
Worse, much worse, was a contingent from Spain, nine of them in two Suzukis. They showed up just as the sun was setting. Loud, noisy. One of them, whom we thought of as "froggy," had a loud extremely obnoxious voice with the timbre of a croaking frog, and he sang and chanted and goaded the others into group songfests. They apparently had brought a supply of liquor as well. Two off-duty "rangers" had come by offering to "protect" the campsite during the night. We didn't bite, but the Iberian pack accepted the blandishments of these petty crooks and promptly got them plastered. These representatives of authority were thus of no help when we went over to ask that the noise cease (this at 11 p.m.). So, we packed up our tents and left, finally finding a spot away from the river that was open and very dusty. The winds came up and blew for the rest of the night. Not far away, what must have been a group of buddies who had decided to nip up to Samburu for the weekend kept us awake all night with a non-stop conversation that was still going on as we drove out for our morning shooting.
In 1990 we had serious problems with the troop of baboons that has taken up residence at the campsite. We had gone out our first afternoon leaving the big tent up and we returned to find it pummelled and pushed down. Even a few poles were bent. That night they stole all our dried soups. We had to hire a watchman to stay at our camp when we were out shooting (100 shillings a day). The biggest and cheekiest was a large male we named Bubba. My partner managed to lock him in his car when the animal jumped in for a close inspection and Bubba bit a piece out of one of our plates. We kept it as a memento. This trip, Bubba was not alone. We couldn't be sure of an identification because the troop now had several large, aggressive males. But the cheekiest this time were the females, one especially who carried an infant on her back and generally made a terrific nuisance of herself.
This troop now makes its living entirely from scavenging and stealing in the camps along the river. You dare not turn your back for an instant: they will dive in and grab anything that you leave lying about. They think nothing of jumping into the car. They are crafty and wonderfully observant.
Every morning when we returned from the shoot, we had to spend time and energy chasing off the baboons. They were instantly aware of our return and would start moving through the Butterfly campsite to see what they could snatch. They do run if you chase after them with a big stick. They will even come out of the fig tree if you throw a stick at them (I mean a big stick a couple of metres long). We had bought a slingshot in the US just for baboons. They also know that aiming gesture and will flee. All we had as ammunition at first were the little fruits of the fig tree. I got one large male right in the chest, but instead of running away, he hooted and came toward us, retreating only after we got up from our chairs and reached for the stick.
Samburu has much to offer. Once you get away from the campsite it is fascinating. One cannot drive off the tracks and roads (true everywhere, I think, except Masai Mara), but the tour vans stick to certain routes and always are looking for leopards. I saw two leopards in one day-the first no one else saw. But Ralph and I like Samburu for its uniquely northern and desert species-the Grevy's zebra, Beisa oryx, gerenuk, reticulated giraffe, and vulturine guinea fowl. We did not waste petrol and kilometres driving all over the place. We did not go to the other side of the river to visit Buffalo Springs. Instead, we stuck to the east side of Loitigor Hill, the open flats along the river, and the river itself. The morning run was always across the Hill. Here the dik-dik and gerenuk could be found in the early morning light. We saw both Kirk's and Gunther's dik-dik, though I did not get shots of the latter. They are highly territorial and stick to relatively small areas, so one can stay with them easily.
I noticed that all the animals were easier to approach than was the case in 1990. The drought had forced the Grevy's zebras, for instance, to come together in herds and make regular daily trips to the river for water. Usually-and this is a social organization quite different from the Burchell's zebras'-Grevy's stallions hold a territory and wait for females to come into it. This time we could get a little closer to the usually skittish Beisa oryx. They too came down to the river in the morning. There was one particular spot both oryx and zebra used as a regular watering place. The oryx is adapted to desert living, but the prolonged drought had made them dependent on the sustaining waters of the Ewaso Ng'iro.
Gerenuk obtain all the water they need from the acacia leaves they nibble all day long. Acacias with green leaves were growing sparser, however, and we found that many of the gerenuk had moved closer to the river in search of food. Animals such as the dik-dik seemed to be eating dried twigs and dead leaves. A family of elephants had moved far up the shoulder of Loitigor Hill one morning and I watched them eating the dried grass and thin branches of dried acacia, thorns and all. Another season without normal or better rainfall in Samburu will seriously stress the animals. And one good hard rain will transform the landscape almost instantly: the trees will flower and put out new leaves, the grasses and low shrubs will recarpet the sandy soil; it will look utterly different. For now, it was a harsh scene of greys, yellows, blacks, and browns. The unrelenting night winds kept the skies hazy with dust.
Near the river we did see evidence of hungry elephants. There are always dead trees near the river's banks, but I felt there were many more than I had seen in 1990. There is evidence of elephants' debarking trees all up and down the river. This they do only when there is nothing else to eat. I suppose in safer times, when poachers and human settlements were much fewer, Samburu's elephants would migrate to greener areas during times of drought.
One day, on my way up the main track that cuts across the Reserve I was forced to make a detour because a male and a female with youngster had knocked over an acacia tree and they and the tree blocked the road. They were eating the bark and the thorny, but leafy, limbs. Several days passed before the rangers got around to cutting up the tree and clearing the road.
Elephants come to the river every morning. They drink and then cross to the other side. In 1990 I watched them cross the river several times, but the only time I saw them at the river this trip they were quite a way upstream from me and too distant for a pleasing shot. But everything else was coming to the river too. At the so-called river-rafting point, I could take a good position for shooting upstream and have a continuing scene of watering oryx, Grevy's, impala, warthog, guinea fowl, vervet monkey, . . . .
I saw more crocodiles this time as well. In 1990 I had formed the impression that crocs in this stretch of the Ewaso Ng'iro didn't grow to much size, since their hunting opportunities would have been much fewer than those of their cousins in, say, the Mara. Not so. I saw several very large crocodiles basking in the sun this time. The river was full, and it may be that when it is low, as it was in 1990, the larger crocs move to the permanent waters of Buffalo Springs. There were many smaller crocs as well, anything from mere babies a half a metre long, to animals one or two metres in length. One lovely, juvenile-green croc loafed all morning on a sandbar right at the river-rafting watering point. There were always crocs along that part of the river, but I saw no hunting activity even with all the animals coming to the river's edge to drink.
One of the chief joys of the dry bush country of the north is the wide variety of birds. Not only helmeted guinea fowl, but the exquisite vulturine guinea fowl as well. They are gorgeous birds, but difficult to photograph because they are constantly moving and pecking over the ground. They too went to the river to drink, and every once in a while, they would actually stick their heads up.
I had first seen the golden-breasted starling in Tsavo in 1990. This is a large starling with a long tail. Its back and head are iridescent blue-green, but if you face it head on, you see a splendid golden-yellow breast, with just a splash of purple at the throat. I never got a picture. Here in Samburu we had seen some on the west side of the Hill, but I saw one (and only one) right along the main track. I was heading back to Bubba and the gang when I noticed a longtailed starling in an acacia. I stopped; it turned around and showed me its lovely golden front. Then it flew down the road. I backed up and gently worked my way in front of the thorn acacia in which it had landed. The starling was facing me, so I could see the golden and purple breast. I managed a few pictures as it did a bit of preening, and then it flew off. I didn't see another the rest of the trip.
Lilac-breasted rollers were all over the place, as usual, but I did not shoot any. I was not set up for birds, really; my longest lens was 420 mm. Except in those rare instances when you are successful in getting very close, a 500 mm is the minimum. Ralph and I both drool a bit over the prospect of an 800 mm f5.6. That would be ideal for birds. But shoot them or not, they were there. One afternoon I saw a Somali bee-eater and a little bee-eater. This latter I did photograph (I was very close) just for old time's sake. Hornbills, of course, were everywhere. From the ridge along the Hill predator birds of many different kinds swooped down in the early morning. The vultures seemed to like one particular acacia just downstream from the river-rafting point, and a few hundred metres upstream from the same point you could always find the Marabou storks.
For a short safari, Samburu was quite productive. We concentrated on a small area and stuck with a certain range of animals. The river was always a delight. Our mornings were all sunny, but by midday clouds would move in from the east and begin to pile up against the western horizon. Even so, on half the days we had light until sundown. It was, naturally, a dusty trip. We weren't worried about rain at night, so we didn't put the rain flies on our tents. Much cooler, but also much dustier: the night winds blew fine sand and dust into the tents. It was also a time of full moon, so the nights were bright. Bathing in the river, as we had done in 1990, wasn't much use since the water was so muddy. But the river went down noticeably in the days we were there and the water we collected for washing up grew cleaner every day.