After a typical Serena breakfast (my favorite African meal of the day) we left Sweetwaters around 8:30. We passed through some villages - many shops selling hides & skins, butcheries prominently displaying their meat, mobile charging stations, and lots and lots of flower plantations. Mt Kenya loomed to our right the entire time, and then the landscape changed dramatically. It became more arid and the temperature rose about 10 degrees.

We stopped at the obligatory curio shoppe where I tried to go to the bathroom but changed my mind after seeing the "type 2" facilities. (I classify toilets as "type 1" for western and "type 2" for "involves squatting" - of course, there is a whole range of type 2's, from doable to downright offensive - this fell into the latter meaning I'd hold it until the lodge :)

Matthew warned us that the rest of the road would be dusty and bumpy and his description was spot on. We saw many people walking with camels, lots of muslims and women covered in dark clothing from head to toe. We stopped at the park entrance where aggressive people tried to sell us their wares: bracelets, necklaces, and a variety of sizes of knives. When it was clear we weren't going to buy they just broke down into "where are you from and what did you bring me."

Once in the park, we had a pleasant game drive en route to the lodge and saw ostrich, camels, gerenuk, zebra, impala, and colobus monkeys. We arrived at the Samburu Serena at noon and were greeted with cold towels and orange and watermelon juice. Our room, #15, was 4 or 5 buildings down from the main area and on the 2nd floor so it had a nice view of the Uaso Nyiro river. From the terrace we saw crocodiles, baboons, colobus monkeys and even elephants !

Game drives here followed the typical schedule (one leaving around 6:30am and one leaving around 4pm). We'd either stay on the Buffalo Springs side or go over to the Samburu Reserve side. The entrance to Samburu features a mural of the famous oryx-adopting lioness.

The area is known for the "Samburu 5", animals unique to this region: Oryx, Grevy's Zebra, Reticulated Giraffe, Gerenuk, and Ostrich.

Typical game drives included baboons, Colobus monkeys, secretary birds, Egyptian goose, Marabou stork, impala, gazelle, waterbuck, oryx, herds and herds and herds of elephants, dozens of giraffe, African hoopoe bird, cheetah, lion, dik dik, rock hyrax, bee eaters, superb starlings, whydah bird , cape buffalo. Two strange things we saw was a troupe of baboons eating a rabbit, and an ODIFOROUS dead elephant surrounded by a flock of vultures (and when we went by the next time it was surrounded by a pride of lions).

Animals here looked the healthiest/cleanest we've seen - full shiny coats, no sores, no ribs, no bugs all over them.