Hi All
Hope this post finds you well & happy :) We're in Nairobi, Kenya at the moment, after spending some time travelling over to Uganda to see the mountain Gorillas!
There were around 10 ppl on this leg of the trip. We've been living out of an overlanding truck, which has everything you could need stowed away somewhere (tents, cooking equipment, tables, chairs etc). We left Nariobi on the 12th of April & travelled to Lake Nakuru national park, where we were lucky enough to see white & black rhino's, water buffelo, giraffes, zebra, a leopard, and many other animals. We took loads of photos & Richard tried to identify everything in the bird & animal books which were very informative :) It was very exciting to see all of these animals on the first day!
After Nakuru, we travelled onto Eldorett. Eldorett is one of the towns which was affected by the political riots after the December elections, and we saw a few of the burnt out shells of houses & shops. Scary stuff. We left really early the next morning, as we were travelling across the border to Uganda and the roads were pretty bad. Stopping for lunch every day is a bit hit & miss, and that day was one of the worst for trying to find somewhere. When we stop for lunch, all 10 of us pull out tables, chairs food etc & make lunch, before cleaning everything & putting it back. The difficulty is finding somewhere to pull over & setting everything up, as people invariably want to watch the "mzungu" (white person) eat, and hope for hand outs.
So anyway, on this day we tried pulling over on the edge of a grassy field which looked perfect. It was the edge of a school however, & by the time we'd parked there were hundreds of school children who wanted to stare at us, shake our hands & say "How are you?". We were swarmed! Needless to say, we decided lunch would be impossible, & so after shaking everyones hands & saying hello, we hopped back in & continued on. Funny stuff.
Our stop for the night was Jinja, Uganda, which is where we stayed for the next 2 nights. The following day, most of the group went white water rafting down the "white Nile" (said to be the source of the Great Nile river. Richard, Tim (one of the group) & I decided to spend the day with a local charity organisation, Soft Power. We spent the morning at a school for Aids Orphans, where we were the most popular people around. All the kids wanted to hold our hands, or stroke our arms, or play with our hats etc. Richard & I sat in on a class for 4-5 year olds learning their numbers & alphabet. I had the pleasure of trying to teach the alphabet with the help of the teacher, which was pretty funny, but lots of fun. The kids are very energetic with a very short attention span & there are a lot of them in the class for the poor teacher to deal with. Pic of some of them below
.In the afternoon, we went to help paint one of the classrooms in a SoftPower school. I ended up covered in paint, but the room looked good by the time we'd finished!
The next day (Wednesday), we were back on the road to the "Hairy Lemon", which is an island on the Nile, where we spent the afternoon relaxing. Getting there & away was interesting. The roads were very muddy & at one point we all had to get out of the truck so it could slide its way over the mud without getting bogged (& so we wouldn't be in it if it slid off the road)!
Thursday we drove into Kampala (capital of Uganda), were we stayed the night, before packing up the tents and leaving at 5:30am the next morning to drive all the way to Bwindi Impenetrable forest where we were going to trek the gorillas the next day. We left the truck in a town along the way & took a local van as the roads heading up into the forest were really bad. We were bogged twice, the second time at dusk, & the car battery failed when the driver tried to rev the car out of the mud. Lucky for us, he managed to get the engine going again, so once we'd pushed the van out of the mud we were back on our bumpy ride all the way up to the community hostel where we were staying for the next 2 nights.
On Saturday, we split into 2 groups, to track 2 different gorilla families. Our group was the Rushegura group, which had 15 members, one of which was the silverback (the alpha male gorilla who leads the group).
Lucky for us, our group was only a half an hour walk from the starting point. The other group was up in one of the dense areas of the mountain, which was several hours of walking, and hacking through the foliage to find them! Both groups had an amazing experience though. They are huge animals, and so human like! I've popped two photos on, one up the top & one below.
The following day (Sunday), we headed back into Kambale (4 hours drive from Bwindi), where we'd left the truck. Pic above of one of the encounters on the road. We had to wait for a while as the truck on the right was broken down and the truck on the left had tried to overtake & become jammed between the wall & the broken down truck & also bogged in the mud on the side of the road. It made it out eventually, & we continued on our way! We took another van to Lake Binyounyi, where we spent 2 nights chilling out, and getting our laundry done. Pic of Richard & I below with the lake in the background.
On Tuesday we headed back to Kampala which was another mammoth driving day, and then again on Wednesday when we drove back to Eldorett for the night. On Thursday we left again at 6am in order to get to Lake Naivasha by 3pm in time for afternoon tea!
At Lake Naivasha is a place called Elsamere, which is a colonial homestead on the lake, which is where Joy Anderson & her family lived, and which is now a museum. Joy spent a lot of her life in Kenya rehabilitating big cats (Lions in particular) & was the author of Born Free (which was later a movie). An amazing woman.
We camped the night on Lake Naivasha, up the road from Elsamere. The lake was gorgeous, and populated with hippo's which are quite dangerous... there is an electric fence between the camp site & the lake to ensure none of them wander into tents! We saw the tops of a few heads, including a mum & baby, & took lots of photos of the sunset & sunrise the next morning on the lake. Gorgeous place. Pic off the edge of the jetty below. The next day we headed back for Nairobi, which is where we are now!!!
Tomorrow we're off to the Masai Mara park for 2-3 days, followed by the Serengeti & then Zanzibar! Hopefully I'll be able to do another update in Zanzibar as apparently there are some internet cafes there.
Stay well & happy!
Love Richard & Corryn
