weekend to the west

Last weekend was a long weekend thanks for the formal president of Kenya’s birthday, I decided a while back that we SHOULD visit Kisumu – supposedly the 3^rd largest city in Kenya and it is right at the shore of Lake Victoria – the biggest lake in Africa (and the largest tropical lake in the world and the 2^nd largest fresh water lake by surface size in the world if you are a bit of statistic fanatic too) territorially belonging to 3 East African countries and the source of the mighty Nile. To add on to this long list of reasons, the only rain forest in Kenya – Kakamega forest reserve is just around the corner. So let’s go.

My excitement of the trip was firstly put off a bit by the delayed flight with Fly540 (the Germanwings/AirAsia/Easyjet in Kenya ) and then when we reached the New Victoria Hotel which should be a good mid-range hotel according to lonely planet, we were told that the room I reserved a few days back was taken already by someone announcing him/herself of the same name of mine (this made me really wonder)! So we were forced to look for another place. Luckily it was just down the street. Let’s just say it was dark enough to not notice how shabby the room was and too late of the day to mind.

Kisumu is much safer than Nairobi as we felt mostly safe wandering around even after dark just by ourselves (being one of the only two aliens in town). There were of course the usual “taxi taxi” touts but the annoyance was minor. The day after we spent a good half day to explore the city – and that is pretty much quite enough to walk about town! It is nothing of the scale of Nairobi but it was tropical heat to walk so we had to make many water-supply stops a.k.a sitting down in the handful of cafes for a soda. The town is sleepy compared to Nairobi but I really enjoyed the calmness (who needs the craziness of Nairobi anyway?!), the pave ways were more or less even though climbing up and down, and they were mostly shaded which strangely reminded me of Penang. Forget about taxi, to go around you have the options of bodaboda (bicycle taxi), pikipiki (motorbike) or tuk tuk(3-wheel motorbike); we even took a tuk tuk to the airport when we departed and the whole journey costs less than 3 euro with breezy air free of charge.

We walked towards the lake then along the train track – for we really wanted to figure out whether the train from Kisumu to Nairobi was still running. We were told by a friend that it is wonderful to see rift valley with the slow train journey but when we consulted the officers in Nairobi train station we were told the train was suspended. Along the road we spotted many signs signaling “mind the crossing” etc – it is all very necessary since we did not see any single running train for the whole day! We finally arrived and the officers there nicely confirmed the fact of the suspension but said “it will reassume next Thursday”. Damn it, of course only just couple of days after we would have left Kisumu! The funny thing is – although it seems no trains were running on any schedule, but there were at least 4 full time personnel there, doing nothing. So we wandered back to town and decided to try the fish stands along the lake. Definitely highlight of the trip! Tilapia are ample and fresh from the lake – we had one fish which weighted more than 1kg just for ourselves! It was all and all a finger-licking-tasty experience, for one thing the fish’s very fresh and tenderly fried, for another it is quite usual that fork & knife are not served in Kenya. I enjoy thoroughly eating with hand only we do need some practices for our poor fingers as they are not really used to grabbing hot flesh while my stomach can’t wait any second longer.

After our feast on fish and the million time saying “hapana asante” (no thanks) to the many sellers of all kinds of goods, we decided it was time to head for Kakamega forest. It was altogether another journey in itself. Firstly a matatu towards Kakamega and we shall get off at Khayega just before Kakamega which took us almost two hours, then a 30 mins ride at the back of a piki piki (mind you: 2 of us with a huge backpack all on one motorbike) on a really bumpy dirt road. Just before I thought we would never make it in one piece, we arrived finally to the heaven on earth for our weekend trip – Rondo Retreat. It was homey, cozy and completely integrated with the surrounding ancient rain forest. I don’t know how to describe that is why you can look at some pictures instead. It was nothing luxury but it was just the effortless effort they spent on putting up the place – many nice sofas to crawl in and armchairs by the magnificent garden, not to mention the lovely collected library with many interesting reads.

I slept like a babe that evening with the sound of nature and woke up renew to our exciting walking trip in the forest. Briefly discussed with our guide, we decided that we would take the longest half-day trail along the yana river. I was too optimistic about the hike and slid and fell hard on my bottom 5 mins after we began the walk. The good things were – I knew how slippery the wooden paths on top of the stream were under daily rain soak and now that my pants were all dirty I did not mind falling in mud again. One of the wonders of the forest was tree murdering. One tree will literally entangle another till the poor one dry out and die away. We also saw the blue monkey (which looks exactly like the wise monkey in Lion King, remember?) and the red-tailed monkey (which is more orange than red, looking like someone has lit up the poor thing’s tail). Another highlight was seeing giant army of safari ants – they were moving in a stream, and a few much bigger fighter ants were solders at the outskirt guarding the march and they will bite hard if you appear threatening! The ancient forest is also famous for its huge variety of butterflies – I had never seen so many butterflies in my entire life.

I was all wrecked after the long walk and glad that we finally made it back to Rondo. We had another lovely well cooked meal and not matter how unwillingly we had to start the whole motorbike+matatu hike back to Kisumu before it was too late. We would love to stay in Rondo for another night…only if we had enough cash on us! (they do not take credit card, see Visa or Master can’t buy everything) The motorbike ride was easier as the mid-day sun dried out the mud road a bit, but the matatu drive was a nightmare of nightmares for me. First of all, at one point of time there were 22 adults and 2 kids on board for a small tiny Nissen which was allow max 14 passengers, plus a small chicken held by one of the kids. Well people know me know that I have phobia for chicken since young (I know that is irrational but isn’t that just what phobia supposed to mean?!), so I was all worried and panic a little while comforting myself by thinking “oh this is just a small chick even without grown feather yet…and she will probably drop off in the next town… ” well she did drop off after 15 mins or so but here it came – a man with like 10 grown cocks and hens got on! In China people will transport these domestic animals in cages but here they were simply tied up by their feet and put underneath one’s seat. So these ten seemly harmless animals were just laying 15 cm away from me right next to Achim’s feet. I was dreadfully scared and being completely honest even a few drops of tear were shed out of fear. This guy with many chicken only got off before we arrived in Kisumu and hence the whole journey turned into a small personal disaster for me.

The last day in town – we went visit the very price-worthy Kisumu Museum. The ticket officers must be a bit disappointed that after all two muzungu were only paying the tiny resident rate of entrance fee so they actually sent a guard to double check our resident status after we entered : ) We paid 1 euro and saw a whole display of culture/history of the western region of Kenya, a well-planned simulated village of the Luo people (local tribal group around Lake Victoria), as well as a small but interesting aquarium, a few tortoises, crocodiles and a informative corridor exhibition of snakes ABC. Well, what can you ask more except a bit of explanation of why the above combination. We enjoyed the visit a lot anyway.

Our trip ended with a late lunch again by the lake in the shanty fish restaurant, watching locals driving cars or school buses into the lake so that they can wash their vehicles in a most convenient way; street kids lingering around with a bottle of glue at hand staring at food on tables waiting for their share of the left-over and many street sellers coming and going with their beyond imagination variety of craps. Oh, what a weekend.

magical masai mara part I

finally i wrote this for i felt into the usual sleepless sunday night and instead of counting sheep I went up to write on my laptop.

I could barely know how close I can actually get to the nature until I landed in Masai Mara with this tiny 13 persons plane, the plane was full though despite the worries of fewer tourists due to PEV (post-election violence) and lucky Achim was invited to sit on the co-pilot seat (I highly suspect that was because of his pilot style sun glasses!) First time experience with such a small plane and I felt excited but safe. Right before landing, I spotted a group of giraffes among the woods next to the airstrip. Deep breath, I knew this was going to be amazing.

Our first camp was an infamous eco camp in Mara called the Base Camp. You can even take a free tour around to see just how eco-centric they are and stuff from the 2^nd camp we went to referred to Base Camp as ‘very local community friendly’, which can be seen from first contact – most of the staff hired there are Masai coming from the surrounding villages. I love the fact that they have a person who is like a COK (Chief of local Knowledge) who came to us everyday, not only to explain the camp but also to tell us interesting facts of animals, e.g. imitating different animal sounds we heard in the evening and had a quick quiz with us on who is whom (hippos made the loud but easy to recognise snore from the nose while hyenas have this creepy high pitch call when they hunt that woke us in the night a few times). The service was really personal and flexible and the whole atmosphere was always relaxingly low-key.

We spent 3 nights in Base Camp and then moved on to the newly opened Karen Blixen Camp (it was even on the news since they opened the establishment at a really inconvenient time right before the election time) for another 2 days. However judging from the number of occupied dinner tables – it seems the hard time has passed which I am really happy for them. The camp is owned by a Dane whose family come from the same island in Denmark as this well-known lady and the guy who is currently running the Camp still has this sweet Danish accent when he talked which of course brought back my memory of cosy time in Copenhagen. This camp is more to the luxury direction, and it locates at a really impressive part of the Mara river. The water roared all the time and it was so great that we could merely heard each other when we tried to talk while lazying around on our balcony. I would say that Base Camp is more to my taste but I was completely speechless when feasting on our late lunch, watching a family of elephants getting shade under the trees, and then a few impalas and zebras amid a whole clan of Thomson’s gazelles came down to drink water by the river, observed closely by a whole bunch of hippos who became so active and naughty once the heat ceased.

I can not possibly write down my whole 6 days in the Mara as most of the experience is out of my commend of writing skills. Perhaps I can try with a few highlights instead.

My most often seen – wildebeest. There are literately millions of them on the ground of Mara at this point of time. They are main actors in the scene of migrations but they are sadly called the ‘clown’. Well, not without reason though. They look a bit strange and they act even more random – quite often one wildebeest will start running to one direction without any obvious reason and the other will just simply follow. They have really strong legs and they are successfully breed here as a group, so eventually they are probably not as stupid as we think.

Among the wildebeest you can often see one of my favorites – the zebras. They are just having the most comic face among all animals and they can act funny too. But they are as well brave and forceful. I read that they play a leading role in the migration though unfortunately we did not witness that this time. However we did see they attempt to cross the Mara river as a clan alone, which was a very dramatic yet touching scene. The Mara river is rather deep sometimes zebras have to swim with only their head out of the muddy water. Not to mention that one of the their biggest predators are just hungry after months of waiting – Nile crocodiles which can measured up to 5 meters and weighted to 1 tone. A stream of zebras chose the part of the Mara of strong tide and started to cross, within 10 minutes more than 10 crocs swam near the crossing ‘path’ from all directions. However do not underestimate these cute faces, they have solid kicks which can frighten off most of the crocs in the fierce waves and although sometimes croc did managed to catch a bite most of the zebras escaped and successfully made it to the other side (during the whole time we were watching only one poor young zebra were killed). You hear them bark intensively like hundreds of puppies which was in fact the call of family. Seeing so many crocs crumbing around the remaining clan of the zebras were anxious and lost, so some of the zebras who had made it to the other side actually swam back in order to be with their family!(maybe give them further guidance and just to comfort the young ones) And they are as well smart. Seeing the crowd of carnivores at bate was too large they changed strategy and looked for a different location to cross.

The fastest animal on land – Cheetah. They might look similar to leopard at the first sight (or it is just me an wildlife idiot grown up in city?) but after some hints you distinguish them easily. Cheetah have rounded spots and have these tear lines just below their eyes. They made this ‘miao’ sound just like any kitten when they are trying to flirt with their mating partners and they are completely relaxed under the gaze of human beings. Actually they were so calm that sometimes they climb on top of the 4-wheel drive to get a better sight of their preys. On the other hand leopards are very shy cats. They are loners except during mating season. Most of the time they live on trees or lay down between low woods. They are very difficult to spot but we had a really good guide with us and we were the first car to ‘hunt’ down a leopard among the forest just before sunset among the high grasses and short trees.

see if you can find the leopard

My favorites are not the carnivores but the elephants and giraffes. They are the local breed which is significant smaller in size compared to for example India elephants. The similarity between these two is that they always seemed to wear smiles on their faces and the fact that they were co-appearing with a lot other animals all the time. In our walking safari for 3 hours, we were in the woods where a group of giraffes gazing, they were curious as well as cautious, keeping a certain radius of distance from us but circling around in a slow pace, stopping every now and then to stare at us with their very gentle eyes. It is hard to describe that joy! Warthogs are also happy creatures. Member the one who sings ‘Hakuna matata’ in the Lion King? That was the warthog. The reason why they were having no worries was really because they have extremely short memory! It can be a sad fact though in cruel nature as they could be so carelessly forgot about the danger they just encounter and go back to where they predators waiting : (

Ok, time for the king of the jungle – lion to come to stage. Their positive image is largely the result of popular culture, especially cartons. Their majestic look also helps to shape that up a lot I guess. But they are indeed most of the time quite lazy and even when they hunt they only have a 50/50 chance of success. In fact sometimes they stole others carnivores’ preys too! Especially the male ones – for me they are just modelling for foto! The female ones take up the responsibilities of feeding and protecting the young ones, they are usually in group of 3 or more sisters and their curbs become kids of all (fair and square). They excel in team work and hunt mostly only during cooler hours (not like cheetahs). Sometimes they have easy gain as well – (un)fortunately we saw a young lost wildebeest came down to the drink water at the river bank where a team of more than 10 mothers and curbs were resting. It took only a breath of 3 seconds for one of the lioness to catch this poor little thing. But there could be hard time especially when the wildebeests and zebras migrate to the other side – lions can grow so hungry that they have to pick a fight with buffalo – which is a chance to live or die.

... to be continued...