Completing the Big 5 at Ol Pejeta Mt Kenya

After a couple of nights in Nairobi, and a full day visiting the Sheldrake Wildlife Orphanage, Langatta Giraffe Centre and Karen Blixen Museum, our Two’s a crowd group set of for Nanyuki, Mt Kenya.

Jaros, our guide from RAW Africa Ecotours, had some amazing experiences planned for us. We were to spend a couple of nights in Nanyuki, before heading off for some camping in Ngarendare forest and Il’ Ngwesi Conservancy, with a full day game driving through Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Mt Kenya.

Ol Pejeta was once a large cattle ranch but today it plays a vital role in the conservation of wildlife, particularly rhino. The last two Northern white rhino are sheltered here, fortunately male and female, and efforts are being made to breed. However, it will require IVF and a surrogate mother (a southern white rhino), and I’m left scratching my head wondering how it gets to this?

We came across this mother and calf about 45min into Ol’ Pejeta

I could have sat and watched for hours. The calf was so cute.

This blind “Barak” the black rhino

We all took turns giving him a feed

We nearly had to drag Leeta away.

We arrived nice an early, organised our northern white rhino encounter at the front gate, then set off. It wasn’t long until we spied two black rhino in some thick bush about 150m away. Although a long way off and in bushes, it is hard not to just want to sit and watch (and click away). However, there is so much to see in Ol Pejeta that we had to be off. We were well rewarded – about 30 minutes later we came across a mother and baby white rhino. This time no thick bush. After some time watching these amazing creatures we headed off to visit Barak the blind black rhino and spend some time with the Northern white rhino.

We were lucky enough to get quite close to these awesome creatures under the watchful eye of his handler, of course. And it really brought home the size and strength of the rhino!

In fact our whole day was one long amazing wildlife encounter. We saw many more rhino, buffalo and Giraffe. We went to the Chimpanzee sanctuary and in the last 10 minutes of the day, on our way to the gate to exit, we came across a lioness on a late afternoon hunt. An amazing day of wildlife encounters, with the only break being for lunch (a beautiful meal at Morani’s restaurant).