Farewell for now, Kenya...

I made it safely back to Norway a few days ago, and from now on I believe my blog will be a little less exciting than before, but here is an update from my wonderful last week in Kenya.I was happy for the opportunity to go to Lamu with Marianne for a few days just before leaving the country! The Swahili style place we stayed at in Shella was perfect for the rainy and sunny days, as we could sunbathe on the roof terrace and quickly get shelter under the open roof on the other half of the terrace when it started pouring down. Which it often did.. But we still had enough sun to get a little sunburned. Great house, great view and great service! Breakfast with fresh fruits, omeletts, pancakes, and the best coffee was brought up every morning.Daily afternoon half hour walks into Lamu town to different restaurants and tasty fish dinners gave us some exercise, and a couple of trips to the beach on the other side of Shella was also good, if we could avoid the strong winds and the whisking sand... Except from flocks of donkeys passing we had the beach all by ourselves. Four very relaxing days with a lot of reading and sunbathing. And - fruit juices in Lamu are the best!!
Then, back in Nairobi on Thursday I was happy that my friends Brenton, Jessie, Kasy, and Jess were willing to meet for a last lunch at Habesha, and spend some time eating cake in my empty house afterwards. Thank you for making my last day good!

248 speed bumps away...

MERU NATIONAL PARK
Highlights day 1:

• Finally setting off from Nairobi at 3 p.m. after hours of waiting for the roof rack to be constructed and welded and fastened to the roof.
• Being allowed to enter the park even if we arrived 4 hours after it had closed for the night, and arriving at the camp site after yet another hour. Pretty scary, though, for the three girls of us, to be left alone to heat up dinner and put up the tents in completely darkness as Brenton was taking the KWS guy who had shown us the way to the camp site back to the gate, knowing that a lion lived close to the campsite and that someone was hired to kill the snakes. Noises came from the bush, we were in the middle of nowhere, were unable to put up the tents, and would have had nowhere to escape if a lion would suddenly come running. That the washrooms were only a few metres away was something we did not discover till Brenton came back and we could see it from the lights of his car...
• 1.30 a.m - creeping into the sleeping bag, dead tired.

Highlights day 2:

• Breakfast by a hippo and crocodile river, Rojowero viewpoint.

• Being dead silent and a little nervous in the car as we were surrounded by elephants who wanted to cross the road just at the same spot as we were standing.
• Finding the male lions that someone had told us about.
• Lunch and some sleep in the shade after the morning game drive.
• Getting back to the main road again after finding out that the looong track, which was covered with grass and full of biting tsetse flies, ended up leading nowhere.
• Sightseeing at Elsa´s kopje, an incredible lodge with beautiful huts and an amazing view.
• Dinner.

Highlights day 3:

• Finding out that the bus Kendra and Daylan were willing to take back to Nairobi early in the morning only cost 400 kshs. That was worth getting up for, at 5.30 a.m..
  
• Finding a track that turned out to be just as bad as the track the day before, but this one actually lead to somewhere.
• Long and relaxing breakfast and rest at the camp site.
• Discovering giraffes at the camp site and being able to approach one of them to get pictures.

• Getting down to Adamson´s falls, Tana River, and finding the most beautiful place for a picnic, completely free from crocodiles - I think...

Highlights day 4:

• Sleeping long, having a long and relaxing morning. Perfect pace.
  
• Baboons being scared away just by a sudden movement from inside of the tent!
  
• Discovering ELEPHANTS across the small creek just below our tent, as we were frying eggs for breakfast.

• Realizing that by the time we had left the campsite we had seen 5 different species of animals (elephants, giraffes, water bucks, impalas, and baboons)!
• Getting the car going well again after struggles with overheating.
• Counting speed bums. Kenya must be the world´s champion when it comes to putting up speed bumps!

MOTORCYCLING among zebras!!

A motorbike weekend with the Dustbusters is definitely one of the highlights during my three years in East Africa!! Danish Per, the founder and leader of the motorbike safari company in Arusha in Tanzania, gave Marianne, her sister-in-law, and myself two hours of training on Thursday, the day before we set out in the bush . And since none of us had ever tried motorcycling before, it was absolutely worth the money! We did not impress very much the first 30 minutes; there was bumping and jerking and stalling of the engine not only once...But on Friday, we were ready for the real tracks! At 7 in the morning we were picked up at Scripture Mission and brought by the support vehicle an hour´s drive away, north of Arusha, to a trail at the side of Mt Meru. Helmet, googles, gloves and knee protectors were put on, and then we were ready to go!
Per was in front with his motorbike, stopping now and then to tell us how to drive to cross the challenging parts of the trail. The four unexperienced of us followed, each on a Honda XLR 250 trail bike, and the support vehicle was at the back to help if we had some problems of some kind... Don´t ask what happened here .. Lunch was great, and it was nice to stretch our legs and relax a little before moving on. Hmmrf, don´t know exactly what happened here either... And I had been so happy that my clothes had dried up during the lunch break...


Despite that I kept entertaining the rest of the group with my unfortunate pothole acrobatics, I had great fun the whole day!
Luckily we had several breaks, and Per´s wife had prepared very good food for us!
Beautiful scenery, partly very good roads, partly mud or rocks - plenty enough of challenges for me! But I am pretty proud that I rode about 95 km all by myself the first day!! And in the late afternoon it was good to get to the camp and relax in a comfortable camping chair with a cold drink and some snacks as the tents were being put up and dinner prepared for us! On Saturday I was sore, I say no more... The support vehicle turned out to be our salvation, as one fell and got badly hurt, another one was sick and had to give in after a while, and myself I got tired and lost concentration after some time, and then I became scared of every little bump. My motorbike was put on the trailer, and I was offered to ride on Per´s back, which was great fun! He had completely control, and then I got the speed I did not dare to have when driving by myself! Full speed into flocks of zebras and wilderbeasts, making them dustbusters as well - an extraordinary game experience! After a while I wanted to ride my own motorbike again, but when I got tired the second time I got to sit on Per´s back the rest of the trip, which was a lot more relaxing. The few sandy parts I tried had been both fun and challenging, and since I was happy about all I had done myself it did not feal like a loss at all to make use of the back-up it was to sit at Per´s back. That was just an extra bonus! I was just happy to be out motorbiking without having to defeat the sandy trails myself! Dustbusters (www.dustbusters-tz.com) is hereby recommended!!

...even though you might be sore and hate stairs for some days afterwards...

Fishing in Aberdare

I keep ticking off my to-do-before-I-leave list... Another camping trip last weekend, together with Bodil and three of our students this time. We entered at Naivasha gate on Saturday, at the west side of the national park, and from there we crossed the Aberdare moorland plateau. Beautiful landscape, and amazing waterfalls. We stopped several times to go fishing, and one of the boys got a couple of mountain trouts. Some parts of the roads were muddy and extremely slippery at this side of the park, and the mud was crammed into the treads of the tyres, making them lose the grip. But I was happy both to have a 4wd Landcruicer and an experienced advisor at the age of 15. After having tried a couple of times to get up a very steep hill, where one side of the road was black mud where the wheels only slided or dug down, and the other side had big rocks, I was about to give up. But my student jumped out of the window of the car, started to move some of the rocks, and confidently gave me instructions on where and how to drive. I gave it a last chance, since it was getting late and we were only a few kilometres from the campsite if we could make it. Otherwise we would have to turn around and go back several kilometres, and the road was not very good from where we had come either. But what a relief when we made it!
Nice campsite, a little rain in the evening, but luckily dry weather the rest of the night, and also the following day! The bush bucks came for a visit when we were about to go to bed, and they kept grazing right outside of the tents most of the night. Fascinating! On Sunday we drove to the east side of the park for a game drive. A little scary, maybe, to have lunch just a few metres from a buffalo. If you use a magnifying glass, you might see him under the bush in the background of the last picture...

Kili and I

I hate to say that time is running out, but I am planning to make a plan for the coming weekends; there are still so many things I would like to experience or repeat before leaving Kenya in the summer... Since it had been a while since I last camped, and even longer since I had been to Amboseli, a combination was good! Heavy rain as we left Nairobi on Saturday morning made us laugh self-ironicly, not having too high expectations about the tent part of the trip. It kept raining as we were driving and Marianne kept encouraging Daylan and myself, saying that the weather forecast promised sunshine after 3 p.m. And the forecast was pretty right! We only had a few drops as we had our coffee break on top of the Observation Hill. The camp site was not too far from the Observation Hill and our plan was to go there and put up the tent, and then have an evening game drive before dinner. But pitching the tent was quite a challenge. The tent was borrowed from the Norwegian school, and we had not checked it before leaving. In addition to the tent poles being much used, broken and taped together again, the tent turned out to lack tent pegs completely. Luckily there was a Maasai who was very willing to whittle us some sticks that we could use. So, after some struggle we managed to put up the tent well enough. But then we had a fight against the wind... It was pretty obvious that we could not have another game drive and leave the tent behind, so instead we looked for the most windless spot we could find and moved the tent. It was easier to put up this time... After all the work the barbeque and relaxing in comfortable chairs around the bonfire was well deserved. We were lucky that it did not rain at all during the night, since it is likely that water would have leaked into the old tent. The morning was cloudy, so we were happy that we had got a glimpse of Kilimanjaro the day before. But during our morning game drive, all of a sudden it cleared up. I have never ever seen the mountain like that before! A mighty sight!! (Hard to catch in a picture, though.)After having enjoyed the stunning sight of the highest mountain in Africa, game was only extra bonus. And we had lots of bonus, too.... Back at the camp Marianne did a good job by the fire, making us eggs and bacon. Meanwhile Daylan did a good job cleaning up the mess after the velvet monkeys that had been visiting our tent when we had been out on the game drive. Impressing how they had been able to unzip layers to get into the tent, and even open a backpack and find the food that was in there! (You wonder what I was doing? Taking pictures, of course :o)I can´t think of a better way of ending a camping trip than having a looong breakfast in the sunshine, by the base of Mount Kilimanjaro!