Day 5 - Thomson Falls

In the morning we broke up camp and then had a game drive to the gate of the Samburu park. Obviously the holy grail of game drives is a big kill, the closest we got was unfortunately seeing some impala’s run in the distance and one person in our group thinking he saw a running lion as well. We drove around that area for a while and some other tourists in that area also reported to maybe have seen a lion with prey, while others did not. Either way, we did not, but the excitement was not less.

Then we continued our way to the Thomson Falls. The landscape along the way was much more varied than I had expected. As I mentioned before, Kenya is much greener than I thought. Also, it is much less flat. Greener land means more food and happier people and kids, so we were waiving like a queen most parts of the way. Somewhere along the way we also picked up a new starter for the engine of the truck as our drive had to crawl under the truck with a hammer and perform some magic to get the engine to start every morning. He planned to put in the new started a few days later when he had more time, but before that he found out that the new starter was of a different make than the old one, so we actually continued the rest of the way with the occasional hammer-time. Especially later on, in desolate and bumpy areas of the Serengeti and near the Ngorongoro crater we have seen many broken down vehicles, but luckily for us this was as bad as it got.

The drive to Thomson falls took quite a while. When we arrived we rushed with a few guides to the nearby ‘hippo pool’, the local attraction. We made it there around sunset. I was expecting a view point on higher ground overlooking some basin with hippo’s, but when we got there the ‘pool’ was more a puddle and the ‘viewpoint’ was some peninsula-like strip of land on the side of the puddle. I remembered that hippo’s are one of the most dangerous animals, because they are extremely territorial and don’t tolerate intruders of any kind. I started to wonder how safe this whole thing was, when one of the many hippo’s in the pool slowly got up and walked out of the water just a few meters away from us. And that’s when the guides started to get a bit restless, also because the hippo was on his way to cut off our retreat from the peninsula. And although I always like to be right, the realization that I was at least close to being right with my assessment of the level of safety, this was not a big comfort. After that I made sure to stay in the back of the group, because I know it’s not possible to outrun a hippo, but then again, I figured it would be enough to outrun most of the others - I know that's not nice, but that's how survival of the fittest works.

When we got back we got the key to our lodges. On the campsites the monkey chasers tried to make some money, charging batteries for phones and camera’s, the constant changes in the intensity of the lights in the room suggested that many of us still had some charging to make up for. We also had some showering to make up for. It took me an extra trip to the reception, but in the end I had warm water for my shower as well. As I had wasted some precious water waiting for it to get warm I tried to shower quickly. The shower still felt effective, but when I dried myself after, the brown stains in the white towel suggested differently. Although I’m not sure 10 minutes more would have completely fixed that.