June 17-19: Meru National Park

Next stop, Meru National Park located roughly 220 miles northeast of Nairobi and covering an area of 340 square miles.

Before we get to Meru, however, I should mention that we stopped at a local coffee and honey farm en route to the Park. Donna and David (Mark and Kirten’s friends from the International School of Kenya) “found” this farm online and started buying their coffee and communicating with them about their operation. SO, we decided to drop in an meet the owners and learn about their operation and life story first hand. George Limiri was born here in Meru county and his wife McKenzie was born in Utah. They met in Utah, married, and started having kids (3 now) and then decided to move back to Kenya to George’s extended family lands and make a go of coffee and honey farming. They have really just started, but already have an impressive operation in the making. George is extremely ambitious and hard-working and is the quintessential entrepreneur – kudos to George for achieving so much given the challenges of making things work in this country. We got a tour of their home, where they have all sorts of animals and gardens, and then a quick tour of one of their farms (they have a few) where they are just starting the coffee plantation and will be building a processing plant soon. We (not me) bought lots of Lamiri coffee and I got a pint of tasty acacia honey. Did I say they also run a safari business as well. Here are a couple shots of the visit:

Meru is the other site famous for filming Born Free and Out of Africa, and is the resting place of Elsa the lioness from Born Free. We drove to and around Elsa’s Kopje (which is a Dutch word for prominent rocky hill rising from the Plains) in hope’s of seeing one of Elsa’s great, great, great, …, offspring. And to the delight of most of the crew (not Nancy and I unfortunately), Mark and crew in the Blue Rhino (Mark and Kirsten’s land rover defender) ran into a small pride near the kopje:

Meru is one of the least visited of the big national parks in Kenya, making it an awesome destination for us, and it has a wide variety of ecosystems including grasslands, forests, savannahs, and wetlands, but really mostly rather dense forest with little wildlife to see as we realized on one very long morning drive. The Park is also bisected by Kenya’s longest river, the Tana, as well as a dozen tributaries that drain Mount Kenya to the southwest. Indeed, the presence of so many streams with water is what makes Meru habitat for lots of species and distinguishes it from some of the nearby Reserves and Parks according to one ranger. Here are a few shots of the landscape, but the video (below) has more of us driving through the landscape):

The wildlife was relatively scarce in Meru, at least based on what we were able to see during our several morning and evening drives. We did see some great things to be sure, such as white rhinos (see video), but most of the time it was just driving through the landscape. Here a few shots:

We camped at Bwatherongai, Meru’s only public campsite. Not the greatest of campsites by comparison to Samburu, but it had some decent shade trees for the midday siesta and a pretty good shower and toilet facility:

Here is a composite video of our Meru visit, but note it has a lot of driving scenes and even a couple of evening by the campfire with me on the flute scenes:

Meru National Park composite video (12 minutes)

OK, back to Nairobi for a brief R&R at Mark and Kirsten’s. Tasks include a new refrig for the Green Dragon along with a new timing belt that has had enough miles on it to warrant replacement and a few other minor vehicle things to address, and food shopping for the next round of Parks and Reserves.