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| 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!
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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.
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| Enormous Termite Mound - Baringo |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Lake Baringo: Panoramic |
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