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Published: August 30th 2007
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After a couple more (too many) days in Nairobi it was finally time to see the back of the big smoke and head West towards Uganda. Neither of us were particularly sorry to see the back of the city or Nairobi Backpackers to be honest. Its a really nice place, the staff are friendly, the food is tasty and cheap, the beers are cold and the pool table is free. Even if it did have a tendency to scoop all of the balls towards one of the pockets. But it really did feel like a compound designed to keep westerners in and Kenyans out, I swear some of the people staying there never left the place except to get in and out of a matatu to go on a safari.
I'm not sure we mentioned this in a previous blog but Nairobi is a no smoking city, not just in workplaces, bars and restaurants, buses etc but everywhere. Smoking on the streets is an arrestable offence. When we were buying our bus tickets to Mombasa, Julien automatically lit up without thinking and was told off by a passing tramp with a very disapproving scowl that he shouldn't be smoking on
the street. Standing in the dirtiest, smelliest, skankiest street you've ever seen where you can practically chew the air, and you can't smoke. We have an inkling the Nairobi city coucil has kind of got its priorities in a bit of muddle..
So after catching up with Julien and Claire (whose paths we crossed again after they got back from Tanzania), we were Kakamega Forest Reserve bound. kakamega is the only bit of primary forest left in Kenya; it's in the West near the Ugandan border. A 10 hour night bus from Nairobi found us in Kakamega town on the outskirts of the reserve. After Marianne had finished taking in the sights and shopping for food on the back of a rather too enthusiatic Boda Boda (a push bike with no suspension with a pillion seat on the back) we got in a Matatu to a little town at a crossroads in the reserve called Shinyalu where we then had to, joy of joys, negotiate the last few Kilometres to Isecheno on three Boda Bodas. One for the bags, one for Marianne, and one for me. YAY.
If anyone has ever been on a bike (lads I'm talking
mostly to you) and had to brake suddenly, cracking your man sack on the handle bars then you'll have some idea of the constant ballache I got from the pillion seat. Every bump was like having my scrotum slapped by an irate dwarf. So after 5 KM of staring at the back of a sweaty Kenyan who I thought was going to die of exhaustion after the first five minutes of riding (apparently I'm a fat Mzungu (White man)) I was quite glad to get off. Marianne on the other hand was having a whale of a time!
We decided to the amusement of the staff to christen our tent (No Rich, not THAT kind of christen). "Are you sure you want to camp, we get quite a lot of rain?" should have rung alarm bells and certainly sounded like famous last words in hindsight. Oh how right they were....
After seeing a load of Blue and Colobus Monkeys around the campsight as soon as we arrived, we were really looking forward to doing the evening walk and seeing some more birds and monkeys. Unfortunately the forest was eerily quiet and we hardly saw anything (We found out
a couple of days later that they had had a minor earthquake in the area at around that time which caused a big mud slide not far from where we were. It Killed quite a few people, including would-be rescuers who got caught in subsequent slides. They say animals sense stuff like that. You never know, the animals were certainly a lot noisier the day after).
We got back to the camp to the very loud rumble of an approaching storm but thought it was going to pass us by. It didn't. As we walked into the camp it absolutely tipped it down. We took refuge in our virgin (Ahem) tent with no idea whether it was going to stay waterproof or not... the 3 inches of standing water outside the door of the tent started to get us a bit worried. It was when we realised that our thermarests were more or less floating on the groundsheet of the tent which itself was floating on 3 inches of water that we started seriously hoping that the cash we paid for the damn thing was worth it.
I can highly recommend Mountain Hardwear tents. They are ace.
For the second day of our stay at the reserve we went for a long guided walk, first up to see the sunrise from a hill, and then on through the reserve to see some rapids. Also took in an old goldmine level where we got really close to some really cute fruitbats. We started at 5am for sunrise and had walked 18km by lunchtime! We were hoping we would see more birds, butterflies, and monkeys but considering they are supposed to have 330 different species of bird, 400 species of butterfly and 7 species of monkey we saw only a handful of each make. We did see some baboons seven Blue Headed Bee Eaters (which are very hard to see) roosting together on a branch on the last evening, the sight of which apparently makes twitchers do the proverbial in their proverbials. They were alright. And we ate some guava fresh from the tree (adam's had a maggot in).
We really should mention our guide Gabriel. Apart from being an amazing guide who really knew his stuff about the Flora and Fauna of the forest, he teaches visiting school children about it and educates them about the importance
of the forest and its preservation. As well as coordinating the education of the local people on environmental issues such as the sustainable use of the forest, he also coordinates the local sex education and HIV awareness campaign. He regularly travels from Kakamega to Nairobi which is a not insignificant journey to attend conferences on the subject, and was incredibly proactive and forward thinking. Something we've seen to be not too common. Chatting to him over a beer was very enlightening and we can highly recommend getting in touch with him if you decide to visit the forest reserve.
The next day the journey back to civilisation was (if possible) more Boda-Boda-Tastic than the first escapade to get us to the campsite. The roads had turned to mud after the rain. Reddy-brown clayish mud that makes a perfectly passable road when dry, but which quickly turns into a comedic rabble-getting-sprayed-with-mud-whilst-humping-car turn of events that we would conveniently overtake on our quickly-clogging-up-with-mud Boda Bodas as soon as it rained. The few short cuts we took to circumvent the worst of the muddy roads was a carefully choreographed route designed purely to provide the bored residents of Isecheno some badly needed
hilarity. We made many stops to unclog the wheels and brakes of mud.
Marianne's Boda Boda controller was clearly deranged, as became evident when other Boda Boda riders started shouting at him for going too fast on the slippery downhill bits and bypassed-passers-by were shouting "fast Mzungu!". Whilst Adam's was clearly in need of some serious medical attention (fat mzungu!). By this time we had lost the bloke with the bags who Adam was convinced was sniffing our grundies behind a bush somewhere.
We finally got dropped off at a junction town with a matatu stand. After negotiating a couple of pissed "helpers" at the bus stop, a couple more who wanted to be Adams best friend, and one who was convinced GOD!!! would be looking over us for the rest of our trip (gave us his phone number in case we were passing through and wanted to pop by. OK then!) we were finally on our way to civilsation and Kisumu.
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Maria Capellades
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Amazing Photos
Dear Adam and Marianne, Just watching some photos from Kakamega Forest reserve that I had not yet seen. Amazing. Kudos to "Trees in the Mist" (absolute favorite), "Ants" and "Butterfly on a salt lick" and the super cute "Blue Headed Bee Eaters"!!!! SOOOOO CUTEEEE!!! Thanks for the wonderful pictures!