We stayed in bed till 8 o'clock and had breakfast by 9. It looks cloudy outside, but it will turn into another warm day.
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We head off to the larga Maasai market that is held once a week in the center of Nairobi. It is almost next door to the hotel. What a chaos ! There are hundreds and hundres of salespeople with their material. We buy a zebra made of grass for 25 Shilling (about 25 EUR cent), a large bag and covers for the diary. Next Inge spots a nice necklace but it turns out it is a bit to long. We negotiate till the price is halved, and the seller is willing to make the necklace a bit shorter. He does however not shorten the necklace, he makes an entirely new one with a few beads less !In 10 minutes the new necklace is ready and fits perfectly. Deeply ashamed we pay the man 200 Ksh (2 euro)
We visit gametrackers again to make final arrangements for our safiri tomorrow. We lunch in the parc again, and do some shoppiong during the afternoon. Later we head over to the market again, and pick up some more goodies. |
Kenia Comfort hotel
$50,- incl. breakfast
Wednesday 5 oktober 2005
We had breakfast with the leftovers from the pizza yesterday and arrive at gametrackers office by 8:30. We are the first to arrive so we have plenty time to go to the supermarket to buy water. When we return we meet the forst of our travel companions: Patty from Belgium. She still needs to exchange money so we show her around, and do the water shopping routine with her again. After we return the other two travelers still are no show. Gametrackers tries to verufy their excistense, but get turned down everyhere. Somebody is sent to the hotel these people are supposed to be in, and we walk through Nairobi, waiting. Patty likes Inge's bag, and want one too. We head over tho the city market and do our thing. The seller wants 3800 Ksh for a bag, Patty does not want to pay more than 1500. Inge is at her best and succeeds. 1500 Ksh for the bag it is. We get a call from Gametrackers and head back. We leave without the other 2. they are and stay missing.
So, by 11:15 we mount our Landcruiser with an attitude, and leave Nairobi. The guide/driver is Daniël and the cook wants to be called Augustino. We head north. It is clear straight away this is a wetter area. The surroundings are green and stay that way. People along the road look much better dressed than those in Tanzania. We see lots of electric cables and the mobile phone just keeps on working.
At 14:00 we arrive at our first campsite on the foothills of MountKenia. We are too late for our gamedrive in Sweetwaters Game Preserve, so we prospone this till tomorrow morning. Instead we make a guided nature walk around the campsite. We learn about plants that can kill, plants that produce soap and plants that help in the fight against malaria. And we are spoiled because at half an hours walk from the campsite the guide spots a group of colobus monkeys !
Great dinner with potatoes and chicken. We go to bed at 21:45.
Bantu Camp, Mount Kenya
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Thursday 6 oktober 2005
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We pull down tents at 6. We pass the equator going north at 8:30 and are on our way to Sweetwaters private ranch. As soon as we are inside the parc, we spot a herd of zebra, and right before the car a mother black rhino with baby cross the road. We also see giraffe, impala, warthog and ofcourse babboons. We continue our drive to the chimpansee area. This parc is a sanctuary for orphaned and/or abused chimps. They are kept in 3 seperated areas. Unfortunately with all the fencing, it looks more like a zoo, than a wildparc.
We continue enroute to the Samburu National parc where we arrive at lunch time. We spot the always present babboons, white rhino, impala, ostrich, elephants (with an extreme young one !), dik-diks, gazelle,, secretaris birds, giraffe and zebra. Once at the campsite it turns out there are already tents standing, so we don't have to build our own. This campsite is in the midle of the natinal parc, so its perfect ! We walk around the site, have lunch and rest a bit. |
Samburu camp, samburu n.p.
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Friday 7 oktober 2005
We have had a bad night. Next door to the campsite is one of those redicoulisly expensive lodges and they ofcourse can not live without electricity. And for electricity in the center of a national parc you need an aggregate. A noisy-diesel-bloody-aggregate...
So at 5:45 Inge is clear awake. She peeks through the musquito netting behind the tent, and notes a tree moving. Maybe baboons getting up ? Wind ? After a few seconds things clear up, when an elephants reveals itself at less than 20 meter from the tent. We look at it eating, untill it leaves the scene.
One of the tires is slowly leaking air, so we leave by 8 for a nearby village. The repair and switch would take 30 minutes, so 2 hours later we are on our way again. We have a long drive ahead of us and we are behind on schedule. The landscaee is the boring same all the way. We see hardly any people. During our lunch break Daniël fixes the shockabsorber that has gone loose. Fortunately this car has a different suspension than the one from the first safari, so there is nothing to worry about. After lunch the exhaust explodes because of a rock jumping up high. Yup, we have arrived in the north of Kenia ! We are now a noise machine, so we atract lots of on-lookers.
The road gets worse by the mile, but at 17:00 we finally arrive in Marsabit. This is the heart of north-Kenia. We head over to the campsite, pitch tents and leave straight away for the national parc. Daniëls drops us of at a lodge with a view into the crater, and drives to town to fix the exhaust.
When he returns us to the campiste, we eat spaghetti and have fun teasing the babboons that also live on the campsite. Until we are cought in a very local rain-storm... Monkeys revenge !
We head to bed at 22:20
Public camp site, Marsabit
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Saturday 8 oktober 2005
We were up at 6 again, packed our stuff and had breakfast. We stuck around watching the babboons for a while, but than went in to "town". The car needed more work so we went into another garage. When Daniël is finally happy, we fill up every hole in the car with fuel. The next 5 days we will be nowhere...
Finally we head out of town. The road seems a litle better than yesterday, but this is probarbly more due to the fact that Marsabit is close. Unfortunately we leave the "main-road" pretty quick and head into the big nothing. We follow a trail straight through a vulcanic area. Around midday we enter the Chalbi dessert. It is nothing like the dessert we think of: no huge mountains of sand. But he main feature of a dessert is here: there is absolutley nothing. It is hot here and we drive on roads that are not even there. Once a year the entire dessert floods, and the firt one in after the rains makes the road for the next year. Every year. We drive along the edge of the dessert aginst a mountain range. At some places I would be afraid to even walk, but Daniël drives on, and on. The terrain is rough en rugud. We see no humans, we see no animals.
In the distance we spot one car...
We arrive in a town called Kalacha in the north of the dessert. There is water here and quite a few people live i this area. Unfortunately the temeprature is way high, so Niels' temper is up there too...On the campsite is a bassin that used to be the local water stash. Now it is used as pool. We cool of in there.
After putting up the tent it turns out it is so hot, we might as well take off the outer layer of the tent, and sleep like that. After dinner the heat chases us into our tents at 21:30.
Kalacha, public camp
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Sunday 9 oktober 2005
We leave at 9:15. There are clouds in the sky, so the sun is not yet frying us. The temperature is reasonable. Unfortunately the clouds disapear and the temeprature quickly is up to 40+ celcius. (105+ F). We continue our route through the dessert. this time there is no road. We are driving on the gut feeling of the driver. We see no people, nor animals. We get stuck in the sand twice but nothing serious. A stretched landcruiser seems not really well adapted for sand.
Around 10:45 we have a break in North Horr. We have a drnk, and Patty and Inge go to a local shop to buy some stuff. Almost the entire village gathers around to see this. If Niels gets bored after a while and gets up in the middle of the crowd (almost 2 meters ling and 100 kilo worth of white flesh...) the crowd is scared beyond believe. Most people run for their lives. The ones that stay behind have a good laugh at the runners...Inge and Patty both buy a Maasai cloth for 300 Ksh.
| North Horr is the end of the desert trip. We now head west and plummit down to the shores of lake Turkana through rough terrain. We arrive at Gametracker's permanent campsite on the edge of the lake by 14:45. We really want to swim, but we are strongly advised not to, because a few years back crocodiles were spotted near the camp, so the lake is considered dangerous to tourists ever since. Showering is not the sollution either. The wate ris pumped from the lake, salt and there is no roof on the shower cabin. Taking a shower would mean instant skun burning here. In the area surrounding the campsite there is nothing. Absolutely nothing. No trees, no bushes, no plants, no houses, no humans, no nothing. We try to adjust to the heat. The wind is constantly blowing hot wind from the dessert up north. The only shadow on site is inside the hut that is used to eat in. The temperature is up to 45 C (114 F) and Niels hardly copes. We hang out, do nothing and slowly simmer till dinner is served. After dark the temp is down to a whopping 35 C (95 F) ! Niels'mood is through the floor. Tired of strugling the heat we head to bed at 9:30. |
Monday 10 oktober 2005
We have had a tough night because it remained hot during the night. We even had a storm ! Bad luck: the wind was warm... Today a boat truip is planned. Inge and Patty don't seem to mind to be in a wreck with windforce 8. Niels stays at the campsite. The boat takes the ladies to an island inhabited by one fisherman. On the shoreline is a big group of crocodiles, while on the island itself goats wander freely. The boat leaves the ladies on the island and heads on. On the island is no shade. Nothing. Soon enough some souvenir sellers wade through the lake to the island. After an hour Patty and Inge are "rescued" by the boat. Niels in the meanwhile does the laundry.
After lunch the cartakes us to the nearest village to a lodge. Oasis club is truely an oasis. It shows that if you do something you can actually create something nice in this heat. There is a pool on the premisis and we spent most afternoon under water. It cost 500 Ksh per person, but in this heat one should not complain.
We are picked up and brought back to the campsite. We ask Augustino (our cook) to bring us to a local school, an he finds the headmaster. We hand out pens and pencils for him to distribute and have dinner at 19:15. By 21:00 the heat exchaustion grabs us again.
Gametrackers camp, Lake Turkana (Loiyangalani)
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Tuesday 11 oktober 2005
We try to beat the heat by getting up at 5:45. Today is our camel-walk safari and we can only take so much stuff along. We drive off at 8 o'clock and use something the locals call a road, and we would call a path...
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We turn off the main road and take a shortcut to Tuum. A goats path I would not even dare to walk on. Steep, rough and inaccessable. We pass straight over the mountain, straight through the big nothing. The first hour is exciting, after that the ride gets annoying. We bounce and bump on the rocks. there is not a moment of rest. The area we drive in is astonishingly beautiful. Our guess is very few tourists have ever been up here. Every now and then we see some Samburu tribe people with goats, camels or even cows. We hand out water a couple of times. These people have truely nothing.
By 12:30 we arrive in the village of Tuum. We have luinch and try to figure out how long our walk is going to be. Nobody seems willing to give an answer. It is pretty hot, and we really like to know what we are going to d, so we can use our strenght wisely. We get no answer. We walk with 3 locals and 2 camels. After an hour and a half we loose the group. Patty, the locals and the camels walk way too fast for us. So we follow the only path we can see. After a two hour walk we suddenly stand at the campsite. |
Fly camp, 2 uur oost van Tuum
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Wednesday 12 oktober 2005
We were supposed to go on another long walk. The first half in a forest, and the second part in the dessert without any shade. Again everybody refuses to tell us how long the walk will be. So we decide to refuse to walk. It is way too hot and we will not walk a "long" walk without shade out here. So we are pointed towards the path, and arrive at the rendez-vous point in an hour. We wait (in the shade !) till the car arrives to pick us up. Patty walks for another hour with the guides, but without the camels.
The road is the same sort of terrible. We stop for some shopping in a village that later turns out to be "small Bosnia". Many people go here armed because there is a fight amongst the different tribes. As tourists we do not feel unsafe.
We arrive at the campsite at 17:00 and meet up with two (huge !) overland trucks. Both are filled with Dutch tourists who also visited the northern regions. In every truck is an armed guard for security. Quite an exaggeration if you ask us...
We eat rice with goats meat with lots of fat and tendon (?). Niels is in bed by 20:30. Inge and Patty have a drink at the bar. Inge orders Fanta at 30 Shilling while Patty tries some local alcohol at Ksh 240...
Yare camel club + camp, Maralal
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Thursday 13 oktober 2005
We leave camp at 8:15. Today will be a quiet day. The road remains in horrible condition, the views get better all the time. The clouds stay up today, so the temeprature remains reasonable. Daniël break the handbrake cable along the way, but it doesn't matter. The shock absorber breaks again, but a piece of string fixes that quickly. Suddenly the bunp-road ends and we are back on asphalt. We enjoy the ride totally ! After half an hour of smooth gliding we arrive at Roberst camp at Lake Baringo. We pitch tents and have lunch. After lunch we dive into the pool at the next door lodge fot 220Ksh. It is still pretty warm so the colling off is much appreciated.
By 17:30 the wind starts to blow and we even get rain. Lots of rain. We decide to wait with dinner. Only by 19:45 the air cleans a bit, and with a slight drizzle coming from the sky we have dinner in our tent. The rain does not seem to stop, so we sleep by 21:00
Robert's camp, Campi ya Samaki
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Friday 14 oktober 2005
We were bugged all night by the coughing/laughing noises the hippos made. These animals come out of the lake at night, and eat the grass on the campsite. Even before breakfast we go on a boat tour. We immidiately see a goliath harron. One that is 1.5 meters (almost 5 feet) tal... We also see tons of icebirds. Ahead is a fisherman who sells us one of his fish to feed a fisheagle that comes flying towards us. the guide counts down for us to snap the cameras. He is wrong unfortunately... We spot a huge varaan, but by the time we get closer it is running behind the rocks. We sail to a large herd of hippos and start bugging them. Every now and then one of them gets so angry he will chase the boat for a while.
Robert's camp, Campi ya Samaki
Banda at Ksh 2000 incl. usage of kitchen with refrigerator / deepfreezer
Dinner and drinks for two at Ksh 1050 (10 euro).