31 OCTOBER – 1 NOVEMBER 2011

NAKURU

There is so much rain falling here this afternoon that the roof of Care Guesthouse is flooded causing a river of water to run down the stairs through each floor level making a very intriguing sight. Soon enough the short rain eases again and things get back to normal i.e. the water stops running down the stairs through each level. I get my washing down and enjoy a lovely dinner at Planet Fries!

Weird name, yum food though, then a nice early evening to be up in the morning to confront Crater Travel - I have decided that if I had let Pega undercut Crater, they may have offered the trip for Ksh25000, so I will work from that angle. But in the morning, the Crater staff are as slippery as worms and will not entertain any refund, as evidenced by my receipt. They deny informing where the camp would be – just that that the safari would travel ‘by’ Sekenani, which it didn’t anyway! Much argy bargy, they call in reinforcements and in the end I get Ksh3000 back ($30) so I’m reasonably happy with that outcome, even if they aren’t. I walk around town doing chores and as I return from registering my new Kenyan phone card, I meet the bloke from Spoonbill travel who offers to take me to Lake Bogoria for Ksh6000 plus my entrance fee of US$25. A bit exxy but with Crater now funding 50% it is all so convenient, he is very obliging, good company and we’re on our way out of town within thirty minutes!

When we arrive at the lake there are thousands and thousands of lovely pink greater and not so pink lesser flamingos. There is also one marbou stork harassing them but still they make a glorious sight prancing by the lake’s shore. The lakes here in the Rift Valley are very shallow soda lakes – saline waters. Due to high evaporation rates the alkalinity is concentrated even more and encourages the blue-green algae growth which the flamingos love! We follow the lake line around to the hot springs – my guide is surprised because these springs are usually boiling metres high. Today there are only a few small springs but they are obviously boiling hot with the eggshells remaining from previous tourist visits.  Heading back to Nakuru in the late afternoon I cross the equator for the second time today and the fourth time this trip. I’m very contented having seen the flamingos en-masse and decide to give Lake Nakuru a miss, especially as its entrance is US$75 for a day trip. Tonight I venture into a local bar, with live local music for great cold beer. I drink Tusker here but locals particularly like their Guinness. However Kenyans partake of Guinness unlike anyone at home – it is served with a thermos of hot water which is used to dilute the beer ½ and ½ which I find truly fascinating. I ask locals about this and I was told it’s to weaken the beer! He never really told me why hot water is the preference though.

Next day I walk out to visit an archaeological site: Hyrax Hill Prehistoric Site. With its simple museum, this site is Kenya’s most important Neolithic excavation site which was initially explored by Mary and Louis Leakey. They soon found it to be littered with Stone and Iron Age implements, building remains and evidence that a freshwater lake once extended as far as the hill here. My guide is lovely and very informative so it’s a pleasant visit with fab views to far afield across both Lake Nakuru and Lake Elementaita. Walking back to town I find a private clinic for a quick doctor’s appointment to get GAP’s medical forms sorted, signed, scanned and emailed off for the tour of Madagascar. That makes another chore off my list and slowly my itinerary for the rest of the year is falling into place.

I have been trying for a few days to find the local Tipsy Restaurant open for dinner. Tonight at 6pm they are closing again and I have no idea why – perhaps the food is so good that they sell out by dinner time? So wandering about I find a chinese restaurant with chinese folk eating there – that’s gotta be a good sign. And it is – I have a fab soup with mushrooms and TOFU mmmmm I miss simple tofu!

FACT: The central highlands are the spiritual heartland of the country’s largest tribe, the Kikuyu. During the period in which Kenya's interior was being forcibly opened up for British settlement, an officer in the Imperial British East Africa Company asserted, "There is only one way to improve the Wakikuyu [and] that is wipe them out; I should be only too delighted to do so, but we have to depend on them for food supplies." Thus the highlands were the home of the powerful Mau-Mau resistance between 1952 and 1960. That violent conflict set the stage for Kenyan independence in December 1963 but divided the Kikuyu community and these divisions exist until the present day. Targeted ethnic violence was targeted against the Kikuyu people during the post-election violence in 2008 – there are still camps of internally displaced persons just outside of Nakuru.

Where's Wally??