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.