January
5th, 2001
(Slight
update: went on a tour of Kisumu today with Kenneth the bicycle taxi guy. Here are some new pictures. Also, some pictures from Asembo Bay from a month or so ago.)
Just
got back yesterday from what will probably have been my last trip in Kenya
before I go back to the States.
Before
I go any further let me give you the details for my return:
I
leave Nairobi on Tuesday, October 10th at 22:25 on British Airways
Flight BA2068
I
arrive in London Gatwick on Wednesday, October 11th at 05:15.
I
leave from London Heathrow on Wednesday, October 11th at 12:35 on
British Airways flight BA203
I
arrive in Detroit Metro on Wednesday, October 11th at 15:50.
About
15 hours of flying with seven hours to make my connection in London. Can’t express how happy staggering around
London at 5 AM is going to make me…
Hoping
to go to Cedar Point on Saturday the 14th while my jetlag is still
in effect. I get serious jet lag. For a
couple of days after I arrive, whenever I take a step it feels like I’m walking
on a trampoline, the ground seems to be just a little bit rubberized. I can’t wait to find out what it feels like
combined with the Demon Drop or something!
Here’s hoping it will still be in full effect on Saturday!
So
I’m not going to write very much today, even if it is my last entry for
awhile. There must have been something
very Gerard in the air this weekend; almost everyone that I know wrote me this
weekend, so I’ve got to answer all of my mail…
I
have put some new pictures up from this trip
and from a couple of birthday parties that we’ve had in the last couple of
weeks. Also put an exciting new lay-up
into effect for the Kenyan pictures so they don’t take so long to load.
So
anyway…
Aberdares.
Aberdares
national park is a safari park in the Central highlands of Kenya. It’s a couple hours north of Nairobi and,
during the right time of the year, lies within sight of beautiful Mt. Kenya.
This
was not the right time of the year. We
were soon to find out that it wasn’t the right time of the year for just about
everything.
We
left from Kisumu in our friend Meghna’s car (which has a name for, which I
forget. Roger or something…) with
Meghna, her mom (Mrs. Desai), Ritesh (her intern for the next half year). The drive out to Aberdares was long and
exhausting, but very pretty. I took the
last shift and ended up driving the last couple of hours in the dark. While I have driven a bit now and have
resigned myself to Kenyan roads and their inevitable potholes, driving at night
was a new level of excitement. To make
matters worse, the headlights on the car were focused about five feet in front
of the bumper. By the time we arrived
my neck was aching from the stress and my back was soaked.
The
place we were staying Friday night was
the Aberdare Country Club, just outside of the park. Posh, very posh.
Fortunately we were paying a resident rate instead of the super
expensive tourist rate. The meals were
fantastic, the atmosphere was lovely, and it was freezing cold. Of course, freezing cold Kenyan style means
around 54 degrees or so, but it was so bleak, windy, overcast and dry in the
morning that it felt much colder. If it
wasn’t for the giraffes and warthogs everywhere you would have thought that it
was a warm day in early November in Michigan.
The
giraffes and warthogs were really the best thing about the place. Them and the fact that they were wandering
around the scruffy golf course and eating the greens. We took a nature walk with a guide in the late morning and walked
for hours without seeing much. We were able to get very close to the giraffes,
though, and that was probably the highlight of the entire trip for me.
In
the afternoon Kim and I took a game drive, instead of driving directly into the
park like Meghna & co. and the other hundred wazungu that appeared
in the morning. We and another couple
were the only ones to sign up for the ride (digress here briefly to say that
they were a Japanese woman and a French man, both of whom had lived in the
States, while Kim and I had lived in France and Japan, respectively, but we
ended up meeting in Kenya where three of us were currently living. One of those weird coincidence
things…). Aberdares is one of the few
safari parks that is heavily wooded and very hilly. Consequently the animals have more places to hide. We didn’t see anything of consequence in the
entire two and a half hour ride. We saw
some monkeys and some buffalo. While
monkeys are fun to watch anytime, buffalo don’t really do much, except look at
you. What we were really looking for
were leopards. Leopards are the
crowning jewel of a tourist’s visit.
They are shy animals that spend most of their time resting in
trees. In Kim’s four years in Africa
she has never seen one. We hoped, since
Aberdare is supposed to be chock full of them, that we would break Kim’s
unlucky streak. Instead we saw a lot of
buffalo. Ok. So it did clear up and get
considerably warmer, and we did see a lot of truly beautiful countryside, but
no animals. We had a choice towards the
end of the “game” drive to ego about twenty minutes out of our way to see a
couple of elephants, or wrap things up.
We decided to cut it short and head to the Ark, our true
destination. It was driving us nuts to
know that here we were driving around seeing nothing at all while all those
other people were seeing lions and leopards and all sorts of stuff, so we had
to head to where the action was. This
turned out to be a bit of a mistake.
The
Ark is a lodge in the middle of the park.
The idea is that they drive you out to this luxury lodge by a waterhole
and leave you there locked in overnight, and watch the animals parade to the
waterhole. The building is kind of
shape like the biblical Ark (the floors are called decks and the rooms are
called cabins), but the hook is that the animals are on in the outside instead
of the inside. The whole thing is set
up just to view them as they come up to drink and to lick the salt that’s
placed there for them. Every deck has a
viewing platform, some in the open air and some with plush couches and glass
windows. The whole area is lit at night
with huge floodlights so you can take pictures of the animals all night
long. In case you want to sleep most of
the night they keep watch all night long and ring the cabins if any animals
show up. Two rings for Rhino or
Elephants and Three rings for Leopards or Lions. Everyone sleeps in their clothes on and their cameras by their
beds so if something makes an appearance they are ready to capture the moment.
The
only problem was that nothing showed up.
Nothing,
but buffalo.
Meghna
and I stayed up later than practically everyone else and were rewarded with a
spotting of a neurotic bushbuck. Not
the greatest of prizes.
At
seven we were served breakfast and at eight we were herded onto the busses and
out of the park. And that, as they say,
was that. Despite the lack of success
with animals, Kim and I are thinking of coming back to the area when we climb
Mount Kenya.
So
that’s it for now. There are some cool
pictures so check them out. I’m also going to try my hand at some JavaScript
and see if I can make a slide show out some of the pictures from along the way.
See
you soon!
