Kenya Episode 4

Wednesday 4th July

We left Ocean Sports at 9am and headed N. About 15 minutes into the journey our red warning light on ‘T-Belt’ came on and our hearts sank. We ground to a halt and Dave jumped out to look in Garfield’s bonnet – to find nothing. We then realized, with Will’s help, that we had just clocked over 400 000 and it was just a standard warning – nothing wrong. So we gave Garfield a pat and proceeded on our way! We drove past salt pan after salt pan – this area is the salt capital of Kenya for sure.
We were actually entering an area that was considered not entirely safe due to ‘shifters’ from Somalia, so at one of the several police stops, they insisted that we take 2 armed guards with us. I duly took up my seat in the middle isle on a lugbox and the guard took my seat – we did feel a lot safer with an armed guard in the car. We reached the ferry point to Lamu at about 3pm and very reluctantly left our vehicles in an un fenced area but supposedly under a guard’s care. A 20 minute ferry ride had us on Lamu Island and about 50 years back in time! The island only has one vehicle and a couple of scooters and 3 wheelers – otherwise it is just narrow alleyways and donkey transport! We were mobbed by tour operators wanting to sell us various packages and accommodation and finally over a beer it was all sorted out. There are only 2 places in the Lamu Old Town that sell beer, as it is Muslim country, but of course the guys had found one of them within minutes of us landing! We walked down the beach road, avoiding the donkey droppings, turned up an alleyway and arrived at Bahari Hotel – adequate accommodation but certainly nothing fancy. After settling in we took a walk around the old town which is an un commercialised version of Zanzibar.

Thursday 5th July

After breakfast we set off on a guided walking tour of Lamu Town. Our first stop was at a furniture factory where we saw the carpenter hand carving an arched door and frame – the work is really beautiful and if you could get the stuff back home to SA I would love to build with it. We then moved on to a covered area where they were building a dhow. The dhow we looked at was going to take 1 year to complete with about 4 dhow builders working on it, and was costing 3 million shillings which is about R300 000 which the new owner was paying in installments. Apparently, a dhow builder takes 7 years to learn the trade and they use all hand tools – no power driven tools! Mangrove wood is used for the bent bow ridges, thorn tree wood for the straight skeleton and mahogany for the planks to fill in between.
Lamu Town consists of the Arabic section – buildings of coral stone and limestone - and the Swahili section – buildings of mud and coconut leaf roofs. There are 33 mosques in Lamu, about half in each section as both groups of people are Muslim. There were 3 Arabic tribes in the old days and the approximately 40 families in each tribe lived in houses all connected by upstairs passageways so that the women could visit each other without going down onto the streets. The Arabic houses also have outside porticos to entertain men guests without them having to go inside where the women are.
After our tour, we wandered around through the market, the alleyways etc just looking at the general population and how the donkeys are used – we were pleased to see a ‘Donkey Sanctuary’ for sick or injured donkeys. Ingrid found a tailor who whipped up a dress for her, so I also paid him a visit!


Friday 6th July

Well, it was my birthday – a very quiet one as there were no kids jumping into our bed! I opened my present from my Mom – she gave me a silver pendant of Africa which was very appropriate, and I had some sandals that Dave had bought for me the day before. Then at 9am we set off for our dhow day trip to Manda Island. I received lots of sms’s from family and friends and my brother, Trevor phoned me, so it was still a special day. We stopped to fish for a bit on the way and then Captain Bobo took us to the beach where we could snorkel, swim and relax while he and his assistant cooked us a delicious traditional Swahili lunch. It was altogether a magical day and the most peaceful birthday I have ever had! But, once is certainly enough, next year I hope to be surrounded by my family and friends.
We got back to Lamu town at 4pm and the Hardmans and us hopped on a speed boat back to the mainland and our waiting ‘homes’ – we had missed Garfield! Despite, our stressing, everything was in order and we set off to seek permission to camp in the Kenyan Wildlife Headquarters grounds, which they kindly allowed us to do as their guests. Ingrid and I had a few glasses of wine to finish off my birthday.


Saturday 7th July

We packed up and during the process Dave came across a bird on the ground which we think had flown into something and was stunned. We identified it as a Black-crowned Tchagra and put it somewhere quiet to hopefully recover. We then waited for the Kargs and Days to join us before setting off at 9.30am back towards Garsen and then N to Garissa. It was a long, hot day of traveling but it was good to be heading north. We reached Garissa near to 5pm and camped in the grounds of a guest house. Dave had to do further repairs to Garfield’s radiator as it is leaking once again! Luckily, Will has a nifty little soldering iron that works off the car battery and Dave is getting pretty good at soldering the holes that the radiator keeps springing. Our repair at Zedco Radiators in Mombasa has obviously not been successful.
Unfortunately, it was Saturday night and this guest house turned out to be the local hang out, so it was a pretty noisy night. And then, at 4am the mosques start calling! It is really weird to come across so much Muslim influence in Africa – because we are in tents we are really subjected to the loudness of the calling. Somehow in Turkey, for example, where there were 1000’s of mosques; we didn’t feel as invaded as here, where we are woken up at 4am and again at 5am! Maureen has threatened to construct some loud speakers for the top of her tent to blast out some loud Christian music in retaliation!




Sunday 8th July

We left at 8.30am and headed W towards Thika to do a big shop to stock up for the North and Ethiopia. The road was really good and we made good progress despite sharing the tar with cattle, donkeys and camels! I got on with my tapestry and am managing to keep up with Garfield in his travels – that is I am busy doing Kenya and Ethiopia on the canvas.
By 3 o’clock we had finished our shopping and we decided to set off up towards Mount Kenya – on a dual carriage highway with no potholes!! Further up the road we heard a klang klang in the engine – emergency stop – but it was just the air conditioner fan belt that had broken. Our air con packed up a long time ago so Dave just removed the belt and all was well. We arrived at a campsite 30kms from the summit just as the sun was setting, but caught a glimpse of the mighty mount just before it got dark.
Tomorrow we are going to cross the equator for the 5th and final time so we decided to have an Equator Party – there we were, huddled around a fire drinking gluwein!! Unbelievable, as we are on the Equator but because we are at 2000m, we realized once again that altitude is more important than latitude when it comes to temperature.
Ingrid and I are both battling with a terribly itchy raised rash that we think is from sand fly bites that we think we got in the mangroves on Manda Island. We have experienced the horrors of mopane flies, tsetse flies, putsi flies and now sand flies – we hope we have now met all the flies in Africa!


Monday 9th July

We had a very leisurely start and took a stroll over to the Naro Moru River Lodge in whose grounds we had camped. Dave bought himself some very colourful shorts from their shop and then we walked back through the golf course to the camp ground. Around 11 o’clock we were all ready to roll and about 20kms along the road, just before the town of Nanyuki, we crossed the Equator. If my husband even attempts to take me south again I have threatened to take the first flight home!
We had all been wondering how to check out the coriolis effect on the Equator but we need not have worried, as there under the Equator sign, was a local man armed with water, a jug and a dish with a hole in it! For the sum of R20 he proceeded to give us a demonstration of the coriolis effect and we were all totally impressed – just 20 steps into the Northern Hemisphere and the water runs out of the plug in a clockwise direction, and 20 steps into the Southern Hemisphere and it runs out anti-clockwise! On the Equator the water runs straight down the plug hole with no swirling at all. He used a couple of matchsticks on top of the water to illustrate the effect and the demonstration was really impressive.
We then headed further north up towards Sambaru Nature Reserve and went in there for 24 hours – that is all we can afford at the Kenyan rates! Anyway, we had a very pleasant time game viewing, seeing some animals that are endemic to this park only, that is gerenuks, reticulated giraffe and Grevy’s zebra.



Tuesday 10th July

We all met up at 4pm at the West gate out of Sambaru and headed for Wamba where we were able to camp in the grounds of the Catholic Mission. Along the way, we have been seeing the most amazing Sambaru people- the women are so colourfully dressed and have 100’s of beads around their necks. The young men are also very ornate with beads crossed over their chests, red ochre in their hair and elaborate head gear. The men are more like the Masaai with colourful skirts and shawls and always carry a spear and a little wooden stool that doubles up as a stool and a pillow!
We decided to have an early start in the morning to make our way to Lake Turkana.


Wednesday 11th July

Six o’clock on the dot the church bells were chimed! As we were camped directly next to the huge brass bell, we were all instantly awake and we had an earlier than expected departure! We headed for Maralal to fill up with petrol and make last minute purchases and then we were on the road to Turkana. The scenery was magnificent with us climbing up onto a plateau at 2 500m and then dropping down into the Rift Valley. At first it was very green but then the dust began and soon everything was covered in dust. However, the sheer vastness and remoteness was breath taking. We traveled until 5pm and then set up camp on the edge of a huge dry river bed. Or course, within minutes we had company, and Lorraine(with the help of her Swahili dictionary) negotiated for us to pay 2 locals to be our guards for the night – as they were armed, it was better to have them in our camp than out!
Garfield’s radiator continues to plague us and Dave had to solder up yet another hole today on route. It seems that the core of the radiator is inferior and just keeps popping. On top of this, the extra temperature gauge that Dave had installed to measure the water temperature on the top of the engine head, as an early warning system, has packed up! So we just have to keep a very vigilant eye on the original gauge.


Thursday 12th July

We set off on the last leg to Lake Turkana, formerly known as Lake Rudolf. The roads were now thick with sand and the terrain was dry and brown but it still had a stark beauty. As we approached the Lake the area was littered with volcanic rocks of all shapes and sizes. Many of them glistened in the sun as they had been ‘sand blasted’ in the wind and were shiny and smooth. Finally we came over a crest and there was the turgoise water of Lake Turkana cutting through the parched volcanic outcrops. The Lake is 56kms wide and 250kms long, one of the largest desert lakes and one of the largest alkaline lakes in the world. There are volcanic islands in the lake and they host some 22 000 crocodiles so we will have to swim with extra caution! We were elated to have reached the lake and we had a team photo with the lake behind us. Nick, who we had met at Ocean Sports Hotel in Watamu, had told us to travel about 15-20kms S down the lakeside until we found some ‘fingers’ of land and that that was a good place to camp and fish, so off we set at times having to forge our own road over the volcanic rocks. Finally, we reached a place we thought to be suitable – on the waters edge but with a rocky outcrop behind us to try and protect us from the howling wind! We had been warned about the wind, but nobody could have prepared us for this constant gale force wind – you have to experience it to believe it – obviously because there is a huge cool mass of water in the middle of a desert, there is a constant wind. As soon as we set up, we were joined by a local fisherman, Peter, whom we employed to be our camp guard. The men set about assembling the rubber duck and a bit later in the afternoon Will & Brian went fishing for Nile Perch. An hour later, shouting with glee, they arrived back with a 20kg Nile Perch! This was a real achievement as they didn’t have a gaff and it was a challenge to land the fish on the rubber duck without capsizing or puncturing the pontoon of the boat. Of course there were the normal fisherman’s stories of the other 2 that they lost, but honestly we couldn’t have coped with any more fish. After it was filleted, all 9 of us ate dinner and we each have 4 fillets in our freezers! It was the most succulent, tender, tasty fish I have ever tasted, and the harsh, arid conditions all seemed worth while.
The sunset was phenomenal with orange & pink rays going up over the South Island in the Lake and once it got really dark we studied the night skies as things are starting to look different now that we are in the northern hemisphere. The temperature when we went to bed was still 29 degrees and the wind was still howling, so much so, that we could not put up our roof top tents and we all had to sleep in our vehicles. This was a first for us and I had to sleep curled around the fridge, while Dave had to sleep half under a cupboard!
Our Lake Turkana campsite N 02 31.158 E 036 41.747


Friday 13th July

Well, we survived the night and woke up to 24 degrees and howling wind! Today is a day of general repairs and maintenance. Neville is doing an oil change, Will fixing tyre punctures and putting on his 4th set of bushes, Brian is changing oil and fuel filters and Dave is repairing his radiator(another leak has appeared) and fixing the cupboard under our fresh water tank as the weight of the water and the rough roads has broken it. There is always something to keep us busy. The girls are ‘skoffeling’- our term for cleaning all the dust and generally getting all the lugboxes tidied and in order – of course for the next few days we can’t find anything!
The water temperature is 26 degrees and we keep popping in to cool down. The water itself is so alkaline that it feels quite slippery. Brian caught a Nile Perch and so did Neville but not as big as Will’s one. Dave and Will went out this evening and Dave apparently hooked the biggest one yet, reeled it right in, but just a few metres from the boat, it raised its head and shook the lure out! So although Dave had fun, he didn’t actually catch one – maybe next time?
The sunset was once again beautiful and the fried fish absolutely delicious but I am afraid the howling wind is driving us crazy and we have decided to move on in the morning.



Saturday 14th July

We left at 9am as we had to pack up the rubber duck. The wind was still howling – these are real harsh conditions and it is unbelievable that people live here, but we have seen women around and men herding goats and of course fishing. It took us just over the hour to wend our way the 13kms back up the lake and then we headed a further 20kms up the lakeside to Loyangalani N 02 45.373 E 036 43.271
We are going to spend the night here and then leave at 6am for Marsabit which is east of us but apparently will take the whole day. Then on Monday we go north to Moyale and into Ethiopia.