Tsavo and Taita Hills Wildlife Sanctuary

Wednesday saw us depart from Amboseli, driving towards the Tsavo county. Another rough main dirt road for 2 hours, very rough terrain and finally onto a bitchumen surface for a smoother ride, in total we travelled roughly 8 hours with a couple of stops on the way.
Taita Hills wildlife sanctuary was established in 1972 by Hilton International.
Taita Hills is a privately owned wildlife sanctuary in Kenya. It is located in Taita-Taveta county approximately 220kms from Mombasa.
The sanctuary covers an area of 28,000acres (110kmsq) and is adjacent to Tsavo West National Park and the Lumo community wildlife sanctuary.
It hosts Cape buffalo, African bush elephants, leopard, lion, cheetah, Masai giraffe zebra, hartebeest, impala, waterbuck, Thompson’s gazelle, lesser kudu and other animals. Including a diversity of bird life.
The sanctuary has two lodges, we will be staying at the Sarova Saltlick Game lodge.
We arrived into our lodgings at 1330hrs, just in time for lunch, we were very pleased with our accommodation for the night.

 Some of the sights along the way

 A bush toilet stop, on our 2 hour dirt road ride. Big mama, happy to have photo with white mama.

 Herds of goats.

 Very large crevices along the dirt road, you would not want to walk about here at night.

 Our bush toilet, very clean, no running water, but not a squatter!

 Shops along the way.

Donkeys carting water.
We arrived into the park, tickets had to be bought, then we proceeded onto our lodgings.

 Monuments to the war at the entry.

 Our first glimpse of our lodgings.

 Our lodgings are built onto very high poles with surrounding waterholes, there is also a tunnel to walk under and a viewing area, close to the waterholes.

 Amazing engineering

 Our lodge

 Our bedroom, sorry but I mucked it up!

 Woven wall hanging

 Chairs and viewing area, some rooms face the waterholes, but we had the jungle side, we spent a few happy hours on the deck observing the wildlife, before our game drive at 4pm.

 Elephants at the waterhole

 Lucky to spot a chameleon as we got out of the vehicle. Vibrant colours.

 Waterhole

 The tunnel and viewing area.

The African bush elephant, covered in red mud.

We departed for our game drive at 4pm, we drove for two hours, spotted lots of wilderbeast, elephants, lesser kudu and gazelle, but sadly no cats. The grass was very thick and lush, a lot of grass for animals to feed in, but not good for spotting small animals.

That night we had cocktails on the deck, viewing animals at the waterholes and dinner at 1930hrs.

This will be our last safari and most disappointing. We were lucky to see all of the big four, except for the rhino. Tomorrow we head for Mombasa for three days of R & R.