Exploring Meru National Park

It’s been a long drive from Nairobi to Meru National Park along the Embu road. Despite it being a spectacular road with valleys and rivers, it’s a humpty-dumpty road with speeding cars ferrying miraa, the stimulant drug.  

Checking in through Murera Gate late afternoon, it’s only a matter of minutes before we chance upon a pair of Bateleur eagles perched on a doum palm with their young in a nearby tree. A white rhino named Njeri and her two-month-old daughter wait patiently by the side of the road to see who makes the first move. Eventually, it is her and her daughter.

“We know all our rhinos,” says Patrick Gitonga, rhino ranger at the sanctuary, while we are sitting in the open lounge at the Rhino River Camp which overlooks the lush forest along Kindani River.

“We have to account for them every day.”

RHINO SANCTUARY

At the height of the dry season, the grass at the Meru National Park is crisp golden, save for where the river and the swamps are. Tall doum palms fan the hot air, their branches splitting into two. It’s hard to believe that in 2013, the rivers flooded during the heavy rains.

We’re in a little part of the park where Ted Goss, the first game warden, made his home after retiring. It’s been turned into a camp now. Goss, born in Tanganyika, present day Tanzania, became senior warden in what was Department of Wildlife and Conservation which morphed into the Kenya Wildlife Service. He was in charge of the rhinoceros anti-poaching unit during its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s.

The rhino sanctuary is busy because it’s not exclusively for rhinos. A herd of buffaloes enjoys the swamp, waterbucks frolic, while lesser kudus stay shy in the scrub. There’s not a leaf on the trees except for the doum palms and the trees by the rivers.

And as we inch our way looking for the elusive black rhino that is rarely seen because it prefers the scrub to open grassland, a leopard startled by us bounds away.

A lone rhino covered in the red soil of Meru grazes and looks up.

“That’s Peter. He lost his front horn in a fight with another male,” says Gitonga. 

The black rhinos remain elusive.

“We monitor the rhinos using camera traps (hidden in the bushes) that were donated by Rhino River Camp,” says Gitongo, switching on the computer to show images of black rhinos that they know by name that appear on the screen in the night. It’s amazing watching them being watched without their knowledge.

Back at camp, greater bush babies wake for the night scurry down the trees, jumping across the branches as we enjoy Italian cuisine prepared in the deceptively simple bush kitchen. It’s the night of the orchestra as the frogs begin their symphony and fireflies light the dark.

Sitting on the deck of the tent facing the river, the moon travels across the sky, with scorpius (the constellation) unfurling its tail. We await the sun to explore more of Elsa’s country for this is where the world’s most famous lioness lived and died and later Pippa the cheetah – both cats raised by the legendary Joy Adamson who pioneered the rehabilitation of big cats raised by people back to the wild. 

Fact file

Check out www.kws.go.ke for a complete list of KWS guest houses, bandas and campsites, and other useful info. Explore the rhino sanctuary; visit the graves of Elsa and Pippa, the 1,000-year-old baobab tree with a hollow chamber, Kora National Park and the Borana village.