just around the corner

Tucked away between the majestic slopes of Mt. Kenya and the Aberdares Mountains, Solio Ranch is known for its intimate wildlife experiences. Big cat sightings are common, and it is one of the few places in the world where one is absolutely guaranteed to see rhinos in the wild. After our initial misadventure we returned to Solio the following day to try our luck again.

The world’s first private rhino sanctuary, Solio’s beginnings owed purely to chance. In the late 1960’s, the ranch owners decided to fence off a large triangular section in the middle of their cattle ranch so that farmhands would stop shooting the wildlife that preyed on the cattle. Then in 1970, Kenya’s first president asked Solio to take in several black rhinos until a more permanent home was found for them.

With no other secure areas and the Kenya Wildlife Service still in its infancy, more rhinos were relocated to the ranch in subsequent years. Unlike in many other areas, where rhinos have been decimated, the animals thrived in Solio, where the current population numbers well over two hundred, accounting for a quarter of Kenya’s rhinos and enabling Solio to supply rhinos to newer conservancies, which have sprung up throughout the country.

On our first trip to the Maasai Mara, after seeing four of the Big Five, we had spent well over an hour scouring the plains in search of a rhino. We had turned back towards camp and were on our way out of the park when a fellow guide radioed our car to say that he had spotted a rhino. Our driver whipped the vehicle around and raced across the plains for half an hour before proudly stopping a short distance away from a solitary black rhino. By contrast, in Solio we saw entire herds of rhino, much in the way that one typically sees herds of cape buffalo.

By mid-day, the car was abuzz with contented excitement. In addition to a multitude of rhino and close sightings of many of the more common animals, we had come upon two cheetahs, the first time we had seen cheetahs on a self-drive safari. They were looking lean and were clearly on the prowl. Unfortunately, off-roading is not allowed in Solio, so all we could do was watch them disappear into the bush.

We had spent the morning criss-crossing the open plains, where many of the animals had congregated. As the sun was beating down mercilessly, we drove down to a small, swampy river, stopping under the shade of a big tree to have lunch, and intending to follow the swamp road back to the park gate after we ate. Someone asked if we could picnic outside the car, but given that we were in a forested area with limited visibility we decided to stay inside the vehicle. And a good thing too! After packing away the remnants of our lunch, we rounded a bend in the road and stumbled upon half a dozen lions placidly lounging near the road.

Unfortunately, a late afternoon rain cut our safari short and we had to rush back to the gate lest the swamp road became impassible. Even so, this was our most successful self-drive safari to date.