Second Honeymoon 12 years later

This very long post is kinda stream of consciousness and out of order. I was trying to write down things as they came to me. Like we passed an acacia tree so I wrote what I thought about it, ditto after we ate lunch at a nyama choma place.

This is where we stayed the first two nights- the Karen Blixen Coffee House. As in "I had a farm in Africa" Karen Blixen.

Cute huh?

Animals we have seen:

Thomson’s gazelle

Cape Buffalo

Lions

Ostrich

Water Buck

Dik dik

Impala

Bat eared fox

Jackal

Hyena

Grant’s gazelle

Baboons

Grevet monkey

Black Rhino

White rhino

Flamingo

Eland

Zebra

Giraffe

Pulled over in Lion Country

My first afternoon here we went to Nairobi National Park. It is about 40 sqkm and right in central Nairobi. From most of the parts we were in you can see highrise buildings. The airport is close by so huge airplanes are going over on their way to landing. It is fenced on the inhabited sides but otherwise the animals can wander. It is $20US a person for entrance, and then you are just set free to drive around looking for game. They do tell you not to get out of your car. It was really wonderful there- beautiful all around with just me and Jason tooling around looking at wild animals and talking and enjoying being together. We initially saw a lot of ostriches and antelope but not much else. We saw a school bus of Kenyan kids and about three cars in the five hours we were there. We entered one area that was called the Athi Basin where supposedly the lions live. We started seeing lots of bones – old bones, bleach white. Lots of neat skulls with horns. I wanted one. I settled for a picture instead. As we got further into the park we came upon a huge herd of zebras and elands. Probably several hundred of each. We just drove right through the herd, taking pictures and hee hawing and in general being amazed at what we were seeing. As we were headed out an armed guard stopped us in her army truck with army fatigues- instead of telling us to hit it because it was almost dark and the park was closing, she told us a lion had been spotted near the #7 road close by. As we got there we saw a female lion laying in the grass near the road, just sunning herself , licking her paws and ignoring the muzungu woman (me) with the open window of the land cruiser taking pictures. We stared for a while then started driving toward the park exit as it was soon to be sunset. We came upon a large stone sign marker and were shocked to see another female lion sitting upright ontop of it. At the bottom of it was a male lion, two yards away another female and further past the sign was another female. It was the perfect light out and we took a million pictures and just tried to drink it all in- a pride of wild lions, a beautiful setting sun and the two of us together. This is where I will insert my story with a Kenny Bellism-‘its my lie and I will tell it the way I want to’. As we drove by one of the female lions- she was maybe just a foot off of the road so maybe about three feet from my open window. We made eye contact and I looked into her beautiful gold eyes. I could feel that she wasn’t sure what to do in the situation, was it dangerous for her or her family? Her body moved and she started to flinch. Jason yelled at me to take the picture. I fumbled with my camera and the electric window which rolled up at about an inch an hour. She started to rise to her feet and I dropped the camera and yelled to Jason to go. And that is the story of how I was almost charged by a lion.

Lake Nakuru with the flamingos in the background

Lake Nakuru is a ‘soda lake’-kinda like Mono Lake out near Yosemite-site of the famous Christa-Zach-Jason-SA camping extravaganza. This is one of the places where you see pictures of of a bazillion of flamingos in a glassy lake. It is in the Rift Valley as in the cradle of all mankind. Flamingos thrive in it but the water is undrinkable for every other type of animal. There are a decent amount of tourists here, not tons, but it is not like Nairobi national park where we saw three cars in five hours. Jason and Simon call them ‘white banded Van der Beasts’ when ever we spot one. Someone called the lodge we are staying at, the Sarova Lion Hill Camp, like a cruise ship because it is all inclusive ( mostly bc it is in a national park with no where else to go for chow). Jason and I keep joking that we are on a cruise, cause we eat, then we look at some animals, then we eat, then we take a nap, then we eat, then we go for a swim. Then we eat…

The most common type of tree is the acacia tree. It is covered in three inch thick thorns. They will ‘f a brother up. The giraffes munch away at the green leaves tucked away between the thorns. It looks like such a hard way to earn your meal. Since they are almost the only tree around, you can understand why they developed with the thorns for protection- if they hadn’t they would be d-e-d.

We watched a group of Maribou storks who are scavengers eat the carcass of a cape buffalo. It was fascinating to see them picking away at its rotting corpse. We came by later and saw a hyena taking its turn at the buffalo. You could hear the bones cracking as the hyena calmly took hold with its powerful jaws.

The highways here are decent-with one exception. The trucks coming from the port city of Mombasa and continuing on to the interior, are way overloaded with their cargo. So going up the steep hills, the trucks are cruising along at oh, maybe 10 mph. Just below stall out zone. They are so slow that bicyclists grab onto the back of them for a tow up the hill. Very dangerous given that it is a highway. Then when the trucks hit the top of the hill they zoom down it at like a bazillion miles an hour with probably substandard brakes that aren’t meant to deal with their overloaded cargo. The highways are fairly rutted from the weight of these trucks. It doesn’t make tons of sense to me since it would seem that they burn up the gas and the engine with it straining to make it up the hills like that.

The other special part of driving on the main roads is what Jason and I lovingly call the triple pass. That is when you get passed by a car/truck/semi/matatu that is being simulataneously passed by another car/truck/semi/tourbus filled with 50 scared tourists. In general at least 50% of the time on a highway you can expect to see a large moving vehicle headed straight towards you in your lane going full speed. They zip over to their lane just in time as the car(s) they are passing move into their correct lane or the side of the road if it is a triple pass.

Nyoma Choma

Nyoma Choma is Kenyan BBQ. And it is good. Jason took me to a ‘choma place on our first day here. Jason says this place is equivalent to Tiny Registers’s BBQ way out Capital Circle near the airport. He goes there with work people ie not Westerners. So nyoma choma is grilled goat parts seasoned with just salt and pepper. You eat it with spiced sautéed kale, a fufu-like dish of potatoish cornmeal mush called ugali and fresh tomatoes, red onions and cilantro, but add that in only if you want diarrhea later. You take a piece of the choma, a ball of ugali and dip it into the kale and put the whole scoop into your yapper-yummy. You wash your hands before and after in a contraption that is a 50 gal drum retrofitted with a wood fire compartment and a spigot. The water is damn hot in order to get all the goat greasiness off your hands. We stopped today at a roadside stand for choma- this time we tried intestine and liver along with our goat meat. The taste was good but the consistency gives me the skeevies. Jason agreed. So everytime Jason is in Kenya he takes his co-workers out for choma at the end of his visit. They ( about 10 people) usually eat around 10-12 kilos of choma ( that is 22-28 pounds of grilled goat) over the course of five hours. That is correct, 28 pounds of meat and a five hour lunch.

Maasai Mara

The Mara is like Big Sky country. Everywhere you look there is a 360 vista with lush green rolling hills. There has been a lot of rain so everything is green. On the Kenyan side its called the Maasai Mara cause it’s the home of the Maasai people. Just over the border in Tanzania its called the Serengetti. This is where the great migration of wildebeests takes place- usually around September. The rest of the year it is pretty much right out of the Lion King- everywhere you look are zebras, giraffes, ostrich, antelope, gazelles… It has been really nice having our own wheels- we can head off in any direction at any time. When we arrived there had been so much rain that the road to the camp was washed out. We had to pass through the actual preserve. It closes at 630pm, and we got there around 6pm. They were happy to let us in after we paid for a full days admission ( $120 bucks!) for the 30 minute ride to another entry/exit point where our camp was. When we got to the camp it was already dark and we were greeted by 4 Maasai men with long pierced earlobes, traditional red robes and a spear and a club each. They took us to the lodge where they were holding dinner for us. The manager of the hotel took both my hands and started telling me congratulations and ‘welcome to the club’. I was like, uh ok I know Jason has been here before but yah, thanks! We headed to our tent- which was a la’ girl scout camp except it had a large bathroom and two double beds. There was a Maasai man sitting on the porch of it, apparently because it is the last tent and they regularly have leopards and lions walking around there. When we walked in we found a bottle of wine and flower petals on the bed spelling out ‘congratulations Mrs. Jason’. It was then that Jason told me he tried to explain ‘second honeymoon’ when he made the booking but that he was guessing it got lost in translation. We went back to the lodge for a great dinner and then what we thought was a maasai dance. It was like a ten minute song and dance in Swahili involving a cake and a speech in honor of Jason and his new bride. Then we had to cut the cake and feed it to each other, then the rest of the guests all had a piece. Then we had more complimentary wine, probably the manager was trying to help us ease into our honeymoon night. It was pretty hilarious. We went back to our tent with a maasai man who scared off all the monkeys, as he explained to us “they aren’t scared of white people”. That night we could hear lions roar, monkeys on the roof and hyrax screaming half the night.

The next morning we had breakfast sitting by the Talek river then went out for an all day game drive. It was great. Some of my highlights were seeing lions mating from about two feet away, having lunch overlooking a hippo pool- Jason threw a stick into the water and almost immediately a huge croc surfaced to check it out, then coming on another pool of about 50 hippos. We saw just about every animal except a cheetah and a leopard. We were out there for around 8 hours. I got tired towards the end but Jason seemed in his glory- looking everywhere with the binocs to spot some new animal. Since it has been so rainy there was a fair bit of Wakulla county muddin’ going on- they call it black cotton soil here. Then we got back to a nice dinner and we slept like rocks- don’t even ask me what animals were outside last night.

We had a quick breakfast and are now headed back to Nairobi for our last bit of time before we fly out tonight. I like the drives to and from almost as much as the game drives. I like to just observe life going on out the window.