he last leg of our safari adventure was in the Amboseli game reserve. We were on our mission to get the ‘money shot’, a picture with an elephant in front of a clear Mount Kilimanjaro, which is only about 50km away. It was more bumpy roads for nearly the entire ride from Tsavo, but we’d been on so many by this time that we were very used to them. I think I even fell asleep for a portion of the bouncing around, even for me, that’s saying a lot. We were staying at the Amboseli Serena Safari Lodge which is one of the oldest lodges in the park, our driver tells us it’s the best and we couldn’t agree more. We even had our own table that was always reserved for us in the restaurant.

We had two nights here, which was a nice change since we could actually get our stuff unpacked from the bags for a bit and really settle in. One feature of this lodge that was new to us were the monkeys that were all over the property. They didn’t seem to mind when we got close to them, but when there’s food around they would definitely take a shot at helping you eat it. This resulted in me accidentally punching a monkey on our first morning when one tried to take the cake that went with my coffee. To help keep the monkeys away the hotel employs a couple of Maasai warriors whose job it was to keep them away, either with a stick, blow dart, or sling shot!

During our first game drive we got to see just how dry the reserve was. There were sand twisters sprouting up all over the place as we drove through. As with Tsavo, there were an incredible number of elephants all around but our highlight from the first drive was seeing a hippo that was actually out of the water and not just the head peaking out of the water. It’s hard to believe that they’re such strong swimmers and supposedly able to outrun a human on land, there’s a log of weight to be moving around! We also got to see some lion cubs being lazy in the grass with their feet up in the air, obviously not concerned that we were watching them at all. Kilimanjaro was hidden in the clouds and just the peak started to show through around sunset so we didn’t have any chances to get our shot this time.

The next day was a great relaxing day for us, we started with a morning drive as usual (after my ‘monkey punching’ incident) and then spent the rest of the day relaxing by the pool. It was a great way to spend the day, especially considering that the next day would be the start of our long trip back to the real world… Kilimanjaro teased us some more on our evening but didn’t make it out yet clearly. We ended our last night in Kenya with some cold Tuskers around a campfire listening to a Kenyan singing some classic tunes.

Our final game drive ended up not being so much about the animals, Mount Kilimanjaro was out and more clear than any other time that we saw her. The mountain looked much, much bigger than we had expected. Unfortunately, the cold air that gave us a clear view of Kili also prevented the elephants from coming out of the bush at their normal time, ensuring that we didn’t quite get ‘the shot’ that we had been looking for. By this point though we both decided that we had seen so much on our trip that we were ok with not having that one picture to bring home with us.

Plus I think we got the shot with zebras instead of the elephants.

Before we knew it we were back at the lodge for breakfast and shortly after that we were starting our long drive back to Nairobi and our flight home.