Comments(0) Sandy, Michael and I went over the southern Kenyan border into Tanzania, to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro national parks.
There was just so much to see.
This is just about cat type animals.
The lions seem to spend a lot of time with their eyes shut
but occasionally look semi-awake
Comments(0) Lamu is a little town right up in the north eastern coastal area of Kenya, about 60 kilometres from the Somali border. It is quite different to the Kenya that we have known: very strongly Muslim, gentle fisher people who also depend heavily on the tourist industry, and the ultra rich who have incredibly opulent houses here. We saw three settlements: Lamu in the middle
Matandoni three kilometres to the west
Shela to the east
It is famous for its cats
and donkeys,
x
as the little alleyways are too narrow for any vehicle other than donkeys.
Sandy found suitable garb for the sun and heat - and less sunburn risk
Comments(0) We have accidentally visited Switzerland a couple of times recently, but with never enough time to ‘do (some of) the sights. so on the way to a little conference-lette in Austria, we took a couple of days or so in Switzerland, stopping off first with Dirk and Isabel (they spent time in ILRI during the worst of the more recent troubles in Kenya, and still managed to have a relaxing time!)
to acclimatise to the scenery …
Dirk is a cycling enthusiast, and this is the view from the top of one of his favourite hills
Then off to Interlaken
by train up into the mountains
by train to to picture postcard valleys
into the snowline
up in cable cars to places frequented by James Bond
and still further up
snowploughs can be fun machines
The north face of the Eiger
The train that goes up into the Eiger and beyond
Most of our fellow passengers were from India, China and Japan and some found the scenery quite exhausting
a station on the way up
on top of europe: the Jungfraujoch
and the same view in
Comments(0) Getting back from the coast, only two drivers, so we kept going fairly relentlessly, back through Tsavo and the Mombasa road in only two days.
More animals …. domestic
and other
Tsavo Est is famous for its ‘red’ elephants
As we travelled westwards the clouds became heavier, the roads damper,
and we arrived back to work at the start of the wet season. Perfect timing
From the left we have the travellers: Sandy, Marta, Miika, Delia and (Ilma&theKenyan). The patch of blue is a canvas awning, NOT the sky!
Comments(0) A group of us went to the coast for an Easter break.
Like most things in Africa, the journey was as big as the event itself.
First relaxing night at Kapiti
for sundowners overlooking the hills:
then onto the Mombasa road and it’s traffic againagain
Then turn North East into Tsavo East:
And the red elephants (red due to the dust) and friends
The Galena river hippos
and rapids
then out onto the coastal road: mainly straight but very rough:
And only a few more hours to Watamu. Watamu means ‘the sweet ones …’
Apparently the slavers used to capture their slaves from this area using sweet things.
All of the coast was a slave trading area for the countries to the north.
Comments(0) This trip was about ‘doing’ Watamu, north of Mombassa, and having time off, doing very little.
We rented a house known as Macrae’s,
at Turtle Bay. so called because of the island(s) just off the beaches. Turtle bay at low(ish) tide looked like this:
And at high tide:
Good times were had eating (mainly seafood straight of the boat) and socialising
looking at a ruined old Swahili town (Gide)
snorkelling (sorry, no underwater camera)
And our boat needed to be towed most of the way back to the mainland
relaxing in the warm sea
Comments(4) Amboseli is one of the smaller parks, right on the Tanzanian border, about 4 hours from our house. It has a large swamp surrounded by rocky or sandy desert.
We had a little unplanned excitement just a little way into the park: Miika’s car had fuel-line-fever: It stopped. Gita is inspecting the tow cable.
cheap tow ropes?
after a 20km tow … a pit, a mechanic, and Miika’s car kept going for another 20 hours or so.
Amboseli is famous for its elephants and for views of Mount Kilimanjaro, which is in neighbouring Tanzania. Queen Victoria felt sorry for her German Cousin William (’Kaiser Bill’) and so the boundary between Kenya and Tanzania was tweaked just a little, so that Bill could have a snowcapped mountain in the tropics too. Queen V already ‘had’ Mount Kenya, through which the equator runs, and it has GLACIERS. Kili is the highest mountain in Africa. It is actually in Tanzania. It is rather spectacular but photo shy: This is the bit in the middle of Kili:
Kili is very wide, probably a shield (i.e. flattish) volcano, with an ash cone stuck on top, and at least 20 - 30 minivolcano ash conelettes dotted about in and around the shield bit. In this photo the solid looking cloud is Kili, with a ‘child’ on the left.
Amboseli has a large swampy-river area in the middle, where the elephants lie in the water and munch (grass?)
Occasionally they come out, and you can see how deep they have been in the water, by the tide mark.
Unlike the elephants in Tsavo West, the Amboseli elephants didn’t harass us, even if they had tiny babies
And away from the swamp …
Amboseli is not really a National Park, as the current president returned it to the local Maasai, some of whom apparently get all of the income. This means that they graze their livestock in there, directly competing with wildlife.
Most of Amboseli is desert,
dried up lake bed
with usually about eight dust devils visible around you: the larger variety:
the slender variety that often reaches into the clouds
A lovely spot.
Comments(0) Another short weekend at Kapiti, and because the lions have moved onto the top of the hill, the other wildstock has moved down onto the plains. We went looking for them, but the track was peppered with HUGE holes, apparently made by aardvarks.
Comments(2) This week end’s escape - the Nairobi National Park, specifically the pens of animals (they called the area a ’safari walk’) requiring ’special’ treatment: I don’t know what they were all there for, but some needed vet attention, and some were just fit to be re-released ….
Comments(3) Tsavo is a National Park about 200 km to the east of Nairobi. It is famous as the place where man eating lions killed about 100 labourers and locals when the railway was being built through this area. With the civil unrest in Kenya, the tourist trade has dwindled seriously, and we had to share the park with only a few others. We stayed at Kapiti overnight, on the way:
We travelled in a group of three cars (and at least two tow ropes as insurance), for easy consultation of maps:
Shortly after we entered the park, Miika’s car had a close encounter with an surprised elephant, and we all thought there was going to be ‘an incident,’ and rushed into our cars before photos were taken (it was ‘t - h - a - t’ big …). So no photos of that event.
One of the most famous parts of Tsavo is the springs, that gush out megalitres (= a lot, for you non-Aussies) of water, enough to supply many large coastal towns such as Mombasa.
The water flows out crystal clear. Ilma (who is about 99 month pregnant) really wanted to have a cool dip in the water, but hippos had got there first.
