While there’s plenty of reason to wax rhapsodic over herds of wildlife thundering over an open African horizon, there’s also something to be said for the soil-your-pants shock of seeing an elephant thunder out of bush that was, minutes before, just plants. And that’s why people love Aberdare National Park. Camera reflexes are tested as the abundant wildlife pops unexpectedly out of bushes, including elephants, buffaloes, black rhinos, spotted hyenas, bongo antelope, bush pigs, black servals and rare black leopards.
The tallest regions of this range can claim some of Kenya’s most dramatic up-country scenery, packed with 300m waterfalls, dense forests and serious trekking potential. The fuzzy moors in particular possess a stark, wind-carved beauty, wholly unexpected after driving up from the richly cultivated plots of the eastern Aberdares. In contrast, the western high country has been left to leopards, buffaloes, warthogs, lions and elephants, and remains one of Kenya’s best places to spot black rhinos.
And baboons. Lots and lots of baboons.
The park has two major environments: an eastern hedge of thick rainforest and waterfall-studded hills known as the Salient, and the Kinangop plateau, an open tableland of coarse moors that huddles under cold mountain breezes.
Ten years in the making and completed in 2009, a 400km-long electric fence now completely encircles the park. Powered by solar panels, the fence is designed to reduce human–animal conflict by keeping would-be poachers and cattle on one side and marauding wildlife on the other.
