Month: May 2017

Before leaving Australia Rod had a mental picture of himself walking in the African bush and having a giraffe walk past. It was a beautiful image that up until now he had not fully achieved. We have seen lots of giraffe, hundreds actually, but all from a car or truck, that is until we went to Lake Naivasha.

Wendy and Alan’s farm on the shores of the lake has some nice bush that we took a stroll through, keeping a watchful eye out for buffalo just as we had been warned to do. No buffaloes were there but we did see waterbuck, wildebeest, zebras, hippos, dik dik, monkeys and of course giraffes. We actually got to walk amongst the wild giraffes! Sigh. They are such graceful and gentle and beautiful creatures.

Sundown drinkies by the lakes edge was quite serene with all the zebras and waterbucks grazing about amid the evening’s pastel colours. We only decided to pack up and walk back when a hippo stepped out of the water right in front of us so that it could do its evening feed. Gorgeous that they may be, hippos can actually be quite dangerous.

The next morning Graham and Savanna took us for an early morning boat ride around the lake on a bird watching trip. It was just grand, there are so many different types of birds there, as well as dozens of hippos. We even saw a recently born baby hippo resting on the bank.

Lake Naivasha is our new favourite place on the planet.

A tropical island, 2 degrees south of the equator, part of the ancient trading route and a cocktail of different cultures.

It is quite conservative – I covered my knobbly knees to walk the streets due to the large number of muslims – but everyone is very friendly and the whole place is busy, busy, busy. We wandered down ancient laneways, even more narrow and winding than Zanzibar’s, and would have got lost except for the tiny size of the ancient city. Sitting by the water side and watching the kids swim amongst the old dhows and the young men wrestling and tossing each other in was fun.

The minuscule and pokey shops behind enormous carved solid timber doors inlaid with brass were fun to investigate. Struggling artists flogging their tourism-themed paintings and postcards to the rich white tourists, of which we were two of only about about eight that we saw on the whole island.

Georgie got quite frustrated because she couldn’t get anyone to give her a cuppa tea with cold milk, it seems it’s an African thing to boil the milk first. A yucky taste she reckons. I dunno, tea is pretty yucky stuff to start with if you ask me…

We stayed there the night before Ramadan, when everyone was indulging heavily before the coming fasting, and oh boy was it noisy! Party party party late into the night, the cacophony of multiple blaring stereos in the street below coupled with the revelry in the bar above our room (one of only two licensed alcohol venues) made for a somewhat raucous evening.

The wharf was just outside our room and well before the Sun peeked its glare above the mangroves the fishermen were calling to each other and revving their two stroke outboards.

It is a place out of another century, except for the outboard motors. People ride donkeys down the stone streets, and only the governor has a car. Everything runs on Lamu time, which is even slower than Africa time. The place doesn’t have quite the same gruesome history of slavery like Zanzibar, and is much smaller in every respect, but it was a very busy trading hub in times gone past, harvesting mangrove poles for house and ship building. The wooden boats moored along the water front hark back to another century.

Our flight out of Lamu was delayed four hours – oh well, TIA, This Is Africa. Hakuna matata.

We flew into Georgie’s old haunt from 30 years ago primed with the information that it used to be an old mafia money laundering stronghold and a bolt hole for Italians on the run. But since their local bank went under and the mafia were dispersed from Malindi the place had become much less luxurious.

We were just about the only ones staying in a quite nice, but a little bit run down, hotel very close to the seaside. Our strolls along the beach and back streets revealed many once grandiose hotels that were rapidly becoming crumbling ruins.

Georgie’s old favourite beach side bar, The Driftwood, was still functioning so we found ourselves having a few drinks and meals there over the following three days.

Riding around in tuk tuks (like a motorised rickshaw) and meeting up with Georgie’s old cronies from way back was a lot of fun. And watching the look on Georgie’s face as she relived the decadent lifestyle of her youth was a real treat.

 

Here is a link to youtube that we have put a video of the baby orphan elephants at the Sheldrick Foundation:

 

OK, sixteen different wild cheetahs in just a few days is probably a little over the top I think. Granted four of them were only titchy little cutie cubs, but crikey! We hadn’t come across a single cheetah in the previous months of our pan-African travels up until that point, then all of a sudden we had a superfluity of these lean spotty felines. Oh my goodness gracious me! And lions. We’ve honestly lost track of how many of them we’ve seen. Plus their fuzzy little cubs.

A pride of over a dozen lions we were privileged to observe was having a stand-off with a huge herd of buffaloes. One very brave lioness was standing her ground to protect a tiny little cub which was hiding under a bush, as the massive horns of the brawny buffaloes made an impenetrable semi circle around it. The angry roars of the lioness did make those muscley bovines flinch (and me too), but they maintained their threatening cordon for quite some time, before eventually backing off.

Our hearts dropped back down from their positions in our throats as the fluffy bubby cub snuck out of its hidey hole and rejoined the rest of the pride.

Following that all the lions went back to feasting on the buffalo calf they had just killed. No wonder those adults were so cranky at the cats!

Then there’s all other elephants (with cute little babies in tow), hippos (in and out of the water), lanky yet wonderfully graceful giraffes, etc, etc, etc. The Mara is absolutely chocka block with everything African mega fauna you can imagine.

On our last game drive we joked with our guide, Joseph, that the only thing he hadn’t found for us was a rhino. We explained to him that even in Zimbabwe we had gone to a rhino conservation park that had eighteen rhinos in it, and we drove around for hours without seeing any. So our chances in the Maasai Mara were very slim indeed.

“Never give up.” said Joseph, and within half an hour he managed to locate one in the long grass in a remote part of the reserve. Keeping a healthy distance we tracked this black beastie up a gully as he/she headed towards the mountains. At one point the rhino crossed the track in front of us, maybe ten metres away, stopped and eyed us off, then took a few steps toward our vehicle. Yikes! We thought he might charge! But we remained quiet enough and that lumbering great tonne of armoured muscle turned and continued on its way. How exhilarating!

The scenery of the Mara was jaw droppingly amazing. Stretching out under the huge African sky were vast undulating grassy hills interspersed with clusters of very African trees, bisected by winding hippo and croc filled creeks and rivers. Everywhere were great herds of antelopes of all different descriptions, from tiny dik-diks to the enormous elands. The very pretty thompson gazelles outnumbered most species, but there were still thousands of impala and hundreds of topi all around. Huge numbers of zebra grazed alongside buffalo and wildebeest as troupes of banded mongooses scampered about. On some sweeping hillsides there were lone solitary trees, the bottom branches trimmed clean by giraffes and elephants, and each seeming to have an untidy vulture or eagle nest atop them, with clusters of grassy weaver bird nests tangled amongst the lower branches.

The Mara is an environment sculpted by the animals, low trees pruned hard by the elephants and tall trees trimmed by giraffes. Watercourses modified by crowds of hippos and even small creeks altered by wallowing buffalo, warthogs and hyenas. The grasslands are maintained by the enormous herds of herbivores, stretching to the horizon’s distant hills of the rift valley, each shadowed dramatically by the setting Sun.

The stunningly beautiful Maasai Mara is our new favourite place on the planet.

What follows is a tiny selection of the many thousands of photos we took.

How much cuteness can a person bear in one day? When 28 rollicking orphan baby elephants come comically trundling down the track all eager to be fed their bottles of milk you can feel your knees trembling with an overdose of cuddly gorgeousness. Tears well up in your eyes and your heart feels like it will melt for these beautiful fun loving creatures who have endured the terrible heartbreak of losing their families.

But they are happy now, you can see it in their faces and their playful actions as they roll about together in the mud and have a grand old time. The wonderful keepers live and sleep with them for about ten years before releasing them back into the wild, so now they have a loving family again and are looked after wonderfully. They develop best friends with other babies and the joy they experience is evident on their faces.

A huge smile was plastered on our faces for long after we left that place.

(Babies can be fostered at www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org)

Climbing the lush green outer slopes of the Ngorongoro crater we bumped our way through very wet forests, the road varying from smooth red soil to deeply pot holed red soil. The bushland around us supported tall trees and dense undergrowth, broad leafed chest high herbs and tangled succulent vines. Despite the relatively wide gaps between the trees for such a wet area, the branches were hung densely with mosses, orchids and other epiphytes. The higher we climbed the more heavily festooned the branches became until they resembled the crooked hairy arms of gorillas.

The thick fog that has propagated these sodden cloud forests refused to clear for the view spots, instead we made do with it silhouetting the twisted woolly trees against a shifting hazy white background.

Eventually we came out of the forests into the Maasai’s grazing land. Zebras and wildebeests mingled freely with their cattle as the brightly clad herdsmen watched silently over their charges. Tall lean men swathed in their red checked shukas, holding long rods as they kept keen eyes out for lions and hyenas.

Then we climbed over the rim of the crater and were presented with a vista that had us muted with awe. The dark clouds shadowed much of the crater walls, but shafts of bright sunlight illuminated parts of the flat valley floor and lit up the many pools and lakes that glistened like jewels. Vast herds of small black dots were scattered about, as a few thin pale lines of 4WD tracks wove between them.

The steep walls that formed the crater were covered in strange wildflowers growing around clusters of tall euphorbia trees (each resembling strange cacti) as well as the uniquely African thorny acacia trees with their wide lateral branches and flat topped canopy.

With the game truck’s pop top up, giving us fantastic all round views, we slowly drove down into this idyllic setting. Long herds of wildebeest wandered around the lower slopes and scattered groups of zebras stood around and grazed on the lush grasses. Wildlife abounded, all around us were the mega fauna that makes Africa so special. Multiple species of hoofed herbivores grazed peacefully, virtually ignoring us as we drove past, cameras clicking madly as we whispered to each other and pointed out each new marvel. Enormous elephants strode confidently across the grasslands, brightly coloured birds as well as tall carnivorous birds were all around. Prides of lions relaxed as buffaloes looked warily on at them. Flamingoes lined the central lake’s edge and we glimpsed distant rhinos lolling in the fresh grass. That place was a paradise.

At one point we stopped for a toilet, not far from where we had observed a lioness and then warily sat upon a log to consume a packed lunch. Georgie was dive bombed by a daring kite who attempted to steal her chicken leg, but her grip was too tight and the bird only managed to scratch her knuckles with its talons.

We then drove on to the endless plains of the Serengetti Nat Park. That vast expanse was littered with grazing animals of all descriptions, and we were not long past the first gate when we came across a flurry of beaks and feathers as a large group of vultures tore frantically at a carcass. Eagles were also amongst the fray and a pair of jackals stood close by waiting their turn. But the real action began when a huge hyena barrelled into the flurry, scattering birds hither and thither. This awesome beastie took command and dragged the carcass a few metres closer to us and audibly crunched the bones into shards. Fantastic!

There were so many animals we saw, everything from tiny insects, through gorgeous lizards to a herd of elephants with lots of tiny babies in tow. A pride of lions had plenty of young cubs (Awwwww!) and we even saw another leopard. Late night toilet trips included a buffalo just outside our tent (“It’s just a cow.” I said, but Georgie replied “Lone buffaloes are the most dangerous!”). Luckily he just ignored us, but the hyena and lion noises went on all night.

The journey back up over the Ngorongoro crater was a real treat because the cloud’s curtains parted and granted us the stunning view from the top. It couldn’t get better than that!

We now have a new favourite place in the world.

(Note: We had a great deal of difficulty choosing photos for this section, simply because had SO MANY to choose from!)

After a fantastic massage each, we wandered around Old Stone Town again to get another incredibly cheap and delicious lunch that cost only tuppence ha’penny. We passed the only barber shop we had seen thus far and decided to trim the ol’ hairy facial adornment. We were greeted at the door by a bloke wearing a ‘F..k You’ tshirt who proceeded to spend an hour creating a work of art on my mug. When a bloke with a ‘F..k You’ shirt holds a cut throat razor to your neck you sit jolly-well still!