Back in Kenya - We were literally talking shit

Once again we woke at times only drunks are stumbling home to take down the tent, have breakfast and departed from rain soaked Jinja, across the border and back into Kenya.

The ride on the first day took all day to get to Lake Nakuru. We stayed at a place called Kembu Camp, which is a big farm area with lush green grass to put up our tents.

Once the tents were up and as we were in the shower it said they were on tight water restrictions, which I am sure they were taking the piss because rained more in a few hours there than it does in Melbourne for half a year. Thankfully because of the grass we didn’t get our feet dirty after the shower and stayed relatively clean, something which I very thankful for.

A good nights sleep and we were up early the next morning to visit Lake Nakuru National Park for a game drive and bird watching.

Due to the rain we had a lot of roads inaccessible and we were not able to see any Lions or Leopards but I enjoyed it. It is a smaller National Park and doesn’t have elephants, but we saw a couple of White Rhinos, Jackals and their pups, Hyenas, Flamingos, and got close to Buffalo, Baboons, Monkeys, Zebras, Impala and some other animals.

A lot of people didn’t seem to enjoy the game drive but I actually liked it. I liked having a change up and seeing the different types of birds rather than focusing on the big 5 and other, more popular animals.

We finished around 1am and headed to our next destination, Crayfish Camp in Lake Naivasha where it started raining on the way. For a change.

Hi...and thank you for reading my blog. You make me smile

Troopers that we were, we were one of two couples who didn’t upgrade to a cabin whilst there for the nights. I think because of the downpouring of rain we’d had the previous nights and the promise of more on the way everyone was sick of risking getting their stuff wet in the tents. We decided early in the trip that we wouldn’t upgrade rather we’d get an air mattress to replace our camp mats we used last time. Well worth the purchase if you ever do an overland/camping trip, it is comfortable.

Funnily enough it did not rain during the two nights we were there which even worked out even better as we were able to do some washing of our dirty clothes. I had planned on going for a boat ride on the lake hoping to see the Fish Eagles but the planner disappeared and I was unable to do so. So I had a much-needed sleep in and at 3pm we, along with about 10 others, headed to Elsamere Cottage, the home of Joy and George Adamsom. Joy Adamson was an Austrian ex-pat who moved to Kenya in a bid to marry every man in the country. Failing just short in this goal, having only married 3 men – finally settling on George – she moved onto animals and paintings and was famous for her books on Elsa, a female lion she had an incredible relationship with after George, who was a hunter-turned-game warden, rescued her as a cub after her mother was killed. Joy’s relationship with Elsa was written about in a couple of books, the most famous being ‘Born Free’. She also had a relationship with Pippa, a female Cheetah and a leopard whose name I cannot recall.

The justice system over the imprisonment of the person accused of killing Joy Adamson

Joy died in the 1980s, stabbed by hired help over a pay dispute, although a Google search on this suggests there might be a conspiracy in regards to this. George was shot and killed a few years later trying to rescue a tourist in northern Kenya.

We watched a documentary on her before we were able to explore their museum, seeing their various knick-knacks and awards for their services to conservation. Once we were done we had a high tea of cakes, scones, and other savory snacks and we able to explore the cottage.

The cottage was beautiful, a place I would love to live in. It has a wonderful view of Lake Naivasha, and a wide-open backyard leading to the jetty sprinkled with various trees and plants as well as resident Baboon’s and Monkeys who are keen on impressing upon people how hungry they are.

We returned to Crayfish Camp and had dinner and spent some time with the others on their last night on tour before going our separate ways.

The next morning we packed and headed back to Nairobi. Thankfully the drive was short and we arrived at Acacia Camp early enough that we were able to go to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a place where they rescue Elephants or Rhinos who have lost their mothers and look after them and then reintroduce them into the wild. Thus far they have been 100% successful in the reintroduction of Elephants into the wild.

The Trust is only open from 11-12 in the morning where you can watch the Elephants feeding. We were able to watch 27 of the young elephants guzzle down their milk and then try and push in on others being fed. They are very active and quite funny because they can be so awkward, as if they aren’t quite used to their size. Once we had finished watching, we decided to sponsor a baby elephant named Lemoyian, a baby boy who was trapped in a man-made well and lost his mother.

 I, too, would be this happy if someone fed me a giant-ass bottle of milk everyday

We left the Trust and headed to Giraffe manor where we were able to learn about the giraffe programs in increasing their numbers in Kenya (currently the numbers are increasing) and be able to feed them if they were interested in the food. I wasn’t overly impressed with Giraffe Manor, though it was cool to get close to the giraffes. Once we finished at the Manor we headed to the Galleria, a shopping mall about a 10-minute walk from our camp. We had lunch there and browsed a bit before walking back to the camp where we heard of the terrorist attack at another shopping mall in Westlake.

You can get pretty close to them

Funnily enough, because it was the last day for some of the campers, we were planning on meeting at a restaurant in Westlake but we had to quickly change plans and unfortunately some were not able to make it and others were not willing to leave. In the end only 5 of us headed out and we went to Carnivore, a popular restaurant nearby.

The 5 of us waited almost an hour for a taxi we thought was booked but never showed up so we asked one of the managers at the camp if he could book us a taxi seeing as we were getting close to our booking time at the restaurant. Eventually the manager said he would go to the main road and see if he could hail a taxi. We waited for a couple of minutes before he returned with a beat up old white car that did not look like a taxi in any respect. There was also a lady in the front seat.

The lady got out and the manager told us he would take us to Carnivore. We negotiated the price and jumped in, fitting 4 people in the back and me in the front thinking the restaurant was only 4km down the road and only a 5-minute drive. As we left, the lady was still standing out the front of the camp.

20-minutes later we were still driving and it occurred to us that we actually weren’t in a taxi but some random guys car. We asked the driver if he was taking us to Carnivore and he didn’t respond which increased our apprehension on whether we were being taken to the restaurant or just being kidnapped.

Eventually the driver said he knows we are going to Carnivore. We turned off the main road we drove into the back alley roads where it looked more likely you would find bodies and not a restaurant, but like a beacon of light, there was the restaurant. Our driver who doesn’t speak very good English pulled through and we got there in one piece and no ransom demands.

Carnivore was brilliant, it’s an all you can eat meat restaurant that actually starts with a soup. Seems a bit of a waste to fill up on soup when you are greeted with about 30 different rotisseries of meat just waiting to be devoured by us meat-eaters. Once the entrée was completed we got stuck into the mains where servers come around with a different kind of meat on skewers and cut a piece off if you would like it. We sampled pretty much everything, including: Ostrich, Ostrich meatballs, Crocodile, Beef, Lamb, Chicken wings, Chicken breast, Chicken liver. The five of us sat around for our last meal together as Dan & Christine were leaving us and trekking Mount Kilimanjaro while, Danni, Ruth and myself were continuing onto Tanzania the next day.

We spoke of all things from our trip, our plans, the food, and when all that was done, we spoke about shit. Literally.

All our great experiences dropping el numero dos in the toilet, or in some cases the river out in the middle of nowhere. It was at that point I/we realized how well we really got on and how comfortable we were talking literally about anything.

We had dessert, Cheesecake, Pineapple Pie or Choc Chip Blondie, and unfortunately had to start heading back to our camp.

This time we got a legitimate taxi, who, like the other “taxi”, immediately needed petrol. We commented on this and the driver said they deliberately had little to no petrol in their car to dissuade carjackers from stealing their car, which is apparently a common theme. Failing in his first attempt to get petrol (because the petrol station was closed) we drove a little way in the opposite direction to get some and we were once again full of thoughts of kidnappings however we managed to survive our trips unscathed and reached our camp with no kidnappings or ransom demands.

We awoke the next morning and said goodbye to Dan and Christine…twice…before we begun the next part of our journey to Tanzania with a whole new bunch of people.

Kenya is a really nice place, especially western Kenya with the green fields of tea leaves giving it a fresh, clean look. It also has a lot going for it with multiple wildlife parks and their attempts in conservation, whether by the government or private, to increase the dwindling numbers of endangered species (and doing pretty well I think) to attract tourists as well as their exports for tea and coffee. Unfortunately the terrorist attack at the Westlake Mall may add to the stigma people already have for Africa, particularly Eastern Africa and may scare away people who were sitting on the fence about visiting.

Uganda - Dan's in the Mist & Rafting the Nile

We arrived in Uganda in pretty quick time, the drive was a little bumpy due to road works and just general bad roads, and we exited the incredibly green Kenya to the just-as-green Uganda. The drive was still long and we passed many huts and stores that aren’t quite up to standards if we were in Australia but the people seemed happy and like in Kenya, the kids loved the bus and were always waving to us.

We made a brief stop to get supplies, in which we bought an air mattress to use for the rest of the trip in the tent. Best $50 I ever spent I think. We headed past Lake Victoria, the biggest lake in Africa, and arrived at our camp for the night before we head to Lake Bunyoni for 4 days.

The trek to Lake Bunyoni is a long one, especially if it is raining and the truck breaks down in the middle of nowhere. However aside from that it is a nice and pleasant drive through rolling hills of green. Among the brief stops for truck breakdown or to rest, gather supplies or to have lunch, the trip took close to 14 hours to arrive to Bunyoni Overland Camp.

Bunyoni Overland Camp is a nice place situated on the shores of Lake Bunyoni with a nice view across the lake. Lake Bunyoni is huge, as we realized on the drive back from Bwindi National Park.

Our first day in Lake Bunyoni saw us waking at 4am for a quick breakfast before a 2-hour drive to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park to track the Gorillas. We met with our tracker who described the rules and the deal with tracking the Gorillas. It was the usual stuff – Gorillas are wild, no guarantee on seeing them etc. – also you’re not allowed to go in if you are sick since it can really affect the Gorillas. Hiding the tickle in my throat we set off at a trek through the rainforest.

The jungle itself is pretty amazing, this being my first time in a rainforest and it was wild and untamed.  

We walked for about 45 minutes through hills, climbing over fallen logs, walking through the barest of tracks following the trackers to where we found one family of gorillas.

The experience itself was worth the price alone, we sat amongst a male silverback, a female and about 4 young ones, including a baby. The gorillas were pretty anti-social, mostly ignoring us except when one of the trackers pulled the tree the male was eating. He pulled it back and gave the tracker a death stare, which was pretty funny.

The Male stayed on the ground for the whole time we were there and the others initially were on the ground but eventually moved up through the trees. We were able to get really close to them, about 2-3 meters though we were told we were only meant to get within 7 meters of them but the trackers were happy to cut a path for us to get closer and in the jungle to us.

After about an hour and a thousand photos we headed back to our initial meeting point and drove the 2-hours back to our camp and my minor cough was getting worse.

We were lucky that our group took only 45-minutes to get to the gorillas, as one of the other groups were trekking for 5 hours to find their group.

The chest infection hit me bad the next day, I woke with a bad chest rattle and spent the day feeling like death. Our cook – Dom – is a marvel, a former restaurant chef could turn cow shit into cuisine, gave me a ginger and honey tea which cleared me up. Feeling better our group sat around the fire cooking marshmallows and talking about anything and everything.

It was around this time I realize how great of a group Danni and I have gotten to know. My biggest concern was getting a group full of Aussies who just wanted to get smashed every night, similar to the group we had in the Masai Mara for the first 3-days but this group has been so great and have met some really nice people and made some really, genuinely good friends.

Our last day in Lake Bunyoni was spent relaxing, admiring the views of the lake and getting all our stuff sorted before we leave early tomorrow morning back to Kampala.

The drive to Kampala was like the drive to Lake Bunyoni, long, bumpy and we couldn’t wait for it to finish. Nothing exciting happened as most were just waiting for it to end so we could get out.

But tomorrow is going to be the fun day: White Water Rafting on the Nile.

White Water Rafting

We were awoken to the sounds of the Ugandan Air Force flying their B-52’s right over our tent, no wait, it was the loudest freaking birds Uganda has, and probably the universe as well.

We packed up our tent and loaded our stuff onto the truck before we were taken in a mini-van to the starting point of the Nile raft. Our guide was actually a young kid from Tasmania, making the number of Aussies I have encountered on this trip a round 10 million.

We had a small breakfast consisting of grilled sausages and battered hard-boiled eggs, yep you heard correctly, battered hard-boiled egg. Surprisingly it wasn’t as disgusting as it sounds.

We kitted up and took our group photo for identification purposes if any of us didn’t make it and headed down some gloriously short steps to the raft. I say gloriously short because we soon raft at Victoria Falls and we may as well parachute to get to the bottom it’s that far.

Embarking from the shore we went through some of the things to do: paddle in unison, paddle backwards, turning the raft around, how to get in the raft if we are washed overboard and how to flip the raft back over if it is flipped. All the usual instructions for rafting.

We hit our first rapid and the fun began immediately: A grade 5 rapid with a 3m waterfall at the end of it, we managed to spin ourselves sideways somehow before we hit the waterfall and fell and yet we didn’t capsize the boat, which looked a certainty.

Celebrating this victory, the next (and all) rapids were about 25 minutes away from each other. The next was a grade 4 rapid in which our ever-so-kind guide – named Big J – flipped the raft. Now getting thrown off the raft or flipping it, deliberate or naturally, isn’t so bad but when you are underwater in the rapid, the first time is quite freaky. When we did it last time in Victoria Falls, I got thrown off and felt like I was underwater for 10 minutes, not 3 seconds. This time I felt ok, I just drank half the Nile trying to get some air as I got stuck under the edge of the raft and not the air pocket.

We managed to gather everyone and get back on the boat, we were all ok except one who was really shaken and felt like she was going to “die”.  Overly dramatic person completely lost it when we hit the next rapid, a grade 6 that we were had to get out and walk around., before jumping in at the end for a grade 5. They broke down in tears and looked like they wanted to run away.

I may sound overly harsh on this person but they also don’t help do the dishes at dinner like everyone is meant to and it really pisses me off.

We passed the grade 5 with ease and settled in for another long wait to the next rapid, passing by a Eagle in her nest and an Iguana swimming across the Nile which was pretty cool to see, even if it looked like a snake initially. We also got the jump in and have a swim.

We successfully navigated our way down the remaining 5 rapids, which were either grade 3 or 4s with ease completing our 22km rafting (against the wind/current) with success at only being thrown off once, and that was because of our guide.

Once we finished we had a kick-ass lunch of chicken wraps with salsa, lettuce and cheese and kebabs as well as unlimited drinks. Making good use of these facilities we hung around for a bit before an hour drive back to our tented camp in Jinja (pronounced Ginger) where we set up camp and as we waited for dinner it rained like we needed to build a boat and get 2 of every animal. Never seen it rain so bad and naturally the tent wasn’t fully closed up so we had some stuff get wet but nothing major so that was a relief.

Tomorrow we leave Uganda for good as we head back to Kenya. It is going to be a long drive and doubly long if it is still raining.

I’ve loved Uganda though, it is a splendid place and seems to be doing well after a sordid history with Idi Amin. They make do with simple exports (coffee, sugar, cotton) and don’t rely too much on tourism as they don’t have a whole lot to offer aside from the Mountain Gorilla’s.

Seeing the Gorillas’ was my favourite aspect of my visit to Uganda, even moreso than the Rafting, which I will always love doing. The country itself isn’t dirty, it’s dusty and gives it a dirty sort of look but, like Kenya, it is not full of tall buildings or elaborately designed cities. It is a simple place with simple structures and they do it to get by. It’s safe and the people are friendly and they have a lot to offer.

That is all that matters.

Kenya - Ken-ya believe it?

We arrived in Kenya at the god-awful hour of 3am and were, thankfully, greeted by our tour representative who drove us the 30-minute drive to our camp in Nairobi.

Thankfully our pilot on Egypt Air didn’t try to kill us by doing a trick landing like the one did in Cairo and due to the fire at the International Airport in Kenya we were skirted out of the plane and into a tent. It was so Africa.

Anyway, we arrived at our camp at around 3.30-4am and were allowed a 2-hour sleep before we had to get up again, meet the people on the 3-day tour (who were all Australian and mostly annoying bogans who decided to fill up the esky with beer and no room for us who don’t drink) and drive 8 hours to the Masai Mara.

We did stop at the Great Rift Valley, which gave some amazing panoramic views of the valley.

The Masai Mara is beautiful (except the rubbish, seems to be a theme) and after we arrived we pretty much had dinner and went to bed to get some much needed sleep after only having 2 hours in the past 36 or so.

The next day we went on Safari, which I will get to shortly, and the day after the others, thankfully, left us to head back to Nairobi to join their other tours (which isn’t the one we are doing, yay!) while we stayed in the Mara since our 56-day tour group is starting in Nairobi but heading here first.

So we pretty much had breakfast, said goodbye to the others, slept in, did the washing and watch a baboon run across our camp before dinner and bed.

Dude...run

We had a private safari on the Sunday, just me and Danni, which was a blessing since we could do it in a 4WD rather than a huge truck and get to go a little off-road to see some of the animals.

And we saw a lot of animals.

The funny thing about the Masai Mara Reserve is that it is naturally huge and leads on to the Serengeti, it doesn’t have as much flora and fauna as Kruger National Park does so there are sweeping views of flat lands and you can drive for 20, 30 even 60 minutes and see not a single animal and then you crest a hill and see hundreds or even thousands. Including Wildebeest, who are currently migrating south to the Serengeti in Tanzania in the thousands, along with Zebra’s and the antelopes. We were lucky enough to see the Wildebeest crossing the Mara River that is kind of the border between Kenya and Tanzania but also the risky part of their travel as the river is a playground for the crocodiles (and there were quite a few hippos). We saw a few hundred cross over and a few thousand more head on over to the river, but not cross, and then turn back and then head back to the river. This went on for a good hour or so before we left but there were easily over 2000 Wildebeests just meters away from us, as well as Zebra’s, who apparently wait until last to cross so they don’t get eaten.

We were also lucky enough to see the Big 5 (Lion, Leopard, Buffalo, Elephant and Rhino) on the morning of our private game drive which is apparently one of the rarest things you can do, considering there are only 4 rhino in the reserve, it makes sense.

The leopard was content in sleeping in his tree, we didn’t get a great view of it until later where we snuck in for a look and were parked right under him. The next day we did catch him strolling along an embankment but didn’t get the great view of him there either.

There were a lot of lions, we followed one lioness as she hunted down an impala but failed to take it down. It was thrilling to watch though and there were a lot of cubs and infants playing around and we even saw a male and female in the throes of mating ritual. Another pride, including the male, eating and feeding their 6 cubs.

Buffalo are everywhere, you’d be unlucky not to see one, same with the elephants, giraffe, warthogs, and all the antelopes.

We were also lucky enough to see a female cheetah with her three cubs, so very tempted to take them home. They are adorable as cubs.

Once we finished our private tour we headed back just before it started to rain and relaxed until the tour group arrived.

Oh...you found me.

I was shocked to see the size of the tour group, there are 19 including us two and then another 7 coming with us to Kampala. Only 5 of us are doing the whole 56-days but I never imagined there would be so many.

They are mostly Australians, and funnily enough some are even close to where we live at home. They all seem like a good bunch of people, which is relieving after the bogans the other day.

Our first day with them was another game drive, which is mostly explained above. Then we had another dinner and went to bed as we were to bid farewell to the amazing Masai Mara and begin our journey to Uganda.

All that tea...

The next day was a long drive to a camp about 100km from the border of Uganda and boy was it a nice place. They had the most amazingly designed bar, hot showers and our cook – Dom – is a magician with food.

The drive itself was beautiful as we drove past acres upon acres of tea plantations giving us a purely green panoramic of Kenya. The rain hit us early and was on and off all day, but when it falls, it falls hard making our trip a little slower.

We hit the hay early as we had to get up early to get to Uganda.