November 11 &12, 2008 – Safari at Tsavo East National Park

We entered the park around 11:30 and immediately began our first game drive. The route took us from south gate of the park to our lodge at the north end. The park is 13,747 sq km in area at an altitude of 1388 ft. The iron rich soil was a deep rust color and the roads were graded gravel & dirt complete with potholes, ribs and pools of water in dips in the road making for a very bumpy ride. The van’s roof had been raised so we could stand up for better viewing. The most plentiful animal to be seen everywhere was the impala. Very early in the drive we came across 3 lions resting under a tree. This was quite a surprise because there hadn’t been lion sightings recently. Our van was about 20 ft away from the lions so we had quite good viewing of these lazy cats napping. We saw several herds of elephant and zebra which were rust colored from the dirt. Other animals viewed were ostrich, baboon, hippo, lizard, crocodile, water buck, kudu, giraffe, gazelle, warthog and a cute little antelope named dik dik. The dik dik is tiny, about the size of a miniature greyhound and weighs less than 10 pounds. There was quite a profusion of birds that were quite colorful.



At about 2:30 we arrived at Galdessa Lodge which is inside the park and was our home for the night. We were late for lunch but they served us anyway. Before we ate we got a briefing about the place and were told that it wasn’t a fenced property, wild animals are around and that we had to have a guide even to walk between the lodge and our cabins. There is a wild elephant named Tusker that is around quite a bit and he is not to be messed with. The lodge and cabins are along a river which was dry until a few days before but was raging from recent rains in the mountains. The water was the same deep rust color as the soil. After lunch we checked in and were taken to our cabins. As we got to our cabin #10 we came across Tusker standing on the path between it and #9 so we were guided around the back side to get in the room. Each cabin consisted of a thatched roof building with screened sides and a tent front. Each had a bedroom, shower & bathroom and separate toilet. Our shower was a hanging canvas bag that would be filled with warm water for us when we returned from the afternoon game drive. The bed had mosquito netting around it and the lighting was solar. From our room we could see hippos on the far side of the river. We had about an hour to rest up and then were gathered up for a drive from 4:00 until sunset. A lot of this drive was along the river which had some beautiful falls. The animal viewing was excellent although we had to keep to the roads and stay in the vehicles. We returned at sunset and went to our rooms to shower and rest up a bit. At 7:30 we were picked up by vehicle because you can’t walk at night and were led from the cabins to the truck by a Maasai guard carrying a small spear. We had all brought wine from the ship (and a bottle of Lemoncello commandeered from the casino bar the previous night by one of the gals) which the lodge had put in the cooler for us and we had a cocktail party with Tusker just outside the room munching on foliage and he was only about 15 ft from the porch. We had a nice dinner and more wine but unfortunately it was steak & potatoes instead of a pan African meal that I would have preferred. They didn’t even charge corkage for the wines. At shortly after 10:00 they turn off the generator and we were taken back to our rooms. About 20 ft from our porch, just down the hill towards the river, there was Tusker eating leaves from a tree. It had been dry for several weeks so there weren’t any mosquitoes but we used the netting to keep the beetles and moths away.


We were awakened at 6:00am and at 7:00 taken to the lodge for a full breakfast. At 7:30 we said our good byes and “asante sana” (thank you) to the wonderful staff and headed out for our final game drive. The staff was all very friendly and we really enjoyed our stay at Galdessa. We headed out in a different direction from the previous day seeing more animals, a swamp land and a dry desert type area before getting back to the red clay. On this drive we saw quite a number of giraffe and a mother baboon with her baby clutched to her belly. We exited the park at noon from a northwestern gate and headed back to the ship.