Riven

The group meeting in the evening was only short and gave an overview of the trip, since the whole group had yet to arrive. Our guide Patrick is a giant (probably 6”4ish), youngest of 16 children, and he is the shortest one in his family, even his mother is 7 foot tall! They are known as the “Tower Family” apparently. I can believe it!

There was the option to go to a buffet for tea which about half the people were interested in, but I was too full after a relatively late lunch. I went back to the cafe in the hotel, intending to brave the chicken pie with chilli sauce... but the brought a chicken burger. I tried!

We were leaving at 8am, so it was relatively early bed, before more cereal for breakfast and meeting the rest of the group, our 4 man crew, and our truck (Patrick was adamant: it is not a bus, but a truck! To be fair it is very robust!). Along with Patrick, we have Wilson the cook, David the driver, and Jessie, who is “help”: I was sat near him on the truck, and he is aspiring to be a guide like Patrick, but also helps Wilson cook, can drive and used to be a mechanic, and is also a pastor. He can provide a lot of help it seems!

Goodbye Heron Portico Hotel!

And hello truck! (you may have noticed that the background doesn’t seem very Nairobi-ish: that’s because I cheated and took this at our camp in Kembu)

The truck has power at every seat, drinking water, a cool box, lockers for luggage, even some tables! It is very luxurious compared with a lot of the other overland transport I have, though the Kenyan roads give out “free African massages” ievrheyvare quite bumpy in places, though in fairness not too bad.

Nairobi is not nearly so sprawling as I expected, compared with say Lima (though this is somewhat to be expected as the population is “only” 5 million compared to Lima’s 10 million), so quickly we were out into the surprisingly green countryside. It was cloudy, and by that I mean we were in the clouds, since Nairobi is at roughly 2000 meters altitude. 

Are we sure this is Africa?!?

As we continued, I saw a tree I recognised somewhat from many of the classic savannah photos: the not particilarly tall, flat topped ones. I asked Patrick about this, and these are Yellow Bark Acacia, aka the Fever Tree. It has this nickname because in the olden days when people would take shade under them they would often get sick. Turns out the culprit was the mosquitos who like to live in the trees, not the poor trees themselves! The root is actually used often in Masai medicine, and animals love to eat the bark, whilst giraffes like the leaves.

It has yellow bark and is an acacia. I think I know where the name came from...

Around this point the view opened up, as we were about to begin our descent into the Great African Rift Valley, which according to Patrick is roughly 6800 miles long, and where we would be spending much of our holiday (though outside of the descent it will be hard to tell we are even in a valley given how wide it is). We stopped at a viewpoint to take some quick pictures, and a man tried to sell me a souvenir (though not in a lush way, and we weren’t mobbed, which is nice). On this plus side I learned that our altitude was still 2140 meters, as it said so on the souvenir I didn’t buy!

The clouds are preventing us from not seeing the other side

I saw these 2 zebras fighting...

After descending into the valley the scenery became more like what I was expecting from Africa, Savannah with the odd tree. I was very excited to spot a zebra in the distance, shortly followed by a boatload more (and much closer), a lone giraffe, and some baboons!

Patrick assured me there will be better photos later

There were a lot of trucks on the road. Patrick explained that many of the neighbouring countries are landlocked, and so they receive a lot of import goods from the port of Mumbasa. There are strict load limits as historically heavier trucks have caused damage to the road. There have always been rules against this, but bribery at the weighbridges was a problem. Nowadays they have mobile weighbridges to perform spot checks and if someone is found carrying too much load their truck will be confiscated!

We passed through Naivasha, which grows a lot of flowers, fruit, and veg (apparently a lot that makes it to our supermarkets is from here, so check the labels), and passed a brackish lake called Elementaita which houses a lot of flamingos. Recently though there has been more rain, attributed to global warming, and thus has diluted the water somewhat, leading some of the flamingos to migrate to other lakes as the algae they feed on grows best in water of a particular salinity.

We stopped briefly at a mall where we got a coffee and some people changed money, before forging on to our camp site at Kembu. We had a lateish lunch of sandwiches of various spreads (peanut butter, jam, marmalade etc), a salad mainly made up of carrots, kidney beans, and tomatoes (to be avoided), and some guacamole, with watermelon for dessert. It was nice enough, though lacking in meat for my tastes!

After lunch the tents were pitched and we got ourselves sorted out, before an optional farm walk, which I went on. It was mainly just walking, but there was plenty of wildlife (and farm life) to see, so I will dump a few photos taken with my shiny new camera, which transfers them by some arcane sorcery (probably Bluetooth) to my phone:

We went in a field with some cows. They were friendly

Next up was a field with some pregnant horses. Even more friendly, with one borderline demanding nose rubs!

Next was an auger buzzard. I am rather pleased with he dramatic landing shot!

Mother and 2 week old child horse, taken with the considerable maximum zoom on the big lens dad lent me, because the mother is not friendly

Ants. Lots of ants

A black dove. Feels like I might be cursed now after seeing one.

A very fluffy looking brown snake eagle who flew down the road at head height just ahead of us

Finally, a nice badass ibis. It is actually hadada but autocorrect decided badass and who am I to argue?!

After that the heavens opened, but luckily there was a bar with a fire in it, around which we huddled whilst waiting for our tea to be prepared. Wilson had outdone himself this evening with a lovely pumpkin soup into which I put a little tobasco, followed by chicken and/or chickpea curry, both of which were delicious.

Tomorrow would be our first day of safari, in Nakuru National Park, so it was early to bed in order to be able to get to the park early, as the animals are more active in the morning!