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