Into Hells Gate

Welcome to Hell's Gate!!

After a quick stop in Nakuru for some supplies, and another stop just outside the park to pick up our guide (Simon) for the day (George is apparently not comfortable on a bike LOL) we made it to the park gates with little time to spare.  In fact we actually got the last 3 bikes for rent, just some simple mountain bike style bikes, good enough for us at this point.  This would prove to be a very long bike ride for my new bride, who doesn't like biking all that much.  It was a 2 km bike ride just to get into the park and then another 7KM to get to the top of the canyon.  Regardless of distance, energy and effort we both agreed that this experience was more then worth it.  The beauty of the natural landscape here was enough, throw in the countless zebra, gazelle, warthogs and giraffe, it was and incredible and breathtaking experience.  The park is set in the beautiful rift valley, with hanging ochre cliffs and jagged towering peaks.

Incredible Ochre Cliffs of Hell's Gate



Remnance of an ancient whirlpool



We stopped at the trail head and dug into the lunch that Gideon had packed for us.  After refueling, our real adventure in this park was just about to begin.  We were but 20 steps into this hike when we realized this was not going to be an easy task, which was fine by us since we have had little exercise so far on the trip.  The trail starts out with a steep narrow passage which leads to a path along a nearly dried out river bed.  After a few river crossings (very shallow, so no swimming needed at this point!) and some fairly technical downward climbs, we found ourselves right in the heart of the canyon. This area has been the site of several movies, the first one that comes to mind is Tomb Raider...where they are supposed to be in Tanzania heading toward the cradle of life?? Ya that's actually here in Naivasha!  The sculpting and shaping of the rocks over millions of years of water erosion is magnificent and neither of us have ever seen anything like it.  Our guide asked us if there was anything comparable to this in North America, and after lots of though, I still can't think of anything that's even remotely comparable to this place.  Unfortunately its one of those places that pictures really do little or no justice at all, its a place that you just have to see and experience yourself.  We walked along the river bed until we reached the source of the water in the wet season, and where the canyon gets its name.



On the Canyon Floor of Hell's Gate





Incredibly Hot Spring water that feeds "Hell's Kithcen"



According to our guide, the Masai named this area "Hell's Gate" because when the rains come, all of the water from the surrounding mountains flow through here creating flash floods.  Any animals standing in the rushing water's path would be swept up and carried down into the canyon below.  The Masai would then hear these animals screaming for their lives, trapped in the canyon, and later find them dead at at the mouth of the canyon.  They believed these beasts were the ones who were sacrificed below and returned to the surface.  Easy food I guess.  Simon definitely took us on the scenic route on the way back where we had to scramble down some of the sandstone cliffs.  Neither of us had ever done anything like this, I assume this is about as close as you could get to not needing a rope and harness to go hiking, it was a cross between trekking and rock climbing and we absolutely LOVED it.  On the way back we past by some thermal waters which were extremely hot.  Simon told us this was called Hell's Kitchen because the Masai actually used this heat to cook their food.  There was actually an area that was carved out into a ledge with several rounded out holes....making it easy to put the food there, and have it stay until cooked. This ranks as one of the top experiences since our arrival here in Kenya, we were both pleasantly surprised at how incredible this place is!   On the way out of the park, we finally got to experience a full on African downpour, we raced to the park gates and beat the heaviest part of this rainfall but ended up getting soaked regardless.  It was a nice gentle, warm rain and we welcomed it after a long strenuous day of travel, biking, and hiking.  

As a side note, Kenya has made the most of this natural resource, and has begun harvesting the thermal energy from the ground with plans to develop and expand geothermal energy.  Kenya is one of the leading countries in the world in this regard.

Above the Canyon looking at the central tower of Hell's Gate

Hippos in Baringo



Lake Baringo Boat Ride



Baringo Traditional Fisherman


The next morning was bit rough, a we were awoken at our usual 6am start time.  Due to the heat and humidity, I was quite uncomfortable for the duration of the night and didn't get much sleep at all.  Oh well, today is HIPPO day!!  We enjoyed some tea and biscuits as we watched the sun rise over the lake, no time for a full breakfast as our guide came by to walk us down to the boat launch for the beginning of our hippo tour! We quickly discovered this was more like a bird tour which included a tour of the lack and the hippos as the grand finale.  The funniest thing about this was that our guide would get very excited about seeing certain birds, and he'd say "are we not close enough for your camera" 'cause I wasn't taking pictures, so he'd tell the driver of the boat to get closer!  Later on when he saw my camera, he knew distance wasn't a problem...so he'd continually tap me on the shoulder and say "take picture, take picture" as if I was mentally challenged and didn't understand the concept.  The issue was disinterest, I tried telling him that we were here for the hippos and he just said "later".  So I went along with his little game and took dozens of pictures that I later deleted, Marlene was highly amused by this as he thought he was doing me a huge favour by telling me to "hurry, take picture, TAKE PICTURE...awwww you missed it!"  Good to know he takes his job seriously at least. 



 

Stalking Hippos



African Fish Eagle

Actually, there was one really cool thing we saw relating to birds.  After we met some local fisherman who had been out gathering Talipia in their locally made canoes before dawn, and once we rounded the lake's largest island (inhabited by 1 rich man and his 5 wives and 36 children) our guide pointed to some trees in the distance and said, "watch over there" as he proceded to make the sound of an eagle's cry with his mouth...like a high pitch, very loud whistle.  Sure enough, over in the trees we could see the eagle pop its head up out of its nest.  After several convincing cries, and motioning to the bird that we had fresh talapia for him, the bird finally came swooping in!  This was a really cool sight to see, it was like something right out of the nature chanel because he threw the fish about 10-15 ft away from the boat, so we saw the eagle come down and snatch the fish right in front of us.  He did this a couple of times and then we continued over into the marshy area where the hippos reside.  There must have been a family of 20 or so happily bobbing up and down.  It's hard to count how many there are because they take turns with some resting on the bottom and others keeping watch at the surface, so for us it just looks like the same hippo bobbing up and down, very cute!  At one point there was a hippo that was returning to its mates and was coming up from behind us, this is the dangerous situation we've heard about, that you don't want to be in, if that hippo were to believe that we were trying to stop it from reaching his family we'd be in deep trouble.  Our driver quickly started the engine and moved to the side to let the hippo pass.  We sat there for a good 15 minutes watching the hippos watching us, Marlene grinning from ear to ear, she absolultely adores the hippos.  It is really neat when they come up for air, they blow out huge breaths of air like a whale, and twitch their little ears.

powerful jaws

After uncessufully attempting to find some alligators, our tour ended abruptly.  We returned back to our campsite where George and Guidian were packing up our gear and beginning to serve us breakfast. After a quick stop in Nakuru for some supplies, we were Naivasha bound.  Naivasha is a very unique park in that you can experience it outside the security of a vehicle.  Yes that's right, you can choose to hike or bike your way through the park, its a rare opportunity to be on the same level as the animals themselves.



Talapia Fisherman in Baringo



Fish Eagle



After all of this we now made our way down to Naivasha (Hell's Gate) along the way we drove through bee keeper central and we all had to buy some more to replace the bottle that I accidently smashed yesterday.  What's an adventure without a little drama? The bottles were sitting in a bag and while rooting through things trying to find soap I dropped the bag (full of Marlene's stuff of course) and the bottle broke, but we didn't discover this until hours later...note to self, honey does not come out of ANYTHING very easily. I spent a good 2 hours trying to wash the honey out of the bag and some of Marlene's clothes...ooops!  So anyway, for 100sh (like $1.20) you get a 250ml bottle of fresh honey...in old booze bottles no less.  It certainly has a different taste, but its good regardless, pure and natural.

Rhinos in Nakuru



lonely Rhino

 



Nakuru Rhino and Buffalo

 After a pleasant nights sleep under our beg nets (brilliant invention that cottagers/campers here should invest in...you can hear them but they can't get you!) we headed off to for a morning game drive in the park again before heading off to Baringo.  This morning's drive was just as fun, what a great park this is, I was completely surprised as I was not expecting much of this little gem. Today's drive started out with a very large family of baboons, say maybe 40 or more?  Baboons are fun to watch cause the troop was on the move, and the babies were just like children at play except they like to climb trees and swing from branches.  Once out of the forest we were introduced to the interesting habits of the male gazelles who stand guard like soldiers on the edges of their territories, protecting their females and young from intruders. But the absolute crown jewel of the day was a young female black rhino who decided she was going to hang out with the buffalo, George said she seemed confused and may have been new to the park and looking for a  friend...awwww.  She will quickly learn she is of a different species but for now, the buffalo don't mind her and she's happy cause she's got company!



River Crossing:   Road to Baringo

 Now on our way to Lake Baringo!  Baringo is about the same latitude as Samburu, however the road between them is deemed to be unsafe to travel due to bandits so this is why we took the route through Mt.Kenya to Nakuru and then back up to Baringo.  This road was something else to see.  Most of it lies in a low land type valley with steep cliffs on one side.  I suppose because the roads flood so frequently, or maybe due to the lack of stability, there are NO bridges...and let me point out there are SEVERAL rivers, creeks and streams coming off those mountains.  This being the dry season, there was only one river that we had to "ford", that is, drive through with the van.  Imagine something like this in Canada where they know a certain area floods every year, so they just leave the roads to contend with mother nature instead of building bridges and retaining walls. The idea that water has the right of way over vehicles is an idea we are un-accustom to. Apparently the road becomes virtually impassible in the wet season, and its quite obvious why.  The river we went through was a good 4ft deep in some places so I can only imagine what its like when its banks are swollen. 

Enormous Termite Mound - Baringo




Black Scorpion

 

Once we arrived at the gates our guides recommended a local guide who would take us both on a nature walk and on a boat tour to see the hippos.  The price seemed a bit steep at $100 U.S. each for a 3 hour walk and a 4 hour boat ride, but we were here to see the hippos after all.  We later found out that the cost is per per boat rather then per person, had we known this we could've found some other people to come in our boat to lower the cost.  Regardless, the excessive cost was easy to justify since this was a community run program and all the money is shared amongst its people.  We later discovered that Lake Baringo is a "birders paradise" with something like 700 different kinds of birds, which is pretty impressive...if you love birds??! For us, we just can't be bothered to learn about 700 different kinds of birds...some of them are very bright and beautiful but we just aren't that excited about them.  This logically led to our "nature" walk really being a birding walk...oh joy.  I say that sarcastically but we did see some pretty fascinating birds. The coolest ones we saw were ground nesting type birds.  In order to disguise themselves from predators, since they reside at ground level, their feathers are an incredible camouflage.  Even from 10ft away they are virtually invisible due to their ability to blend into the surrounding rocks.  It seriously took me a good 10 minutes to find this bird, I was looking right at it the whole time but couldn't see it.  Pretty wild.  Our local guide, Moses, quickly figured out that we were not interested in birds and so continually turned over rocks with the hopes of finding snakes and scorpions.  We didn't find any snakes, but he did find us both types of scorpions (brown and black) he picked both of them up, neither of us wanted to get very close to it, though he did make me touch it...creepy.  He took us on a hike up the mountain where we could have a birds eye view of his village.  After a quick rest and chat to him about local life, I began to understand teh plight of rural Africa. They are only provided with education up to grade 8, after which point, their only option is to go to the city (Nairobi) for high school.  So if they do want to continue education beyond grade 8, not only do they have to leave their families hundreds of KM behind, but they also have to find a place to live and since most families don't have very much money, guess what most of them don't ever do.  For someone who was only educated up to grade 8 Moses spoke very good english.

Beautiful Ochre Ridges behin Lake Baringo

We returned to our once tranquil campsite to find that our tent space had been rudely invaded by an overland tour of Quebecois! Since we were now out of the highlands, even the nights were very hot and sticky, and of course tonight was the night we had to sleep in our tents, and tonight was the night that it decided to rain again...so we had to keep all the vents closed...this would be the first sleepless night in Africa, I expected it to happen much more frequently then this, so I sucked it up.

Lake Baringo:  Panoramic

Onward to Lake Nakuru



Thompson's Falls

This morning began like any other on this trip, at 6am...this wake up time is beginning to feel more like a job then a vacation!  Oh well, when there is so much ground to cover and a limited time to do it, this is the result.  This morning it was really cold, I don't think the hotel had any form of heat which made it even harder for me to get up.  The hotel has a feature where you can be notified via a buzzer, located in each room, if any animals of interest are roaming around the water holes in the middle of the night...we didn't receive any buzz.  So off we go!  They rounded us up and sent us on our way back to the restaurant via shuttle bus to enjoy a large buffet of food which included everything from crepes to chicken wings...boy do they have a skewed view of what westerners eat for breakfast LOL...though I guess I didn't help that view any since I went back for seconds.  

Great Rift Valley

 After breakfast we patiently awaited our driver and guide to pick us up, once he arrived he told us he had received some very bad news.  The news was that his mother-in-law had passed away.  The result was that he had to go back to Nairobi and would therefore be unable to remain with us for the duration of our journey...which was sad for us because we really liked him!  Natural Treks Safari was going to be sending a new driver/guide to meet us at Nakuru so it really wasn't a big deal for us but it was still sad to see him go.



Thomson's Falls from below



Today's drive took us through the fertile highlands and down into the low lands of the great Rift Valley.  What a stunning view that was!  We were told many (many) times that the Rift Valley extends all the way from Israel to Mozambique, which is very impressive, but everyone we met in this area insisted on telling us this fact which of course then led to them pushing their crafts relating to this fact.  Along the way we stop at Thompsons Falls for a quick glimpse at the falls which descends a 72M cliff into the lush forest below.  This was supposed to be a quick stop for us, but since we really hadn't had much exercise in the past few days we decided to get adventurous and climb down to the bottom.  I'm always amazed at the sheer energy of the falls, once we climbed down through the dense forest, the temperature must've dropped 10 degrees as the falls blew cool mist into our faces. 

Thompson's Falls

Once at Nakuru we meet out new guide George, who is a total wealth of knowledge.  We are sad that Mike is leaving us but George seems to be pretty good too!  Nakuru is a smallish park, for Kenyan standards at 150sq KM but it has a gorgeous fresh water lake at its epicentre. Here the main attraction are the flamingoes, millions of them!  They estimate somewhere between 1.5 and 1.8 million live here.  They stretch the entire length of the southern shore of the lake, it is quite the sight to see from upclose and afar as the waters look like they are stained with some sort of florescent pink dye! As we make our way towards these shores to check out the birds, where we can get out of the van and walk around, we come across two white Rhino's, a mother and its baby.  This was what I had been waiting for, finally a healthy Rhino with horns! What a sight to see, they just look like an animal of raw power, I for one wouldn't want to be standing in front of a charging rhino!  Anyway, on to the bird viewing.  As described before, we aren't really too interested in birds, but I have to admit, this was pretty incredible to see ALL these flamingoes in one place...just the colours are stunning enough to merrit a visit.  There are also a few other birds around such as pelicans and meribu stroks which look like old men in trench coats when they are sitting down.  These birds are enormous...probably 3-4 ft tall when standing upright.

After spending some time with the smelly flamingoes we make our way into the forest where there are plenty of animals to be seen.  I was completely shocked by this park, at its variety and amount of animals in here.  The first thing we see is what we think are two female lions laying lazily in the tall grass, yawning and rolling around.  Then we hear some rustling in the grass on the other side of the road, yep, two more lions...or is it 3?  Yep turned out to be 6 lions in total!  They really weren't doing a lot until one of them decided she had had enough of the flies and proceeded to climb a tree!  Apparently this is very uncommon in this park and our guide George had never seen that...yet another first! 

Nakuru - Leopard in tree with catch

This game drive just kept better and better, the next interesting thing we came across was a leopard which was sleeping high up above the forest floor on a very large limb.  We almost drove right past it until I spotted its tail and paws hanging from the tree and thought "this doesn't look right...there has to be something in the tree" it took a while for my eyes to focus on exactly what was different about this tree.  For 1, it had a leopard in it, for 2, it had dragged its kill up the tree with it! This was one of the most thrilling things we had seen to date. We weren't very close to this tree which held all these secrets, so all of these things were not seen immediately, in fact I think we were sitting there for a good 5 minutes before our guide with his naked eye (we were using his binocs) said, what is that in the tree beside.  Sure enough, it was a gazelle!  After watching the leopard and then a few giraffes, we started to make our way up to Baboon Cliff (or as Marlene called it, Buffalo Hill...at which point she started to serenade me with Blueberry Hill, filling in her own words as she went along...lets just say she was a little disappointed when I told her its actually called Baboon Cliff which doesn't rhyme at all with Blueberry Hill) and on our way, we actually crossed paths with a black rhino and its offspring!! Once again, an extremely lucky sighting to be there at the exact moment when these animals were crossing...this was really the only place we could have seen it since we were driving through fairly thick forest at this point.  Unfortunately the sighting only lasted a few seconds, it was so quick that I couldn't even get a proper picture of it...darn!

Nakuru - Lion Yawning

Finally we arrive at baboon cliff to watch the sunset over the park, it truly was an inspiring view but what was most interesting was our guide's encounter with the dominant male baboon of baboon cliff! As we drove up to the cliff tops there were a large number of them around but as the van approached they all scattered, except the dominant male who patiently waited.  As we exited the van and headed to the look out point I saw this large male baboon approaching the van out of the corner of my eye.  When I turned to look the baboon needed all of 2 hops and a bound, and he slipped right into the popped up roof of the van!  Now THIS was exciting, how to get an angry male baboon out of the back of a van when you're blocking the only entrance.  Well, George used the only thing he had at his disposal, a plastic water bottle! He yelled at it and continued to slam the water bottle on the seat and faked to throw it at the primate, the primate eventually stopped hissing and baring his teeth and with one carefully executed bound, made his way back out of the van throught the roof.  We all had a good laugh at George's expense and this became a running joke for the rest of our days together.  Actually, this was the second time today that we had a primate in our vehicle, the first time was when we were waiting at the gates of Nakuru, I was outside the van and Marlene was inside on the far side chatting with me when a small monkey lept in from the window and sat directly above her head on the seat rest!  I thought it made for a nice hat!! She could tell by the look on my face that something was wrong and all I had to say was, "I think you should get out" and she darted for the door! HAHAHA that was funny too :)  This monkey just got out of the van without any resistance but it was quite humourous regardless.

After taking in the spectacular view of the park from atop Baboon Cliff we returned to our "home stay" accomodations, had some dinner, and watched the rain come pouring down.  The first time its really rained since we arrived.



Nakuru - Baboon Cliff (all the pink are flamingos)



Aberdares Tree Top Resort



Samburu - Elephants Crosing the River

 

Samburu - Elephants Crossing River

Another early morning departure for our small crew of 4.  Today we are heading to Aberdares park and the tree tops resort.  From what we had read, this place is top notch and we are both really looking forward to having hotel style accomodations for once.  On our way out of Samburu this morning, we exercised the African tradition of pole pole (slowly slowly) and watched the large herd of elephants we've grown accustom to seeing.  Today they were making their way across the river, this was an incredibly stunning sight to see the way they crossed the water in single file, baby in the middle holding on the momma's tail with her trunk.  It was at this point that I really began to get a feel for the natural beauty of Africa, to really appreciate how remarkable this place really is.  The elephants marched on through the river and actually came up the river bank directly beside our van, such beautiful creatures!  We continued making our way out of the park and made it about half way when our driver's eyes light up as he looks at our cook.  He slams the breaks and says "we have to go back, you guys forgot something".  Immediately I checked for my wallet and passport as I have a tendency to forget these all important items (I didn't leave it once on THIS trip!).  He started driving irradictly and we knew we were chasing an animal and not an item we had apparently left.  Eventually after weaving our way around dried up watering holes and bushes we come to a clearing with a large tree in it.  And what lies in the tree? None other then our very first Leopard!! This is what we had forgotten, we had forgetten to complete our big 5 viewing before leaving Samburu.  This was an incredible sight as we watched the leopard stretch out and get comfortable atop his tree limb...ah nature!





Samburu - Sleeping Leopard



 At last we make our way out of the park and head towards Aberdares and what we thought was going to be luxury.  The drive took us from Kenya's dry, remote north, back into the semi-tropical highlands in the centre of Kenya.  It is actually surprising how chilli it is here even during the day as I notice many locals in parkas and tuques!  It is their winter after all. 






Samburu - Yawning Leopard





We are dropped off at an affiliate restaurant which has a buffet lunch on offer. The food is pretty good, but the COLD beer is even better!  Eventually we are instructed to jump on the shuttle which will take us to the tree tops.  This is about a 30 minute drive and upon arriving we immediately think, yes this is a gorgous setting way up on top of a hill, but this hotel is not what we were expecting.  It looks like something that was built in the early 50s and had never been updated.  When we arrive we are given a 30-45 minute prep talk about how things operate here, we aren't really interested in a game drive so we make our way into the hotel for a nice hot shower.  Again, its not what we expected in that we thought we would have our own toilet and shower. Wrong! It was shared with our floor, but luckily everyone else was on safari so it was like we had the place to ourselves for the first couple of hours.  The tree tops hotel original concept is a brilliant one, originally it operated similar to a giant tree house which had a few bedrooms in it and you could watch the animals down below from the safety of the tree.  This newer version has two very large watering holes on either side of the hotel.  The hotel has a rooftop and a very large viewing area from which to view the animals, if there were any of interest.  They do have very large spot lights which allow you to see animals at night and some people spend the entire night on duty watching to see if anything comes around.  Again a neat idea, however it isn't like this is a zoo, the animals are free to roam anywhere within the park boundaries, so seeing animals is rare...we checked the log book and they had seen 2 cats the entire year.  It's like letting the animals come to you rather then going out to find the animals.  At this point for us, watching gazelle and buffalo is nothing novel and we're not very impressed...though I must admit when the hyena came at night, that was kind of cool! 



Tree Tops Resort

 It is world cup time and Spain is playing tonight, it just so happens there are several dozen Spaniards staying in the hotel tonight, so of course they are all very interested in watching the game.  The hotel set up an old TV with antenna in an empty conference style room for everyone to watch.  We thought it was a little rediculous that these people came all this way and they decide that watching the futball match is much more important then anything else.  People actually staked out their seats hours in advance of the game.  We watched the first half, then did some animal watching via spotlight, and then retired to our rooms to read and write.





Samburu - Leopard in Tree



Samburu - Quest for the Big 5



Baby Elephant

Boy was it windy last night!  The heavy cancass tents were flapping and flailing like an angry raven resulting in very little sleep for me...ya that's it, the wind...had nothing to do with the roars and grumbles we heard through out the night.  All joking aside we did here a few strange noises which were later revealed to be elephants disgustive systems, which can be heard for kilometres. The experience definitely wins over lack of sleep, by a long shot.  The feeling here in Samburu is one of very remote authenticitiy, which is what we have been so excited for.  Unfortunately, that authenticity was also met with slight disappointment as this morning's game drive was pretty much for not. Althought 2 hours in authentic Africa is much better spent then 2 hours on the job, we did end up driving around for 2 hours in the safari van without seeing a single point of interest!  After the game drive, Mike declared that all of the animals must have migrated southward already toward more fertile lands.



Samburu war dance



Women of the Village



As previously mentioned, it gets way too hot by mid day to be searching for animals, whatever animals were still remaining, would be hiding in the shade of trees and bushes.  So we decided to take a drive into the local Samburu village which we had passed yesterday on our way in. The understanding here is that we would be given a detailed tour of a traditional Saburu village.  The deal here is that it is regarded as rude and disrespectful to take candid shots of the villagers, who instead invite you to join them in their daily activities.  Judging by our guide book and our official tour guide, the belief is that these villagers are the real deal, what you see is what you get.  Being who I am, I often approach situtation like this with skeptisism.  My first hint was that they wanted $25 US from us each for this village tour.  In our opinion this was quite a bit of money for people who don't own, nor have a need for, a material single item.  Anyway, we decided to go as this was the proper way to be able to take pictures and it gave us the chance to interact with the tribe. 




how the Samburu make fire

My failed attempt






Inside the Hut

From the introduction to the end, their manner was very professional, polite, and inviting. They performed a few war and welcome dances for us and even gave us the chance to join in on a couple of them.  After the dances and a quick round of questions, we were brought inside the Samburu village, which consisted of about 2 dozen shelters.  The village guide explained to us that the shelters are made of cow dung and old cardboard making it easy to pack up and move the entire village as the Samburu people are nomadic hunter/gatheres.  For me, the $25 entry fee became worthwhile when we were given a glimpse inside the hut, and were even allowed to climb into the hut itself.  The hut consisted of two areas to sleep (sheep skin blankets on the ground), one for the parents, and one for the children, and also fire place in the middle. placed for both cooking and for warmth...although its very hot during the day, its quite cool at nights.  The next stage of our tour brings us to fire making 101.  This is fire making African wilderness style...with two sticks, a few grains of sand, and some bark shavings. The demostration seems easy enough to replicate until I attempt it for myself.  The process seems fairly straight forward, you've got one piece of stick being rubbed quickly between the palms of your hands as you drill the tip into another stick which has a hallowed out bottom where they throgh some sand in for added friction.  The idea is creat enough friction to bring smoke, add some tree bark, blow a little oxygen into it, and voila!  I have little (no) success and am quickly demoted.  Clearly there is much more complicated technique that I'm not about to master in a couple of minutes.



Authentic Samburu Hut - The reality is they do sleep and live in these things

    

Samburu children getting primary English lessons

Later on it is explained to us that some of the local villagers are sent off to be educated by catholics in the local schools. But in order to do so, the children must have uniforms which cost money which, of course they do not have...of course this is all mentioned to us very casually...but two and two? We casually ignore these "subtle" hints but this of course, resulted in further eyebrow raising on my part. The interesting thing I discovered while here is that a) they can't wear traditional clothes to attend these schools b) they can't have those huge holes in their ears they make as part of their tradition if they wish to attend, and c) they can't wear their traditional jewelry to the schools either.  Its no wonder they think the west is trying to brain wash, manipulate, and control them.  The second to last portion of our tour takes us directly into and area where a "professor" is teaching the village children to count to 10 and sing the alphabet in English. The Children vary in age but are all looking at us with their best puppy dog eyes.  Our guide continues, "it is through the donations of people like yourself that we are able to educate ourselves".  He had already mentioned this to us at least 4 times by now and eventualy asked us directly "so if you'd like to donate, if you can find it in your heart, just let me know".  At this point I began to feel very awkward as I felt as though the $25US I already gave, should be going to these children. It is one thing to bring in foreigners in an attempt to guilt them in to handing over peity money, but what really bothered me was the fact that this tribe owes its existence to their persistant refusal to adopt to Western norms.   



Samburu Warriors





So by giving this money am I not contributing to the destruction of their traditional ways of life, instead of their prosperity? These sale by guilt tactics continued as we were introduced to the town "black smith" who, as far as we could tell was just some random guy sitting beneath a tree.  We were then quickly ushured/escorted toward a large number of local women encouraging and begging us to buy some of their beaded jewelry.  I am always one for supporting locals when I travel but in all honesty, neither of us were interested in anything they were offereing. I'll leave it to you to decide for yourselves as I seem to be jadded when it comes to these things, but again, other then education, what could these people possibly need money for?  The Samburu diet consists of milk, blood, and goat meat..no vegetables as nothing grows here...their houses are free, they own no vehicles, they don't have electricity and they are nealy 100% self sufficient except in times of drought. 

 

Some additional random information ont he Samburu:  their enemy is the Somali tribe to the north east and they apparently still have raids on each other once in awhile.  They still have traditional medecine men, and blacksmiths, and they are pretty well 100% carnivors as there is very little edible vegetation which grows. All in all I'm glad I went as I really did enjoy learning about them, meeting  them, and of course, the pictures are absolutely stunning if I do say so myself!



The elusive greater Kudu!! These animals are extremely rare, we saw 2 in 2 days!

Later that afternoon we went to see how the rich travel Africa.  We went with our guide to the nearby resort to see what life is like on the other side.  He needed to check his tire pressure and get a shave so we decided we needed to tag along fo a cold beer!  This place was very extravagent and we sat in a covered oval room perched high above the meandering river and watched the birds fly by, all while enjoying our cold Tuskerrs.  I was informed that later they would be feeding the crocodiles in the river for the entertainment of the resorts guests...but we didn't stick around.  As nice as it was, it didn't have the genuine feel of the park that we had in our campground. After some quick tea and biscuits at our camp we were off to our late afternoon gamedrive. 


 Todays late afternoon drive once again began very slow but ended spectacularly.  We found ourselves hanging out by the river as yesterday this is where most of the action was .  Sure enough this time the river yielded us a couple of lionesses that seemingly everyone else in the park was also aware of.  The lions were very actively moving around (maybe even hunting?) but Mike wrangled his way into an incredible spot for us where we were able to get extremely close to the lioness' resulting in an incredible sense of amazement.  They are such beautiful animals, and to see them from this close, in their natural habitat is truly a thrill. The lionesses actually walked right beside our van at this point and Marlene swears they were eyeing us hungrily head to toe contemplating the difficulty of the kill!


Dinner tonight was traditional African food including oxtail soup, chepati with fish masala and veggies...and of course lots of passion fruit for Marlene.



Lions on the prowl