Day 7 - Kerio Valley

In all national parks game drives are only allowed between sunrise and sunset. Sunrise and sunset is when most animals are active as well, so we got up at 5.30, to make sure that we could start immediately at 6. To our great surprise we already spotted the first animals while waiting for the gate of the campsite to be opened. It was a black rhino, the very rare species. We drove alongside it for at least 15 or 20 minutes.

Unfortunately the road to the point where we would have been allowed to leave the truck was flooded, but there was plenty to see from where we were. We saw a group of 7 white rhino’s, some hyena’s (which I had not seen last year at all) and a few flamingo’s. When we were close to the campsite we saw another (or perhaps the same as before) black rhino.

It was around midday when we were back at the campsite, so this time we were packing our tents during the hottest part of the day, also not ideal. I had chosen to not use the shower over there and I tried to stay away from the toilet as much as possible as well, although the latter could not be completely avoided. One funny thing there was however that you were asked to ‘flash when you are finished’. Instead of ‘flashing’ I decided however to respect Kenyan culture and keep my shoulders and knees (as well as other body parts) covered. Although when I saw the exact same request at other places as well, I started to wonder whether flashing was indeed what they wanted.

We left Nakuru NP with a long drive ahead of us. Again, the landscapes were very varied and there were kids greeting us everywhere. As the quality of the roads was not great in some areas, the drive took quite a while and of course at some point the need for a toilet comes in. That’s when the driver was asked to find a spot along the road to stop, and he found one… The deal was that the men would get one side of the truck and the women would get the other. For the men this was not a problem and all of them walked across the street and did their thing. Some of the women did their thing on the other side of the truck. The row of white asses was quite a funny sight I have to admit and I’m sure that our cook and driver had some good fun watching it in the rearview mirrors as well. Anyway, I am not a prude, but there are things that I prefer to do in private, and I was not sure whether I was ready to cross this personal boundary just yet. On the other hand, it would take at least 2.5 hours before we would get to our campsite… so let’s just say things happened that we all agreed to never talk about.

In Keiro Valley, which is part of the Rift Valley, we stayed at a campsite of a local farmer, Emanuel. There were options to upgrade to a room as well, but I did not. I signed up for 9 nights of camping, so as a matter of principle I’m not going to chicken out and upgrade to a room. And luckily both toilets and showers were of good quality, so that eliminated the most pressing reasons for such upgrade. This campsite had a bar as well, which looked like what I imagine ‘drank-keten’ in the Dutch countryside look like, but most important part was that it provided good shelter for the incredible rains we had in that evening and the next. Up to this point in our trip we have had rain at least once a day, but luckily it had always been at convenient times, for instance when we were putting up our tents.

In the bar we also learned that this farmer had been to Holland for 3 weeks in the summer of 2008 and he remembered quite a few Dutch words that he would mix in with his English. He told me, he stayed with a family of farmers in some town I could not understand and he also had friends in Losser. Losser happens to be the village next to Lonneker and Lonneker is where I grew up! What are the odds? So I asked him whether he knew Lonneker as well and he immediately mentioned the windmill, which is only a few hundred meters away from the house where I grew up. Turned out that the village he stayed at was Glanerbrug, which I realize may have too many Dutch sounds, even for the best foreigner. Two of the things he mentioned about this trip is that the first morning he got up at sunrise as he always does, only to learn that it was only 4 am instead of 6 as he expected, when I told him that in the winter it the other way around and it stay dark till late, I think I spotted some disbelieve in his eyes. Moreover, he thought it was curious to see that in Holland rain was not restricted to the end of the day and it could pretty much happen at any given time of day. Yes that does sound like Holland, and luckily Sweden is not much different either.