Kenyan Adventures

We arrived in Kampala, Uganda after almost 3 weeks traveling around Kenya. Lots of adventures to write about! Our route took us from Mombasa to Tsavo Park on safari, to Nairobi, to Samburu Park, Marsabit, the Chalbi Desert, Lake Turkana, Maralal, and back to Nairobi. Most of it was on tour/safari, since it's near impossible to travel to some of these remote locations on your own, unless you have loads and loads of time.

Some "experiences" to share:

- Seeing the "red dust elephants" of Tsavo, magnificent. The earth is very red in this area, and elephants like to give themselves dirt/mud baths, so they are all painted bright red. We had to have a Masaii warrior walk with us around our campsite at night since the elephants roam thru there. When I say "campsite", we did stay in a tent, but we had real beds and a full bathroom inside the tent. Luxury!

- Samburu park: Seeing 10 cheetahs, including a mom with her cub eating a dead baby gazelle while the mommy gazelle looked mournfully on at a distance. Watching a herd of elephants ford a river, with baby elephant struggling not to get washed away. Dancing with the Samburu people in their village, looking like a complete mzungo fool. Having a monkey jump up beside me and grab a crepe off my plate at breakfast in camp (I did not react in a calm manner unfortunately - no I screamed extremely loud and thru my plate, narrowly missing our friend Roberta. gave everyone a good laugh though.)

- Driving thru the Desert on very rough tracks. You really felt like you're in the middle of nowhere. Watched the sun set over the desert. And cooled off in our camp's "swimming pool" (ie. water tank). Highlight was stopping for lunch "on the side of the road", where a camel herder was resting with around 20 camels. Our friend David from Belgium was keen to ride a camel so he paid the guy a few dollars to (awkwardly) jump onto a camel's back and ride around the field. I was crying I was laughing so hard, watching poor David holding on for dear life onto the camel's hump (he was basically sitting on it's butt) while the camel ran around - he eventually fell off, but he stayed on for 10.5 minutes! Impressive.

- What can I say about Lake Turkana? Out of this world. Where the Constant Gardner was filmed. The lake is huge, and a beautiful blue. Enticing in the heat, but not so tempting when you realize how many crocs live there (though Brian still went in). The weather is super super hot, but with a crazy strong wind so that you couldn't walk upright. The wind whistled thru our straw bandas (huts) all night driving us mad. The land itself is barren - volcanic rock, sand... Nothing grows there. This is where the Turkana and El Molo people live. Don't know how they survive there. They do, barely, with help from the government. They look much poorer and malnutritioned in this region, for sure. But very colourful, with beautiful beaded necklaces similar to the Samburu and Masaii people, and the Turkana women have cool mohawks. There is also still a lot of fighting between tribes. The El Molo village we visited had to uproot itself the week before since it got raided by the Gabra during the night and one person was killed. pretty brutal.

- 5 days trekking on a camel around Maralal in north central kenya. An experience of a lifetime, meaning i don't need to do that again. I was mostly with a 12 year old camel named Jet - quite liked him. Feisty. He liked to body check other camels. And he didn't like getting hit by our Samburu warrior guide ("Doctor"), so he'd try and run to avoid the stick. Fun times. My butt and back still remember well. But seriously it was fun seeing the countryside in this way, sleeping in the bush, walking by zebra, warthogs, gazelle, etc. Our first night we camped by the lake where a couple hundred years ago the Masaii and Samburu split - Masaii went south, and Samburu went north. We passed by many manyattas (villages), and as soon as people spotted us they'd run out to get a better look at the strange mzungos on camels (it was just Brian and I actually on the trip). I'm glad that we could provide some solid entertainment for the region - they all seemed to think it was hilarious. Even donkeys, goats and cows seemed intrigued. If we were walking beside the camels they wouldn't pay attention, but if we rode them they had to rush over to watch. Strange. Anyways, I was glad personally when the trip was over, since I was getting the flu. got back to base camp and our hut just in the nick of time, and spent the rest of the day in bed and in the bathroom. Fun times.

- Worst travel day ever - 13 hour trip from Maralal to Nairobi. took us 8 hours to go less than 100 kms. We got stuck in the mud at least 7 times, and had to have a team of men to pull us out. It was absolute carnage out on the roads, with trucks everywhere. I was just thankful we didn't have to stay the night there, like our driver did the night before. Can't believe that the government wouldn't do something about the roads. Apparently the minister of tourism of kenya went up to Maralal to attend the famous Camel derby, but he of course flew. I took some pictures of the roads so I can send them to him. We took in a few people into our private minibus so that they could help us when we got stuck, including a man and his two small adorable children. Our "niceness' got us nowhere, since when we arrived in Nairobi we discovered we had been robbed. Whoever it was went into our bags and took out select items, including my only pair of shoes, all my contact lenses, our malaria pills, a flashlight, etc. Very upsetting! good reminder that you really can't drop your guard here. Luckily we were able to get more malaria pills in Kampala today, so we're ok.

- 16 hour ride to Kampala, when we thought it was going to be 10 hours. As we were leaving the town of kisumu we read the paper which reported on the big bus crash that happened in that exact spot, just a few days prior. A bus driver swerved to avoid a tanker, and the tanker ripped the bus apart, killing 21 people. The last few hours of our bus ride was in the dark on crazy roads in uganda. thought we were driving in a field rather than a road, but there were big transport trucks whizzing by us.

I'm sure I've missed something, so much has been happening. But now I'm off to pack up and get some sleep - we head to lake Bunyoni tomorrow to relax for 4 days. bought a new book and a new journal so I'm set - have already read at least 7 books since arriving in Africa, and have written one full journal. Need to take full advantage of this time off - as soon as we land in singapore we'll be focused on the job search.

Brian has posted a few pictures on Picasa website. you can reach them using this link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/briananderson15/AfricaHoneymoon He did have to crop the pictures quite a bit, and drop down their size, to get them on the site, so they probably don't look as good as they should. But it'll give you an idea!

Love to all,
Anne (and Brian)