As the calf ambled close to her mother's huge legs, our exceptional safari guide Noel Olweny pointed: "Her right tusk is more worn out than the left. She is 'right handed'."
I have flown to Nairobi and been driven for nearly four hours, across surprisingly smooth roads, to cross the equator into the Northern Hemisphere, entering Kenya's Great Rift Valley where I am seduced by the vast savannas and plains.
A vision of Hollywood's rendition of Out of Africa floats before me as I am driven around Karen Blixen territory, loved terrain of Robert Ruark, Joy Adamson and Ernest Hemingway.
No vegetation and isolation could be more conducive to a game safari than here at Sweetwaters Tented Camp, clustered around a watering hole where the abundance of wildlife and the isolation assure it as a wilderness haven.
The entire conservation park forms part of Old Pejeta's 354km conservancy now owned by the government and Flora and Fauna International, with eco-tourism pioneers, the Serena Hotel group, running the two luxurious resorts on the land.
We are on our way back to camp after several hours of yet another stupendous game drive.
This afternoon we hit the jackpot. Rarely have I seen such a variety of wildlife in such a concentrated area.
Whenever there was a stretch or gap between sightings, Noel fuelled our curiosity by describing differing habits of everything from ants to striped hyena.
He explained why there can only be one male buffalo among the expanse of females standing shoulder to shoulder in the dust.
Back at Sweetwaters camp we amble slowly to nab a place on the bench overlooking the animal watering hole until dinnertime.
With dry campari and maghareti in hand, photographer Deborah Yazbek and I watched as a gigantic rhinoceros clumped its way out of the thicket, towards water.
The safari experience and diverse settings are splendid, but the array of scrumptious food with its attention to detail, service, and friendliness of staff and hotel manager James Odeny, must rank as highlights of this trip, assuring that Sweetwaters retains its listing as number 35 of the top 100 international hotels in Travel and Leisure magazine.
Strolling down the dark path to my tent, I revelled in the still darkness, enhanced by a tapestry of stars.
Sleep came easily.
The next day included a visit to Jane Goodall's Chimpanzee Conservation programme, where 43 of the near extinct chimps in Central and Western Africa lord over a kilometre of forest setting.
The chimpanzee and gorilla population in Western and Central Africa is highly endangered, and these as babies were rescued and transported from war-torn Burundi after their mothers were eaten or had been captured as infants for pets and later abandoned and left to die chained while their captors fled.
After the animals' antics had entertained us, we walked next door to meet the newest black rhino named Obama, a lone rhino in the adjoining Rhino Sanctuary.
Eighty-two black rhinos populate the game reserve, the largest concentration in Africa. Black rhino in the wilds are almost extinct, having declined 90 percent in the past 20 years.
In need of a respite from the game, I asked if I could, unannounced, visit a typical tribal village and observe daily life. I had no intention of being entertained by a contrived tourist attraction.
Nowhere is Kenya's atmosphere more alluring than when sharing typical lifestyles of the diverse 46 tribes, and in this setting I found Turkana herders living alongside marginalised Pokot and Samburu cattle merchants.
Extending African warmth, women bedecked in exquisite beadwork invited me to enter a few mud huts, clustered in a circle, each built in different styles reflecting cultural lifestyle.
For lunch we drove eight kilometres to Ol Pejeta House, arguably the largest "farmhouse" in Kenya.
Until 1985, this was the domain of the richest man in the world, Adnan Khashoggi.
In 1986, the billionaire's wealth surpassed that of Howard Hughes.
The Saudi Arabian arms dealer, implicated in the Iran Contra Affair as key man in the arms-for-hostages exchange, made this area his headquarters.
Khashoggi later sold the entire territory to Flora and Fauna International, who appointed the Serena Group to run two eco resorts on condition it respected local ways of life and used only indigenous designs and materials.
We gasped and gawped at the conspicuous opulence of the Saudi's totally preserved wooden home, and it's here on the verandah we sat eating curry. We looked out on flat plains behind which looms incomparable Mount Kenya, my next destination. A troop of baboons froliced aside a family of bathing warthogs.
From nowhere a lone bull elephant unselfconsciously approached the watering hole. I blinked to remember this is not a zoo but a wild game safari. Suddenly the bull's ears flapped and he turned toward Debbie clicking on the opposite side of the watering hole. Guards and hoteliers stood frozen as she retreated slowly, step by step, backwards, facing the elephant, who finally relaxed and stepped into the water.
We headed back into the black blue evening for dinner, and, as luck would have it, spotted a leopard sanguinely crossing from a thicket into a clearing on this, our last drive up the dusty road to Sweetwaters.
Mount Kenya beckoned and with brilliant sunlight on the plains, the hotel car transported us to the Aberderes.
As the altitude began to rise, we felt the drop in temperature.
We passed the site of the luxurious Mount Kenya Safari Club, with its nine-hole golf course, heated pool, and a members' list which includes many of the world's famous and wealthy, and suddenly we were rounding the winding incline with its thick belt of trees to Serena Mountain Lodge at Mount Kenya's base. This is a Garden of Eden. The forest-capped massif of mountain ranges includes some of Africa's most rugged landscapes and spectacular forests.
Born, three to possibly 10 million years ago, Mount Kenya was among the world's highest mountains, seemingly touching the sky.
Thousands of years of erosion by wind, rain and glacier disturbance have worn the mountain down, yet still Mount Kenya's snow-capped twin spires ensure its enduring grandeur. The mountains, hundreds of secondary peaks, offer the most experienced Himalayan and Alpine specialists some of the most dangerous ice climbing in the world.
Serena Mountain Lodge is a green wooden tree hotel, built to height of the tallest trees to blend with the thick protected wild rain forest. From every vantage at the lodge one faces a panoramic Mount Kenya, and wild game and vegetation.
Kenya ranks fifth in the world's top 10 eco-tourism countries, and the reasons are apparent by the obsessional fervour with which wardens and game rangers protect the land from poachers and tree fellers. Possibly the longest conservation fence in the world stretches up and down hills, passing over rivers along the edge of hundreds of communities
We guests are a motley bunch; some heading out to fish each morning at the trout farm, some of the hardiest and fittest being guided by irrepressible naturalist Benson Maina to 3 500 metres up for a day's walk to the moorlands. Others sit upstairs with binoculars, bird viewing, or dreamily game watching as animals come to the watering pool. Here, there are no time constraints.
Later, I sat chatting with a United Nations of guests, nursing drinks in front of a log fire before dinner. Watching nocturnal animals from the roof lookout, I tried to find fault with the hospitality, but could not. Acting manager Wycliffe Adem explained that tourism provides Kenya's mainstay, and staff have to prove themselves to stay employed and keep guests returning.
Time intruded, and on the third day, Faraj Tours collected us for the drive in Nairobi where we spent a night at coveted World Trade Award 2009 winner, Nairobi Serena Hotel, and our flight home.
Place a Kenyan safari on your 100 must-do before-I-die-list if eco-tourism and an out-of-the-box safari is what you enjoy.
- The author and photographer Deborah Yazbek were guests of Kenya Airways and Serena Hotels.
- Contact the Serena South African reservations office on 011 021 2607/8/9
- Kenya Airways flew us there. See www.KenyaAirways.com