Our first day in Africa, after flying into Nairobi the previous night, we drove 97 miles north to the Serena Mountain Lodge in Mount Kenya National Park. Along the drive we stopped at a souvenir store and found epauletted fruit bats in an evergreen tree right outside the store. Mount Kenya National Park is 276 square miles surrounded by a forest reserve that is another 272 square miles and together are a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and UNESCO World Heritage Site. The lodge overlooks a large waterhole that animals come in to use all day. The waterhole is lighted at night so that you can see the animals 24 hours a day. After checking into our room, with a nice view of the waterhole, we went on a guided nature walk with several guides with rifles. We saw a Kolb's monkey, a number of beautiful Mountain Kenya Guereza, also known as eastern black and white colobus monkeys, one of the highlights of the trip for me. From our balcony, overlooking the waterhole, we saw bushbuck, lots of Cape buffalo and African bush elephants, an eastern warthog, Egyptian geese with little goslings and a genet feeding on a platform that night where meat scraps had been laid out.

Posted on June 12, 2022 10:24 PM by rwcannon57