Fuelled by my plans to going into teaching and my dream of going on safari, I spent 4 months in Kenya with a company called AV (Africa & Asia Venture) which allowed me to spend 3 months living in a small town and teaching at a local school, and a month travelling the country, ending with a week long safari at Lake Nakuru National Park and the Masai Mara. Since returning home, the time has just flown by and it's now over 9 years ago, so I decided to write a blog about it to try and keep some of my memories alive :)
It didn't take long to find plenty of wildlife, our first four days was spent doing orientation at Lake Naivasha, which was home to hippos! They were very far away, just blobs in the water really but I was still pretty excited to see them! During this time we also took a trip to a nearby place called Crescent Island where we saw giraffes, zebras and wildebeast, and there were some giant bugs where we were staying too!
After the first four days we travelled to our schools and homes for the next 3 months, although not as exciting as hippos and giraffes there was some interesting/creepy stuff there too, mostly tons and tons of bugs, including jumping spiders that resided in our toilet, (when I say toilet, I mean hole in the ground, I wish I'd known about shewees back then!) lizards and enormous wasps!
The strange thing is, I don't remember seeing any birds at all, maybe they weren't as much on my radar back then or maybe there just weren't any. I do remember seeing a dead chameleon once but never a live one.
On the weekends we would usually travel to different places, the best (and worst, in terms of getting there and back again, I really thought we were going to get murdered, but that's a whole other story!) was when we went to Kakamega Forest, from our accomodation we could see colobus monkeys leaping about, you often see them in zoos but there is nothing quite like seeing them in the wild, I loved it! We took some walks in the forest where we saw some other monkeys, to be honest I don't remember what they were! On the last morning there we got up at 4am and walked through the darkness to see the sun rise from the top of a hill, it was pretty gruelling and I'm not good at hills at all but the view was amazing, and on the way back (or there...can't actually remember now) we went into a cave that was full of bats swooping and flying around, it's safe to say not everyone enjoyed it as much as I did!
Once we had finished teaching, our next stop was to Uganda where we went white water rafting on The Nile, now to be honest I'm a bit of a wimp around water so I did spend a lot of time in the safety boat as I was terrified of the boat flipping over so I can't say much about the thrill of white water rafting but I did stay in the main raft for some of it and it was very fun! As we were in a boat and rowing I wasn't able to have my camera out to take photos but I remember seeing loads and loads of lizards (monitor lizards I think?) and huge bats flying around.
We spent a lot of our travelling time on the Kenyan coast, where I got very up close and personal to a delightful sea urchin (what I mean by that is, I was swimming in the sea and I stepped on it!) This was in one of my favourite places, Diani Beach, there were loads of monkeys here too, including one who stole our bread from right in front of me and HUGE baboons, I even thought some of them were people at one point! I will never forget standing with one of the men who worked there and watching a baboon almost walk into our chalet, and hearing the screams from one of my friends, she is probably still traumatised! The Colobus Trust there protect the monkeys and have put up ladders going over the roads to stop the monkeys getting run over! We visited them and got to feed a tiny baby monkey :)
So as you can see, a lot of the wildlife encountered so far was bugs or monkeys, nothing wrong with that but soon enough it was time for our safari and that's where all the action started.
We began our safari at Lake Nakuru National Park, home to thousands of flamingos. As soon as we drove through the gate we saw zebras and buffalos and soon we saw rhinos too, including a baby one :) We drove on and ended up looking across the whole lake from on top of a hill, or a cliff (I'm not too sure) It was the most breath taking view I had ever seen, the photo of it doesn't look like much to be perfectly honest but I'd never felt like that before and have never felt like it since, it was stunning. Apart from the view, there were baboons and a beautiful blue and orange agama lizard sunning himself on a rock :)
The last part of our safari was spent at the Masai Mara, where we had a little campsite, there were lots of baboons around and people thought there were hyenas around at night too, but I never saw any near there, we did see some whilst on safari though.
We saw a big herd of elephants almost as soon as we arrived and saw another herd the next day, this herd had young elephants, and we spend a lot of time with a pride of lions that had two cubs! It was so cute to see them playing right in front of us! Of course there was your usual giraffes, zebras, gazelles etc but we also saw cheetahs, one of which tried to catch something while we watched, it even went right in front of our bus but it didn't get anywhere near catching it unfortunately (some people might have said fortunately but I would have loved to have seen it!). Bird wise we saw ostriches and crowned cranes, both very impressive large birds! I don't remember seeing any other birds but we did see some weaver birds on the way there. One of my favourite parts was getting closer to the hippos (not too close obviously, hippos are the most dangerous animals in Africa!) They were having a great time wallowing in the river and the sound they make it brilliant, they sound like old men laughing! There was also a crocodile on the far bank too!
Unforunately, we eventually had to leave the Masai Mara, and soon it was time to head back to England but not before we paid a visit to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, which is an elephant orphanage, where we saw lots of gorgeous baby elephants, a great way to end our time in Kenya.
It was 9 years ago now, and at times feels like only yesterday and at others feels like a life time! Hopefully I will get back there one day! Here I am feeding a giraffe in Nairobi
xx
