Return to Meru National Park

I have been enthusiastic about Meru all this year and here I am again.  This park just keeps delivering and has really given my guests and I some wonderful wildlife this season.  

We arrived at Kina airfield on our first day and luckily I had told everyone to un-pack their cameras and binoculars for the drive to camp because we would be seeing game. Sure enough we found a couple of male cheetah in the shade of an acacia looking at an impala buck.  

It was almost mid day and the sun was hot but I could see that they were hungry so we spent a good while with them as they eyed up the options and then eventually lay down in the shade for a sleep. Just too hot to hunt.  That afternoon we tried to find them again but they had moved on, hopefully finding a meal.  

We did however find a small pride of lion out on the plains and spent the evening watching them sleep and enjoying our first sundowner Tusker as the sun set behind the Nyambene Hills.  A great start to our safari with some wonderful pictures to take home at the end of the day.

Every park in Africa that I have had the pleasure to visit has its own special feel to it, giving each a distinct character and flavour.  The diversity of features found here in Meru from the open plains with golden grasses to the cool green swamps and their towering raffia palms. From the rounded granite kopjes lifting above the grey coloured bush to the distant blue ridges of the volcanic Nyambeni hills in the west.  All this and the gift of water;  rivers and streams cutting through the dry bush and brittle grasses bringing the promise of life to tree and animal alike,  pools filled with hippo and sandy banks with crocodile.  Sausage trees and baobabs, acacia and mahogany, tamarind and doum palm marking the course of the rivers with a verdant green.  

Meru has a wonderful character which I have come to enjoy and I will certainly be bringing more of my guests to introduce them to this beautiful and alluring park.

From the red dust covering the rough bodies of the elephants to the lesser kudu with white flashing tails as they bound into cover we have had some great game viewing.  The reticulated giraffe, tall and graceful but dwarfed by the towering doum palms, the white rhino we saw at mid-day, standing in the shade of a tall acacia, the hyena we heard, early this morning as we were getting up before dawn to prepare for our game drive.  The hoary old bull buffalo, with their hanging judge look and moist noses glaring at my truck as if challenging me to dare....The baboons, climbing higher into scrubby trees to get a better look at us and then the young ones chasing each other around in play as their mothers keep a wary eye out.

 Tomorrow we head out for our next leg of the safari, a drive to Lewa Downs on the other side of the Nyambeni Hills and more adventures.  This is my last trip to Meru this year but I will certainly be back next year and am already missing it!