We arrived in Nairobi in the middle of the night and our first experience of Kenya was having our taxi run out of petrol in the middle of nowhere with our driving telling us that petrol stations don't serve people in the early hours of the morning for fear of being robbed. Luck was on our side though as there was a petrol station 100 metres from where we broke down so our driver used his starter motor to get us the last bit of distance and fill up the car enough to get us to our camp - welcome to Africa!
The first part of our African adventures took us to Lake Nakuru game park in Kenya. This morning we first learnt the phrase "This is Africa" which can relate to all manner of failures, including our safari drivers being 1 1/2 hours late picking us up and having our safari van get stuck in a massive hole in the ground. We were too excited about the safari to care anyway. Our first safari was brilliant, our initial glimpse of Lake Nakuru was a pink haze of flamingos on the shore line with buffalo and other bird life sifting around. From there we feasted our eyes on Zebra, Empala, Warthog, Lion, Rhino and other prancing hooved animals that I cant even remember the name of! It was beautifully surreal to finally be up close to these animals in the wild. We had ticked off 3 of the big 5 for Kenya with only the Leopard and Elephant to go.
From Kenya we moved on to Uganda, passing through the Rift Valley and the Equator towards the Nile River in a town called Jinja. This stop was purely for the adrenaline junkies as this was the place you could do the grade 5 rafting. Being a complete baby I was not interested in all in this option and left Chris to it . I did however offer to stand at the first grade 5 rapid and take photos of him coming down it instead. All reports from Chris was that it was awesome and he survived it which is also a bonus.
We stayed around Jinja for a few days and got addicted to visiting the local chapati man, buying his "Rolex" special on a daily basis, sometimes twice. This constituted a chapati with an omelet filled with tomato, onion and avocado rolled inside, all for about 30 cents US. Delicious.
We also hired the worst mountain bikes in the town for a ride around the local village. The guy insisted that Chris needed to wear gloves for this ride and then swiftly produced a pink pair of Hello Kitty gloves that he must use. The local children were some what baffled at this Muzunga (white person) waving at them in pink gloves. The children in Africa pour out from everywhere just so they can wave and shout "hello, how are you, I am fine" and at some stages we had an entourage running beside us for kilometres trying to hold our hands.
From Jinja we started the big drive towards Rwanda, we were gorilla bound. We stopped in the capital Kigali to visit the Genocide Museum to learn a bit more about Rwandas tragic past. It still astounds me that this happened only 16 years ago, but it has to be said that the Rwandan people are heroically pushing forward positively with their lives and have learnt from the tragedies of the genocide but are not letting it destroy the future of their country.
After that sobering experience we pushed on to our base camp for Gorilla trekking. We have been looking forward to this for a really long time and had paid a big amount of money for it as well. Only groups of 8 people can visit any one gorilla family per day and for no more than 1 hour. Our family to visit was Susa and just our luck this family resides on Rwandas biggest volcano and Africa's 5th largest mountain. Wouldn't you know it, they were pretty much at the top, and this certainly meant they were gorillas in the mist! It was a stunning jungle to walk through though, the smell and look of it took your breath away, that and the altitude of course. After 3 1/2 hours we finally found the Susa family and spent the next hour sitting and watching them get on with their daily lives. We were so close to them at times, within an arms distance but they were not aggressive, more playful in fact. This experience cannot really be described in words, it was magical and worth every penny.
Unfortunately for me my tolerance for being at high altitude failed me again. After being at 3500 metres for over an hour my crushing headache got me again so the decent was not so enjoyable. It also started bucketing down so for 3 1/2 hours we slid our way down the steep mountain which would have been fun if I didn't feel like I wanted to die. Chris had a great time skating his way down holding onto the bamboo as he went!From Rwanda it was back into Uganda and straight to Lake Bugayonyi a tranquil place which helped us to recoup and clean up after our muddy trekking. We spent a couple of days and on the first afternoon decided to wander through the local village. We came across a group of local woman and children who desperately wanted to show us their dance moves and also to teach us a song. It became apparent that missionaries had taught THEM the song as it was in English and about "Making melodies in my heart" for the King of Kings. It had some pretty snazzy actions with it though including thumbs up, chest out, buttocks up and turning around - hilarious.
The next day we hired a local dugout canoe, let me just say that maneuvering those things on your own will lead to a full scale tantrum out in the middle of the lake. I just kept going around in circles! Later on I did the wise thing and went with Chris so he could steer. We got a local fisherman to come with us in the afternoon with intentions of catching a massive catfish, but when we saw our rods (a stick with a thin bit of plastic as the line) we knew we would only be catching the equivalent of spotties. It was fun though as they were definitely biting and we got told we could eat the little guys whole after char coaling on the fire which is exactly what we did.
Reluctantly we left the Lake and headed back to the capital Kampala. A slum tour was on offer in the city so we thought we would give it a bash. Well it was an eye opener for sure. We didn't know what to expect when we were given a big box of condoms each before we set off for our walk. Most of the people that live in the slum are either HIV or AIDS victims including the children which is heartbreaking as you see their smiling faces and realise they are the innocent victims. Some of the kids are not allowed to play football as they cannot expend too much energy as they will get sick. The conditions they are living in is simply vile. Rotting rubbish and open sewers emit a horrible stench and right next to an open drain children and playing in the water as well as collecting it for drinking. We also realised that we would be going through the sex industry area of the slum and were expected to hand out the boxes of condoms to the prostitutes who snapped them up quick smart. There are so many people in this world in need, especially children, that is almost overwhelms you. You see how much kids have in the western world and what these kids have, we saw 1 ragged doll the whole day which was very well used and grubby but apart from that no other toys. We came away from the tour glad we went and saw, but with a big heavy heart.
Back into Kenya again and our stop off point was Lake Navaisha. Great campsite with its own resident hippos and monkeys. Fortunately the camp put up an electric fence every night to stop the hippos wandering through the camp as they are aggressive animals and not ones I would like to face on my midnight run to the loos. We spent our time here doing a mountain bike tour through Hells Gate National Park, it was good to not be on motorised vehicles as the animals don't get scared off much. Nothing that we hadn't seen before but definitely a lot closer to zebra, giraffe, warthogs and empalas. The national park is also a geothermal area so we ditched the bikes for a bit and walked through the gorge to a natural hotspring. Not up to Hells Gate in Rotovegas' standard but lovely nevertheless.
Finished the first leg of our African tour back in Nairobi where it all started. Had a quick visit to the giraffe sanctuary where you can feed them, or if you love them that much get a big slobbery kiss from them like Chris did. One of the giraffes also got a bit grumpy with one of the girls and gave her a decent headbutt which was pretty funny.
The time is flying already and tomorrow we set off for Tanzania to continue our adventures.
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