We spent the weekend enjoying Candace and Bob's hospitality, catching up on our cooking, and setting up our logistics for the following three weeks in Kenya. Candace and Bob also took us about 45 minutes south of Nairobi to the game ranch I lived on in college – it was a three month School for Field Studies program in Wildlife Ecology and Management, and we lived and studied on the Hopcraft Ranch, surrounded by herds of gazelles, wildebeest and giraffes on a daily basis.
It was all still there, but now as a collection of cabins for rent where our tents had been and a restaurant where our we had had our communal kitchen and classroom. It was a very cool and nostalgic feeling to be back, and we enjoyed a wildlife-filled drive around the ranch after finishing our lunch at the open air restaurant among the accacia trees.
On Monday morning, we were picked up by our driver for our next six days on safari – order of business: Masai Mara National Park, Lake Nakuru National Park, Lake Naivasha National Park and Crater Lake Wildlife Sanctuary.
We headed out of town and about an hour later arrived at the rim of the Rift Valley, pulling over to look out over the beautiful, stark scenery. We stopped again in Narok for a local lunch of ugali (similar to a sticky polenta) and beef stew, before completing the last leg of the five hour drive by heading south into the Mara along an unpaved track through fields of cattle, gazelle and zebra, before finally arriving at the park's southeastern gate.
Our camp was just outside of the gate, overlooking the small outpost at the entrance – a Maasai town of small rickety shops, cattle enclosures, and a traditional village dependent on the tourist trade. At every swing through the outpost, our jeep would be swarmed by middle-aged and elderly women selling beaded jewelery – beautiful, ornamental decoration ubiquitous among the Maasai, but a bit overwhelming when hoisted within inches of your nose by two dozen pairs of hands backed by a babble of voices quoting prices and entreaties. We waited until the last day to actually select a couple of pieces, so as not to encourage any more of a circus than the standard fare on our several passes through the gate.
When we arrived at camp, we met Garuya, our guide for the next few days, and headed out for a nature walk in the forest behind our camp.
Native Maasai and raised a two-hour walk from the camp, Garuya was a font of knowledge about local plants, animals and birds. We collected and sampled half a dozen medical herbs and found small bush buck and dik-diks in the brush as we followed the ridge above camp. We arrived back before the light faded, and enjoyed a dinner of simple Kenyan dishes served near the fire before heading to bed for the night. We were in canvas tents with two comfortable cots inside, neighbored by outhouses and open air showers. It was perfect – simple but comfy, and only minutes from the park entrance.
The next morning, we woke and ate breakfast on a leisurely schedule, leaving camp at around 9 a.m. for a full day in the park. The Mara was incredible – the smaller portion of the Maasai Mara/Serengeti National Parks of Kenya and Tanzania lie on the Kenyan side of the border, but the area is still expansive and we only covered about half the length of the park during the entire day.
In addition to the standard grazers (we saw Thompson's gazelles, impala, kongoni, dik-dik, bush buck, Grant's gazelles, waterbuck, topi and buffalo), we also found herds of elephants, giraffes, zebras, warthogs, and a couple of black rhinos. Vervet monkeys and mongoose put in appearances, and we saw hyena slinking through the tall grass.
To cap it all, and with the help of a network of cell phones and Garuya's impressive tracking skills, we found a pride of sleeping lions and a pair of cheetahs shading themselves from the sun after devouring their morning kill. And that was all just on day one!
Our day also included a lovely picnic under an accacia tree at the top of a small hill, so that we could see approaching predators, as well as park rangers, since we weren't supposed to be outside of our jeep within the park. We finally made our way back to camp at about 5 in the evening, and found a new resident, Dana from the Czech Republic, had joined our camp.
She was a PhD student in parasitology, investigating the possibility of a lifelong dream to move to Kenya, a la Joy Adamson. This was her first visit, and she was on a budget, so we invited her to join us on our game drives in the park the next day.
We had dinner and s'mores around the campfire that night, and got ourselves ready for an early morning start the following morning, so we could catch the critters that hide by day (Colin's attempt at early rising pictured).
Aside from adding a jackal to our tally and seeing hundreds of brightly colored birds (my favorite being the lilac-breasted roller), we spotted hippos and crocodiles at the river separating Kenya and Tanzania.
We also found a pride of lions on the hunt – incredible! Even more incredible was watching as the herd of buffalo they were hunting turned the tables on them, getting the lions on the run with the buffalo in pursuit! We found many more during our day of wildlife viewing – including a trio of lions which had just snacked on a porcupine and still had porcupine quills protruding from their bellies (our guide found the spot where they'd caught him and retrieved a quill with lion blood still on it as a keepsake for Colin) - and then returned to camp for lunch.
On the afternoon game drive, as evening approached, the highlight of the day occurred: a brief glimpse of a leopard skirting the roadside before saying nertz to the growing number of jeeps converging on his chosen haunt and disappearing into the tall grass. We made it out of the park after sunset (and after curfew – the park was already officially closed), and collapsed into our tents happy and exhausted. 
Our final morning in the Mara started with a visit to the Maasai village at the edge of the outpost, where we were greeted by young men in warrior dress, given a tour of the homes and livestock enclosures, and treated to a couple of traditional songs and fire-making demonstration before entering the crafts complex where we were obliged to visit each family's area before selecting our chosen pieces.
I selected a simple Maasai necklace as a wall hanging and Colin chose a carved wooden club, used in some of the ceremonial dances.
After one more quick tour through the park (focus of the day: rhinos), we packed up our gear, along with half the camp equipment, and headed for Lake Nakuru, via the site of the coming weekend's race car rally.
We dropped off a dozen canvas tents and some of the camp staff, because the tour company's owner is an avid rally driver and would be hosting a large party throughout the weekend races. Arriving at Lake Nakuru (with Dana, who had decided to come with us), we glimpsed a lion perched on a fallen tree before arriving at a guest house belonging to the Wildlife Club of Kenya – a lodging we found in our guidebook in lieu of camping, partly because the forecast called for rain (in buckets!) and partly because most of the camping gear was needed at the car rally. Turned out we had the guest house – and its kitchen – to ourselves, and spent a pleasant night cooking, eating, reading and sleeping to the sound of rain on the roof.
We woke to views of gazelles out of our window and headed out to circle the lake in our jeep.
We were greeted by hundreds of baboons as we set out, and enjoyed seeing nearly a dozen endangered white rhinos and the lake's famous pink flamingos in our circumnavigation.
Lake Nakuru is a small but beautiful national park, and much more easily navigable than the expansive Maasai Mara – we picnicked at a viewpoint on the lake's western cliffs and dropped Dana off in Nakuru town before heading south to Lake Navaisha.
Dana was headed to Lake Baringo to the north via matutu – the local minivan buses that are packed to the gills with locals traveling on the cheap. We planned to meet her again in Lamu, off the Kenyan coast, if our schedules meshed.
At Lake Naivasha, we were given a choice between the backpacker tents at the lakeside (Fisherman's Camp) or the simple camping cabins with beds at the top of the hill overlooking the lake (Top Camp). We opted for the cabins, mainly because we saw them first, but were later grateful for the peace and quiet that having some distance from the lake afforded us. We went down to the lakeside and had lunch at the campground restaurant, then boarded a small boat for an afternoon of hippo viewing and a visit to Elsamere, Joy Adamson's residence.
Despite our motor failing, we had a nice journey (partially towed by another boat), toured Adamson's house, enjoying her paintings, watching a documentary film about her life in Kenya raising lions and other wild cats, and having tea in her dining room before heading back to Fisherman's Camp for dinner. The down side of staying at Top Camp was being stuck when our driver didn't show on schedule – I had just talked the manager of the restaurant into driving us back when he showed up – to our relief, because our hard-sought ride had just asked me: “I hope you don't mind if Ive had a few drinks?”
The next morning, our driver once again didn't show on schedule, but this time it was daylight and we hiked downhill to the restaurant for breakfast, leaving a note and our bags behind. Just as we were considering calling the company owner at his race car rally, our driver showed up (he had a talent for nick-of-time appearances) and off we went to the highlight of the trip for me – Crater Lake Wildlife Sanctuary, where we didn't need to be in a vehicle to see the wildlife.
We hiked through the sanctuary on foot, walking through grasslands full of giraffes and gazelles, and finally seeing eland – a large, cattle-like antelope that has a reputation for extreme shyness. Nonetheless, we walked within 50 feet of one, joyous at being in such close quarters with so many animals! After a couple of hours, we continued on out of the savanna and over a ridge leading to the crater lake itself – a tiny but beautiful blue lake fringed by a handful of flamingos and colobus monkeys hollering in the trees.
An exclusive, rustic resort sits on the lakeside opposite where we crested the ridge, so we stopped for a cool drink after walking around the water's edge, and finally tore ourselves away to head back to Lake Naivasha and prepare for our return to Nairobi.
We had lunch at a local restaurant on the grounds of one of the many flower orchards bordering Naivasha (Dutch flower growers have come to dominate the local economy in the last 20 years), where Colin played pool with our driver, beating him and winning himself a coke in the deal. Then it was back on the road to Nairobi, arriving back at Candace and Bob's in the late afternoon, and settling in to wait for them to arrive home from work. We had one more night with them before catching a plane the next day to Malindi, on the coast, where we were to volunteer at an orphanage for the coming week. We all went out to dinner that night with friends of theirs at an upscale Asian restaurant in an exclusive gated community, sharing sushi and curries and grilled fish around the table. Delish. But....
I woke up at 4 in the morning sick as a dog – retching and dizzy and as food-poisoned as I've ever been. I don't know if it was the lunch or the dinner, but I was the only one to get sick (thank goodness!). I couldn't even get out of bed and away from the bathroom long enough to go see a doctor, let alone get on a plane. We had to delay our departure to Malindi, making our apologies to the volunteer service coordinator who had made our arrangements with the orphanage. Candace helped to reschedule our flights, and Colin took care of both himself and me for the next two days while I slept and recovered. When I was finally able to think straight again, I discovered that our flight had had to be delayed by a full four days, because of the limited availability of seats.
So we made a few more plans for sightseeing in Nairobi, taking in the National Museum and visiting the Giraffe Center, where endangered Rothschild's giraffes are bred for reintroduction to the wild, and the Elephant Orphanage, where young elephants orphaned by poachers are raised and reintroduced into National Parks throughout Kenya. Colin “adopted” an elephant, and earned himself the right to visit in the evening when the babies are being put to bed for the night. Unfortunately, we didn't get the opportunity to return for that visit, as we finally had tickets out to the coast that afternoon, and were eager to get started on our belated stay at Malindi's Heart Children's Home....
Up Next: Mama Lucy & Mohammad's Birthday
The Mara is also a great place for getting to know the colourful Maasai culture. This fearsome and historically nomadic tribe is truly fascinating and most operators offer the chance to visit a Masai homestead, or "manyatta".
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