Camp036- Aberdares National Park > Home to ‘The Ark’!
Camp036 - Aberdares National Park - Home to ‘The Ark’!
The Aberdares is the established name of a mountain range thrusting directly north from Nairobi for more than 160 kilometers. Part of the range is protected as the Aberdare National Park and encompasses all land over 3200 meters together with a projection due east known as The Salient, which reaches down to 2130 meters near Nyeri town. The park is a fairyland, awesome in its majesty and beauty. The Park is well known for the Ark, a world class hotel built in the shape of Noah’s Ark, perched atop the tree lines, as well as the Treetops Hotel, acclaimed as where the then Crown Princess Elizabeth acceded to the Throne on the death of her father George VI during a visit in 1952.
This park which covers much of the Aberdare (renamed Nyandarua) range of mountains, is predominately forested and spreads over 584 square kms, some of which is moorland. The latter is home to the duiker, rhino, buffalo, eland, elephant, suni and the very rare nocturnal bongo. One of its distinctive feature are the Gura Falls which drop down a full 300 meters.
There is a road which traverses the mountains from Naivasha to Nyeri which can be handled by a sturdy car in good weather. The Salient which thrusts a dense forest through rich farmland is where both Treetops and the Ark are situated. The salient's origin lies in an elephant migration route between the two mountains, now sadly no longer.
The forest is rich in wildlife; elephant and rhino, warthog, bush pig and giant forest hog, waterbuck, duiker, suni, dikdik, bongo and reedbuck are all to be seen. In the canopy the black and white colobus monkey performs its aerial acrobatics and Sykes' monkey and the black faced vervet can also be found. The carnivores are represented by lion, usually more hairy and spotted than on the plains, leopard and serval, the latter often seen on the moorlands and sometimes in its melanistic state. Birds are not only plentiful but also dazzling.
