Since we had learned during our travel preparations that the entrance tickets for the national parks would have a validity of 24 hours, our plan was to shorten our trip to Amboseli National Park by simply driving through Tsavo West National Park. Unfortunately, the ranger at the gate made it clear to us that here in Tsavo the tickets lose their validity as soon as you leave the park. But since he took pity on us, or somehow liked us, he acknowledged on our yesterday’s tickets that we would have been overnight guests of the park. So we could put our plan into action and put the 2 hours of driving time saved with this shortcut into the search for the rhinos. A suitable place seemed to be the so-called Rhino Valley. But once again we had no luck. The day was extremely warm and also the animals hid themselves with these midday temperatures around the 34 degrees Celsius rather somewhere in the shade.

So we only had the way to Chyulu Gate to leave the national park on this side. On the way there, we crossed an impressive lava field, which had been created by a volcanic eruption hundreds of years ago. After a very bumpy and careful drive (sharp-edged lava rock and tires do not get along well) we reached the gate and left the park through the same. Andreas briefly visited the toilet or rather the latrine (a wooden shed with a hole in the floor) and we continued our journey. Despite official road (if one may call a Kenyan C-road so) Andreas drove the way further. Had someone tasted blood here? The drive was only interrupted by a checkpoint with a barrier in the middle of nowhere. Since none of the soldiers gave the impression that they were eager to open the barrier, Mel got out to clarify the matter. Brazenly, the soldiers demanded “Christmas money” from us filthy rich white mzungos. But they had not done the math with Mel. After some back and forth, they just waved us off and opened the gate. Andreas, meanwhile, had only been able to fend off the sales-mad grandmothers of the nearby village, who had strategically surrounded the car in the meantime, by handing them an empty 1.5l plastic bottle, which they wanted to use for the preparation of their local brew.

The rest of the trip was quite uneventful. Arrived at our accommodation Amboseli Eco Camp we still had to fulfill a mission – we still needed a Kenyan SIM card. Our hostel father made a phone call to an acquaintance and so we set off again to Kimana, 10km away. The search for the mentioned store was a bit difficult at first because the directions in the village showed again a little left-right weakness of the describer. After some time we found the Nature Shop and its very nice owner Jacob. He was visibly happy to meet us and did everything possible to help us. So we fought together first against the bureaucratic hurdles. Even in Kenya, it is not so easy to get a SIM as a foreigner – Jacob helped us out with his identity card. Subsequently, the technology of Mel’s vacation cell phone was still a bit on strike and credit had to be topped up – since we or better Jacob was interrupted again and again by real customers, the whole process took about 2 hours.

Finally, back at the accommodation, we enjoyed the freshly prepared beef stew with rice and a kind of kale from our Masai host father and relaxed on the veranda of our stilt house with a view of Kilimanjaro, which was already glaring menacingly at us from a distance.