I’ve now seen the 3 big game parks in Kenya and Tanzania: Maasai Mara, Serengeti, and the Ngorongoro Crater. I had a great time at all of them and they were all very different.

Maasai Mara- The highlights of the Mara were visiting a local Maasi village, watching their dances, and going into their houses made of dung. (Each woman builds the house by herself and it has 3 rooms. 1 is for sleeping, 1 is the kitchen/eating room, and 1 is for the animals. That’s right, their animals are so important to them that they build a room just for the sheep and calves to sleep in.) The other highlights were the quantity and proximity of animals. As we were driving around we basically saw animals very minute. For some reason all of the animals were really close to the road so we got within a few feet of everything. (We saw at least 50 lions, a leopard, and a cheetah from about 10-15 feet away.)

Serengeti- This park is in north-western Tanzania. It was dry season when we were there, so it felt very desert like and bare. The highlights were the beautiful landscape. (The landscape in all of the parks was completely different.) In the Serengeti it was mostly flat desert land with long grasses, and than there would be these bizarre rock islands in the grass. (It really looked like the backdrop to “Lion King”or something.) My favorite animal encounter was seeing a cheetah mom with her 2 babies. (They were a bit far away, but it was great to watch them play and interact with each other.)

Ngorongoro Crater- It is very close to the Serengeti, but it was very cold here, whereas the Serengeti was extremely hot. It is the largest crater in the world that isn’t filled with water. Again the scenery was breathtaking. My favorite view was standing by a little spring with a huge heard of zebra and in the distance seeing the rim of the crater with a cloud cascading over it like a big tidal wave. (It’s hard to explain how breathtaking it was, you’ll have to see the pictures.) Another highlight of the crater was being swarmed by animals. We would drive up and 100’s of zebras or wildebeest would surround our jeep. It was so cool!

We went to the Serengeti and the Crater with a company called Fun Safaris. And they treated us really well. We got to drive in jeeps instead of our huge truck. And they did all the cooking and cleaning for us. It was like being on a proper holiday!

PS Happy Birthday Stacy! I hope you had a really fun day!

I spent most of my time in Jinja relaxing. (I never ended up going white water rafting. After seeing the video I thought it looked a bit too scary for a first timer like me!) I did go on a cool Village Walk. We got to see how the local people really live and got to met a lot of sweet children. It was pretty cool camping right by the source of the
Nile!

 

 The next day we had a 13 hour drive! Boy was that ever long! The highlight of the day was warm showers and an awesome meal in the camps bar. (We got in too late to cook our own dinners, so there is a perk to driving all day long!)

 

The next day we headed to Naivasha. We did a walking safari to
Crater Lake and it was really cool. We got to within about 15 feet of giraffes. Walking safaris are really neat because it feels like your part of nature, instead of whizzing by in the truck. We had a nice hike around the lake and a good boat ride. (The only problem was that on the boat ride back we got totally soaked and then were supposed to go straight to high tea at Joy Adamson’s house.)

 

Joy Adamson is the woman famous for “Born Free” and all of her conservation of lions and African animals. She was killed about 15 years ago by poachers but they have transformed her former house into a museum. It was pretty cool.

We went back to Nairobi for a night than it was out to the Maasai Mara. The Maasai Mara is basically the best game park in Kenya. It is known for having tons of lions. The Mara did not disappoint! We saw so many animals that it was unbelievable. We saw at least 6 different groups of lion families eating wildebeest and buffalo. Plus we were lucky enough to see both leopards and cheetahs (which are really hard to spot). We saw about 30 other animals too! It was an amazing experience!

 

Tomorrow we leave for Tanzania and the Serengeti!

It seems like so much stuff happens everyday, that it’s hard to remember everything that happened after my last posting in Kampala. I took a boda boda (motorbike taxi) from town back to the Red Chili. Was that ever crazy! Traffic is insane and nobody stays in their lanes or takes turns. At one point we were driving down the wrong side of the median into on coming traffic, but we somehow managed to make it back in one piece.

We did do our big night out on the town. We started by going to a bowling/karaoke bar. Everyone else in my group was too chicken to sing, but Claire and I ran right up to the stage and impressed the audience with our rendition of Madonna’s “Holiday”. We even won free beers since we had the guts to be one of the first ones to sing.(You can take the girl out of Asia, but you can’t take the Asian out of the girl, I guess.) Anyways, after a few drinks we got most of the girls up on stage and butchered “Brown Eyed Girl”.

At about midnight, we joined up with some more people from different overland trucks and went to a nightclub. We had a great time! Kaz finally had to force us all to go home at about 3:30.

Claire and I had to drag our butts out of bed at 7:30am that morning. We had signed up to go to Chimp Island, so we were suffering a bit that morning. We took a car out to Lake Victoria, and then took a 1 hour speed boat ride across the lake to Chimp Island.

The first thing the man said to us was that if there was an emergency we should all run down to the boat. I was thinking, “what kind of emergency could happen here?!” Then he told us a delightful story about how one of the caretakers had had most of his fingers and toes bitten off by some crazy chimp that had escaped from the fenced in area. (It had attacked him and instead of rolling up in a ball like he was supposed to do, he had kicked at and punched at the chimp. So that’s when the chimp bit him.)

It really was a cool experience though! We got to sit really close to the chimps (on the other side of a fence) and they fed them a bunch of fruit and veg. The chimps are so human like. Some of them actually peeled the carrots with their teeth before they ate them, so that they didn’t have to eat the outside. It really felt like you were watching evolution take place, especially when they walked on 2 legs, interacted with each other, and ate.

One carrot didn’t make it over the fence and a chimp saw it sitting there. So he found a stick and tried to pull/ push it to his side of the fence. Another one had a few carrots in his hands, and another chimp didn’t have any. The one without the carrots came and sat my the one with food and sort of gave him a sad puppy dog face and begged for one. The other one crossed his arms, hid his food, and turned his back on the beggar. (He looked just like a kid that doesn’t want to share.) Eventually after a lot of begging, the greedy one shared little bits of the carrot with the other guy. It was so cool watching them!

After Chimp Island, we stopped in Kampala at a local restaurant and had some great African food. (I was really missing local food. It’s great to eat salads, sandwiches, and steak all the time, but you really miss out on the experience of eating with the locals an seeing what it’s really like in the country.) Then we set off for Jinja. Jinja is the source of the Nile. So there are tons of touristy activities to do here like white water rafting, ATVing, mountain biking, bungee jumping, walking tours etc.

I needed a little break from my group (some alone time), so I decided to take a boda boda to town and explores a bit, than I’m doing a village walk in the afternoon. Tomorrow, I’ll be white water rafting down the Nile! I’m so excited!

I’ve written this blog entry about 10 times now, but somehow the computer/Internet keeps messing up and I have to retype it everyday! Ugh!!

 

After a nice breakfast of banana pancakes, we drove to the Uganda/Rwanda border. It was a long drive, but the breathtaking scenery made it a great morning. (Kenya and Uganda are gorgeous countries.) On this drive we went through corrugated mountains (mountains that the farmers had craved into levels, so that they could utilize as much land as possible). Along the way many children ran behind our van, screaming and waving at us. (They were so cute, but they really pulled on your heartstrings with their grubby clothes and begging.)

 

Crossing the border was breeze. (Especially because Kaz, out leader, fills in all the forms for us and deals with the border officials.) The Rwandan border was so funny, it was basically 1 small shack and there wasn’t even a fence or anything separating it. The drive into
Rwanda was really cool. The women dress up so colorfully and they all seem to have a baby tied to their back, a huge bundle balancing on their heads, and something in each hand. (Boy, those women must be strong/tough!)

 

We camped in the garden of a pretty nice hotel/motel. Unfortunately, Claire and I were the last ones to set up our tent and we got the spot under a tree filled with birds. Needless to say our tent got covered in bird crap. Yuck!

The morning of our gorilla trek we woke up at 5:00am and began the long process of getting to the gorillas. I somehow got put into the “hard” group with all of the good hikers. We set off up the mountain with a guide, a porter (who an elderly German woman had hired to carry her backpack), and 3 Ugandan Army guys with their big machine guns. After about 2 hours of hiking (some of it a bit challenging, especially when we had to go through big patches of stinging nettle) we got to the gorillas. There were buffalos hanging out by our gorilla family, so we had to wait while the army guys scared off the buffalo. (Buffalos are supposed the most dangerous animals in Africa.)

Then we got to approach our gorilla family. The family was made up of 16 gorillas: a big silverback, a black back, many adult females, some adolescents, and 3 babies. The babies were so adorable! They were really playful and curious about us. They kept trying to come up and touch us. In the beginning the family was busy eating and didn’t really pay any attention to us. They kept moving around to get new plants, so we had to follow them up the mountain a bit. After about 30 minutes, they all settled under a tree to rest. We were able to sit within a few feet from them and watch them. The young ones were wrestling, rolling around, hugging, and even kissing each other. It was such a cool experience! I’m so glad that I shelled out all that money to do it ($400)!! Kaz said that if tourists weren’t visiting the gorillas, the mountain gorillas would be extinct by now. The government is really only interested in helping them and preserving their habitat, because it’s one of the biggest revenue generators for them.

 

We spent the rest of the time in Rwanda hanging out, showing off our gorilla pictures, and sharing our trekking stories.

We left Rwanda, and made our way back to Lake Bunyoni in Uganda. The first time we camped there we basically had the whole place and to ourselves. That was not the case this time! There were at least 5 or 6 overland trucks there (carrying at least 12 people each), so we were basically camping on top of each other. We were glad to get away from the crowd and head out early the next morning for Queen Elizabeth National Park.

Queen Elizabeth National Park is in North-western Uganda, so almost on the border of the Congo. We did a quick afternoon game drive around and saw a few animals. (This park has alot less animals in it, because the Ugandan army poached the animals until the late 1980’s, so the numbers are just starting to go up again.) It is a beautiful park that borders both Lake Edward and Lake George, so it is really known for it’s hippos and birds.

The campsite was pretty basic, but obviously I’m getting used to that by now. During the night we could hear a bunch of hippos grunting and hyenas. We even had one hyena walking right up to our tents looking for food.

The next morning we woke up early (before sunrise) and headed off on a game drive. We saw a bunch of different birds, hyenas, water bucks, gazelles, impalas, and cobs. (This park is sort of know for it’s cobs, which basically look like a cross between a deer and a gazelle. Not too excited but it was fun to watch them because it’s their mating season.) Then some people saw a leopard run up to a tree and hide in the grass. It’s very hard to see leopards, so it was sort of a big event. (Unfortunately, I was sitting on the other side of the truck so I couldn’t see him.) I did sort of get a picture of it, but you have to zoom in really close and study the picture pretty hard to see it.

After the game drive, we ate a big brunch and than washed our clothes by hand. (Using buckets and the 1water tap at the camp site. It was a lot of work, I’ll never take my washing machine for granted again.)

In the afternoon, we went on a boat cruise around the lake. It was really the highlight of QE Natinal Park! We saw tons of hippos, elephants, birds, buffalo, and even a croccidle. It sort of felt like that jungle boat ride in Disney World where the hippos pop out of the water all around you. Except this time they were actually real and wild animals. Very cool!

We got really spoiled that evening (our guide, Kaz, is actual one of the owners of Bukima, so she spoils us a bit with meals out and sleeping in realy beds sometimes). Anyways, that night we sat around a very posh safari resort ($300 a night/room) and had some drinks on the balcony. Then we got to eat dinner there too. You’ve never seen a group of people so excited to eat in a fancy restraunt. They had a starter and dessert buffet, plus we got fancy meals too. Boy, were we ever happy!

Unfortunately, as we finished our meal it started to pour down rain. No fun! Remarkable Claire and my tent was the only tent that didn’t leak, so we actually had a decent night sleep. (3 of the guys got some kind of stomach bug, so they were up all night getting soaked in the rain.)

The next day was a 12 hour drive back to the captial of Uganda, Kampala. We are staying at the Red Chili Hideaway. It is pretty nice, but really busy with overland trucks. Today, we got to sleep in! (I woke up at 7:00 am and it was still a sleep in for me.) Then we went to the craft market and bartered a bit with the shopkeepers. I got a few nice things (a painting, picture, frame etc.) Then tonight we’re having a big night out. Eating in a restraunt again, bowling, and drinks! (Wow, maybe we’ll even stay up past 10:00 a big strech for me!)

I have joined my Bukima tour and things are going very well! So far we have had to do a ton of driving (and on really crappy roads, so it’s slow going). My group is really nice. Everyone is basically in their 20’s or early 30’s and most of them are from England or Austraila. There are 3 couples and the rest of us are single girls.

So far the highlights of the trip have been Lake Nakuru National Park, an amazing campsite in Eldoret, and hanging out at Lake Bunyoni in Uganda. At Lake Nakuru we saw white rhinos, black rhinos, lions, giraffes, zebras, impalas, gazelles, etc. We camped in the National Park and there was no fence around our campsite, so it was a bit scary. (She told us that lions and buffalos have been known to walk in between the tents.)

We are traveling really fast because we need to be in Rwanda for our gorilla trek on the 9th. (I’m excited that we get to go to Rwanda it wasn’t on the inital itinerary, so I’ll be going to 10 countries on this trip.)

The truck is pretty nice and comfrotable. And we have been eating really well. We have 3 huge meals everyday. Breakfast is ushually cereal, fruit, yogurt, eggs, and sausage. For Lunch we have good salads and sandwiches with tons of veggies, and for dinner we have had alot of yummy things like steak, chicken, pasta etc.

Today, we got to chill on Lake Bunyoni in the southwestern corner of Uganda. It is a beautiful lake! We took dugout canoes and paddled around to some of the islands. (The dugout is literally a tree trunk that they have carved the middle out of.)

I’m having a great time, but won’t be able to post much since the Internet is really crappy and unreliable here.

Well, my second week in Lamu basically went by like the first.  I spent most of my time resting, relaxing, sunbathing, reading, swimming, drinking fresh fruit juice, eating awesome seafood, and talking to all the locals. 

One amazing thing happened: I was able to rent a whole beach house (more like mansion)  right on the ocean in Shella (the little beach town 3 kilometers away from Lamu Town).  I stayed in a 3+ bedroom with my own personal house boy (servant) whole did all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry.  I felt like an African princess or something.  The best part about the whole house was the master bedroom and bathroom. It took up the whole 3rd floor of the house and was completely open air.  (There was a thatched roof covering most of it and some walls, but there wasn’t any glass in the windows and I had a 360 degree view of the ocean, palm trees, and sand dunes.)  I really can’t describe how beautiful the house was, you’ll have to see the pictures. 

I also got an amazing deal on it.  Ushually it cost about $30 a night just to rent the master bedroom.  But I was friendly to all the locals and chatted with them, so I ended up making quite a few friends.  (They were all really sweet people in Lamu.  It’s a small town so the main activity of the day is sitting around and chatting with everyone passing by.)  Anyways, I was able to get the whole house for only $8.50 a night!!!  Crazy huh!  (Really I was only renting the master bedroom, but there were no other guests that week so I got to keep all of my stuff in the smaller bedrooms.) It was paradise!

I got insanely lazy while I was there!  So I don’t have too many activities to report.  I did get henna painting done on my hands.  (It’s the Indain looking painting with the ink made out of plants.)  It looks really cool.  I’ve taken some pictures so you can all see it.  (I’ve never had so many people compliment me on my hands before.  All of the Lamuians kept telling me that I looked like a Swahili bride.) 

I’m now in Nairobi. I just arrived a few hours ago, and already had a meeting with my safari group.  We leave first thing tomorrow morning for Lake Nakuru National Park.  It should be great!  (The flight from Lamu was so funny.  The “airport” is just a thatched roof with benches underneath.  There aren’t even any walls.  Plus the “security” area is a folding table with one man standing behind it.  The flight went very smoothly though, so no complaints for Air Kenya.)