Safari!

Jon, Mari’s father, and Odd Kristian, his colleague, has been her for 10 days. We’ve had a great time with a lot of new experiences. Finally we got to see more of Kenya than Sigowet and Kisumu! We spent some days in Sigowet. Jon made a great success when he joined class 7’s physical education and played kanonball. They had brought a soft-ball from Norway which definitely made the game much more funny. Noone feared the ball anymore and the girls triumphed strikingly despite of Jon’s desperate attempt to make a strategic plan together with the boys. I’ve never seen my pupils running as fast and playing as enthusiastically as when Odd Kristian brought his camera and devotedly recorded the match.

After some days in Sigowet we headed for Nakuru and the famous African wildlife. We passed the enormous tea-fields in Kericho and zic-zacked between the potholes in the poorly maintained road. We spent a whole day in Nakuru national park shooting zebras, antilopes, gazelles, rhinos, buffaloes, flamingoes, warthdogs, baboons and giraffes with our cameras. We were apparently very lucky also to see a leopard resting on a branch about 50 meters from the car. Thanks to some instructions from bypassing car we also got to see a graceful lion resting on a rock, enjoying a great view over the plain beneath. She didn’t even bother to her head as we approached. It seemd that she knew she was the queen of the forest with no enemies.

Our car was completely covered in dust on the outside and the inside when we finally arrived at Menengai crater the following day. The fine sand that made up the steep road was probably also polluting our loungs, but no doubt the great panorama from the edge of the crater of the volcanic mountain was worth it!It was huge, green, endless, deep and stunning.

We traveled north towards the lakes Bogoria and Baringo. The landscape changed from green and fertile to dry and deserty. Jon jumped back to the Northern Hemisphere as we crossed equator, people were selling honey along the road and George booked a night at a hotel on an island that turned out to be a beautiful, quiet place where we slept in a bungalow-like tent and woke up to a stunning sunrise. I sat on the balcony watching the lightshow and the sky shifting from night to day in only half an hour. (Pablo, I will definitely take you there when you come in August!).
Some local people showed us around the lake in a boat. They knew how to attract the Fish-Eagle with whistels ans tilapia fish. They also knew exactly when we were supposed to press the trigger on the camera to get a good shot of the large bird. A crocodile relaxed on a rock and some hippoes exposed only their noses and ears on the water surface. According to the guides the crocodiles and the hippoes stayed on the other side of the island and we could safely swim where we stayed. I jumped in and had a short swim, but I couldn’t really relax and enjoy the warm water knowing that I theoretically could have some company I wouldn’t like. Mari and I also had a expedition along the shore on a piece of plastic looking more like a surfing-board than a kayak, but handled like a kayak. Around 500 people are living on the island living from the tourism, livestock and fishing. They use balsa floats from where they gather the fish in nets and instead of ores they use some plastic shields held in the hands.

A steam bath from the hotsprings on the other side of the island gave George a hale and hearty start of the day and left him with a smooth skin. He finished the healthful treatment with an egg boiled in one of the holes where the hot water came up.

The following day we passed the Kerio valley and crossed the escarpment of the Kenyan Rift Valley. The roads here were surprisingly well kept, probably due to the area being former president Moi’s home district.