Travels in Africa #4 - Kenya Part 1

The last journal I sent was a two part email from my blackberry about our final day in Rwanda as well as our time in Uganda. From there we went into Kenya.

We arrived in Kenya around 3am on Christmas eve. The bus ride was uneventful for the most part. The border crossing was similar to the one between Rwanda and Uganda in that we had to exit the bus in Uganda, fill out a departure card, then walk to the Kenyan side and fill out an arrival card. Because we planned to stay in Kenya less than a week we were able to pay $20 for a transit visa. I believe the normal, three mont visa, would have cost us $50.

I slept the majority of the bus ride. Soon after crossing the border, around 8pm, the bus company served us each a soda and then turned off all of the lights. We'd expected movies, or at least lights to read by, but all we got was a dark cabin. My iPod was completely dead, so I popped some ear plus in and faded in and out of sleep most of the night.

I did jostle awake at one point and thought we might already have reached Nairobi. I asked the friendly Dutch gentleman next to me and he said we were merely making a quick stop. I was a tad hesitant to exit the bus in the cover of night. The lonely Planet book lists Kenya as a crime ladden city where you must always be on guard. No matter where we we're I presumed that I should take caution upon exiting. I saw an African gentleman who was sitting behind me enter a restaurant just outside the bus's exit. I followed him in their, used the restroom, and then inquired about the samosas which were for sale. The owner indicated they contained meat and the guy who was sitting behind me on the bus asked if I was a vegetarian. When I responded affirmatively he offered to buy me a fried piece of bread, similar in taste to an unglazed donut. It was kind of him, but when he returned to his seat on the bus I was a tad startled by his arrogance. He was bragging to the Dutch guy sitting next to me about how he's "purchased the entire store."

From there we continued on. I was a bit disappointed that we were on a night bus because I was anxious to see the Kenyan countryside. However, traveling at night had its advantages - presumably we wouldn't have to pay for a nights accommodations.

I dozed off again and awoke when we'd stopped yet again. It was almost 4am. It was really hard to tell where we were, though it looked as if we were outside of a restaurant similar to the one we'd stopped at with the samosas and donuts. In fact, we were outside of the Scandinavian bus office in Nairobi; we'd reached our destination early.

Nairobi has been nicknamed "Nairobbery" and everything we'd read and heard indicated that doing anything after dark would assure being mugged and beaten. Not ones eager to test the waters on our first morning in town, we hopped a cab for our hotel. Luckily they weren't fully booked and allowed us to come in and get some rest.

I awoke around 9am, after a couple of decent hours of sleep. Our room faced the street, and though the hotel was on a relatively quiet street the noise was loud enough to be a nuisance.

After a quick bite to eat at the Nairobi Java House, a very western influenced, upscale diner with great coffee we set out to explore the city. We weren't entirely sure what our plans for the next few days were, but if we could find a good walking or cycling safari we would gladly entertain it. There were "touts" everywhere attempting to guide us to a particular safari company. We weren't entirely sure how these guys operated and attempted to ditch them as soon as they approached us.

The day was pretty frustrating overall. We ended up in two safari offices that were both sending 3-day trips to the Masaai Mara National Park for about $80/person/day. The price itself wasn't terribly overwhelming, but we suspected that would indeed fall prey to the adage, "you get what you pay for.". We got the cell phone numbers from both operators and told them we'd call them later, once we'd made a decision.

No matter how hard we'd tried to ditch the touts, they were everywhere on Christmas Eve. We seemed to be the only two tourists looking for safaris, too. After leaving the second office the sane set of guys were waiting outside for us. They were asking us a bunch of questions and one of them stuck his hand out towards me. I said something and brushed his hand away. That set off one of the touts, who like many of the others on this day was quite drunk. He wanted to know why I was a racist, and as we walked off to investigate the train to Mombasa he shouted "next time don't come to Africa."

Drunk or not, that comment disturbed me. However, I didn't let it creep to far under my skin. The train station proved to be somewhat of a safe have. Not only were we able to buy tickets for the Wenesday train to Mombasa, but it allotted for a peaceful and quiet place to make some decisions.

After a ton of back and forth, and calling one of the safari companies we'd visited to let them know we would like to go, we ultimately reversed that decision in favor of going to Lake Naivasha the next day.

We returned to our room at the Terminal Hotel for an attempted nap. The outdoor restaurant had a DJ alternating bad club music with even worse Christmas carols. It was a tad surreal that this was where we were spending our holiday season. Aside from the obligatory music in certain shops, restaurants and bars, there was hardly any real Christmas feeling. It may have been the warm weather or any number of other things, but my suspicion is the free world's celebration of such holidays is completely amplified; which is jus one more reason I enjoy being out of the country at this time of year.

Unable to sleep we employed the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" philosophy and headed to the restaurant for a Christmas eve beer. We followed that with a cab ride to an Ethiopian restaurant in the Westlands area of town. The food there was great, though the place was empty. We did walk around just a bit after the meal, to see what else that area had to offer us, but quickly found a cab back and went to sleep.

The following day was Christmas, and I've already sent an account of our unique and special events of the day.

December 26th, Boxing Day, is a holiday here in Kenya as well. Our plan for the day was to rent a few bicycles and ride around Hell's Gate National Park. Hell's Gate is a bit more low key in terms of the wildlife it contains. You figure if they'll let you ride a bike in it there's little chance of deadly animals capable of catching and eating you roaming within the park's confines.

The entrance fee was $20USD/person. In fact, the park fees are a major budget consideration when traveling here. I promise never again to curse the $50 National Parks Pass the US offers. Nevertheless, we inspected the "series year" on our Andrew Jackson faced bills to ensure they were 2001 or later (some countries won't take US bills if they weren't printed in 2003 or later, in Kenya the cut off was 2001) and handed them over. We proceeded through the gate and past a few maintenance buildings on the gravel and dirt road into the park.

The mid-morning sky was blue with thin white clouds overhead. We had the road to ourselves and the wind blowing on my face was refreshing. As we cycled down the road I took in the grand scenery. There were massive expanses of green leading to 200 feet high cliff faces on both sides of us. As we wound further into the park we spotted a heard of zebra grazing. We jumped from our bikes and walked through the ankle high grass towards them. We trod carefully, of course, hoping only to get a better look and without scaring them. A few of them inquisitively looked back at us, but most went about their normal eating routine.

Satisfied with another wildlife encounter we pedalled further into the park. The slight decline in the path allowed us to propel our heavy mountain bikes faster than we'd even expected. It felt so good to be on a bike. Even if we saw no wildlife at all, the scenery combined with physical activity would have been exhilirating enough.

We took a detour along the aptly named Buffalo Circuit where we surprised a group of tourists walking. They were with an armed ranger and a guide and were looking at another herd of zebra. We paused long enough to allow them to snap their currently lined up photos before pedalling past them. Just then the zebras began stampeding parallel to the bike path. Robert and I glanced at one another feeling as if we may have rudely caused the disruption. The sound of the zebra's hooves trotting in unison was quite powerful. Soon enough we noticed that it wasn't the two guys on bikes they were afraid of, rather it was a heard of African Buffalo. As the path we rode curved slightly three of the lead zebras fleeing the scene ran about ten feet in front of us. That was great. We slowed enough to allow those three zebras to make an outward arching u-turn and re-unite themselves with their herd who had stopped a fair distance from the buffalo.

The turnaround of the Buffalo Circuit provided a nice view further down the canyon we were in. We could see the "central tower" a natural column of rock about the size of Pisa's leaning tower. On our way back along the track we'd just covered we were able to snap a few pictures of the buffalo. Unbeknownst to us at the time, the African Buffalo is one of the "Big Five" (Rhino, Buffalo, Elephant, Lion and Cheetah). We jokingly added a second notch in our Big Five log books, having seen a Rhino in South Africa.

Still amazed by the ability to bike we almost missed the family of giraffe walking halfway between the main park road and the aforementioned cliffs. We stopped to admire them briefly before continuing on to the ranger station near a gorge in the park.

Robert was beginning to feel the onset of another bout of sickness, but we opted to briefly hike into the gorge anyways. We declined the services of a guide, not anxious to part with another $8. The main ranger there sent a young guide, probably no older than twelve, with us anyways. It turns out he was quite helpful, as the path wasn't clearly marked. It was a tad frustrating to feel obliged to pay someone to lead us somewhere three small signs could have easily solved. Robert and I debated the merits of helping out the locals by providing them with jobs versus being entitled to simple signage as we'd each paid $20 to enter the park. Obviously we wasn't to assist everywhere we can, but I must say we were beginning to feel a small pinch in the pocketbooks.

We hiked right through the gorge. With the amount of rain the region had seen there was a surface layer of water moving through the gorge, pooling ankle deep in certain places. The gorge walls were smooth from the erosive properties of water pushing its way through it after each bout of heavy rain. The guide led us down a short path of a side gorge that provided for better pictures. After that short detour we made our way towards the first of a series of warm water-trickles (to call them waterfalls would be giving them too much credit). The gorge is in a hotbed of geothermal activity and as we were walking along the bottom water emergimg from the walls above would fall towards us. The water was comfortable to the touch and the young guide led us each of the easily accessible trickles. As he indicated a path leading out of the gorge, we asked him where it would lead if we continued on. I was hoping there would be an actual hot springs which was accessible. I don't think he completely grasped my question and given Robert's ill feelings and a 10km bike ride back to the YMCA it wasn't worth pushing the issue.

The path out of the gorge led to a perch high above the canyon. We passed a group of four teenage Masai warriors, dressed in traditional garb. Our guide, a member of the Masai tribe himself (all Africans, or at least Kenyans belong to a tribe. In fact, Jerry's brother asked me what tribe I was from as they walked us from their house after our Christmas dinner), indicated these guys were "level two" warriors. We did not find out what the highest level was.

From the top of the ridge we were afforded a beautiful view. The mid day sun was shining brightly overhead. The central tower, indicating the location of our start point, was within perfect view to our left. To our right was the rest of the gorge, presumably continuing for another 20km.

We gave our guide a token payment. It was hard to tell if he was satisfied or not. As we biked out of the park many cars were entering. We were happy we'd gotten an early start. By this time Robert was really beginning to feel ill so we high-tailed it back to the YMCA camp. Our host there, Peter, was surprised at our early return. Concerned if we'd had problems with the bikes or anything else he began asking questions. He was very surprised to hear us tell of the ground we covered, what we'd seen and the fact that we'd hiked the gorge. We'd only been gone four hours; many tourists cover half the ground we did in a full day.

As the YMCA camp was dead, and I was straved for food, I left Robert and his resurgence of ill feelings in favor of Fisherman's camp. I checked out a few other places along the road, but Fisherman's seemed to be the only one really catering to vegetarians. Unlike when we'd rolled in the evening of Christmas, the mid-afternoon vibe on Boxing Day was quiet and relaxed. I ordered a plate of food and coffee and enjoyed the comfortable breeze.

There were a few Australians gathered around a TV with satellite broadcast alternating between cricket and English Premier League soccer. I spent the afternoon writing my journal and sipping a beer.
I ventured down to the water for a view of Lake Naivasha. There were two slips along the lakefront, both filled with a dozen people awaiting to board boats. I was still able to see the water and peer out to see the hills in the distance. Hippos live in the lake, but only come out of the water to graze at night. In fact, the camp had an electric fence that was turned on at 630pm each evening to prevent hippos from coming into camp. I did see a variety of different birds, though. I have never been one to watch birds or even pay much attention to any other than major predators, such as hawks or eagles, or brightly colored ones. There were many different and beautifully colored birds here, and elsewhere in Africa. It's been an unexpected highlight.

Robert came and met me just as I'd exhausted my need for Fisherman's. We got a cup of coffee and watched the end of a Chelsea v Reading "football" match. Then, as the sun was setting, and incredibly powerful thunderstorm unleashed itself. A transformer blew and power at the camp was out. I read by candlelight as we debated exactly how long we should wait for the rains to subside. Before long we knew the rains had settled in; we sucked it up and rode the 5km back to YMCA in the rain. The power was out there too. We were served a very tasty meal there and then crawled into bed quite early.

I had a very strange night of sleep, which often happens when I eat to soon before going to sleep. Also, as was the case last time Robert got sick, my stomach virus was kicking in a day later than his. I had to make a few runs to the shared toilets and awoke a few times sweating profusely.

To be continues in part 2....