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Published: November 8th 2021
We have had a fabulous day today seeing our first hippos!
Following a tasty breakfast at Sweetwaters, we left our camp at 8 am for our long drive to Lake Naivasha. We first stopped at the equator sign in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy for photos, then we continued on our way, driving on unpaved, extremely bumpy roads. Susan and I were in the back of the jeep today, which I think is a bit worse than the other seats over bumps.
We passed greenhouses (Kenya exports a lot of flowers, including roses, which are grown in greenhouses), open air markets, and little and big towns. The scenery changed a lot over the 5 or so hour drive, sometimes flat and arid, sometimes more hilly and green. We passed countless herds of cattle, some quite large, and many small herds of goats and sheep. Once again the animals seemed quite oblivious to cars, and would cross the road whenever they felt like it. We saw quite a number of donkeys grazing by the road. These donkeys look very healthy and I think have much better lives than the donkeys we saw in Morocco.
We passed through the quite good
sized town of Nyahururu, and several small villages. It is just so interesting to see these places, which are so different from what we’re used to. You see people going about their daily lives, and children in their school uniforms, and there is no evidence of tourists anywhere.
After a couple of hours driving (and hanging on while we thumped over the countless bumps), we made a bathroom stop at, yes you guessed it, a curio shop. No purchases this time. This location is the actual geographical location of the equator, and we were shown a demonstration where a matchstick on the surface of water turned clockwise north of the equator, counter-clockwise south of the equator, and did not turn at all on the equator. It was quite a fun trick to see. I put short videos on facebook.
We made a stop for one of the group to see if they could find the Kenyan wine that they had discovered in Nairobi (no luck) and we hopped out of the jeep to briefly stretch our legs. We arrived at the Lake Naivasha Sopa Lodge, which is a beautiful old lodge located on the edge of the lake,
about 1:30. This isn’t a permanent tented camp like we have been staying at, but is a quite lovely lodge. The animals (including zebras, impalas, waterbucks, and, at night, hippos) come right up on the lawn next to the cabins. Our room is on the top level (there are four rooms in each cabin) and we have a great view of the lawns and the lake.
We quickly had lunch (very nice soup and salad), and left at 2:30 for our boat ride on Lake Naivasha and “boat safari” to Crescent Island. There were 6 of us doing this optional activity, and we had lots of fun. When we left the Lodge it had clouded over somewhat, but still looked pleasant. However, after a few minutes it began raining quite heavily, which continued as we reached the dock. Our driver (the driver of the other jeep, Safe) said the rain would stop soon, so we waited about 15 or so minutes, and it did stop, so we got our life jackets and boarded the boat. It was a pretty basic open boat with hard bench type seats. The big draw on the lake are the hippos and all the
Group shot at the equator
Of the six of us in the one jeep. There is also another group of 6 in the other jeep who are on the safari with us.different birds. We were really lucky and quickly saw about five hippos (
Kiboko in Swahili) along the shore of the lake. You don’t see much of the hippo when it is in the water, just the top of its head. We saw one hippo come out of the water and have a snack on water hyacinth. It looked like it took quite a bit of effort for it to get out of the water. They are such enormous, unusual looking animals, and it was so great to see them in their natural environment.
We also saw an amazing array of birds along the shore, including the Great Egret, Little Egret, Great White Pelican, Cormorant, Grey Heron, Hamerkop, Pied Kingfisher, Marabou Stork, Egyptian Geese, Yellow Billed Stork, and the most beautiful of all, Pink Pelican. The Marabou Stork was a very unusual looking bird! We also saw a fish eagle. The guide had two fresh carps, and first whistled for the eagle, then tossed the fish into the water. The eagle then flew down from the tree it was in and plucked the fish from the water. We saw this demonstration twice, and it was quite amazing.
We arrived
at Crescent Island, and viewed an array of animals on the island, from the boat. I had thought that we would be getting off the boat and walking on the island, but it turned out we stayed on the boat. Apparently some of the movie “Out of Africa” was filmed here, and the animals moved here for the filming were left here, in what has become Crescent Island Game Sanctuary. It is home to Masai Giraffe, Burchell’s zebra, waterbuck, gazelle, wildebeest, and hippos who graze the island at night. It was pretty incredible to see all these animals in such a small area.
We arrived back at the lodge about 5:30, and got gin and tonics from the bar to take to our room. As we were walking back to our room, we were completely amazed by the number of zebra grazing on the lawn. I never thought we would be able to get so close to zebras, and it was quite the sight! We watched the zebras from our balcony, finished our G&Ts, and I worked on the blog.
Guests can’t walk by themselves after dark here, because the hippos at the lake come to graze on
the lawns. We have to be escorted by staff to and from dinner (at breakfast the hippos have gone back to the lake). We were escorted to dinner at 7:30, and enjoyed selections from the buffet. There was a “vegetarian corner” with the Indian vegetarian dishes, which I had, washed down with a Tusker Lite. We walked back to our room (led by our escort), and saw one hippo on the lawns a distance away as we walked.
We are here only one night, and are leaving tomorrow morning for the Maasai Mara, which I expect to be a highlight of our safari.
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Valerie Brown
non-member comment
heron
It looks like a Squacco Heron.