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Visitors. We picked Kim up from the airport and took her to three malls and a few meetings her first few days in Kenya. Merely to take some face saving photos for her family and show how safe things are in this country. On the other hand – the amenities I speak of are a pleasant break from the excessive heat of Olkirimatian for Paul and I and we threatened to spend her whole vacation going to movies and Naukamatt – the Kenyan version of Wal-mart. In contrast we did camp 80 yards away from a pride of lions one evening. That discovery in the morning led to us dragging Josh to the very same spot his second day in Kenya for a collaring attempt. The lions never came that close again, but we found them in the area on a few night game drives. While we were out looking for the lions we came across a few giraffes and barely stopped the car to see. How quickly one gets numb to the surroundings and we needed Kim’s excitement to remind us of the luster. We spent the first two weeks in camp and a women’s group meeting and some unexpected Swedish students prompted the slaughtering of two goats. No participation was made on our part, although Josh offered up his newly purchased maasai machete for the butchering. Kim, Josh, and I then set up Paul’s cameras with Michael while Paul had a meeting. Our salaries for the day’s work are still being discussed.
We hiked Mt. Shompole the day before my birthday - my 30th birthday. Not a bad accomplishment to close out a decade. I was feeling good about this on the way up, but an old knee injury nagged me on the way down and I sank into a reality I’ve never liked to admit – maintenance. We never made it to the top peak – our guide lost the trail - it hadn’t been hiked in a long while and would have required us to dip down into an overgrown valley before going up again. It seemed like more than a one-day adventure at that junction. The next morning there was “sneakery” going on and I wasn’t privy to the overnight surprise birthday party planned for me at a lodging camp in the conservation area. We had a lovely morning following baboons around with Joel, the resource camp baboon habituator while Paul was out doing some work and later had a goat and chapatti feast with Michael and Patrick. On the way home, Sam faked a call from some guys at Sampu camp saying someone was sick and needed a lift to the main road. I guess I should have wondered why he only needed to go to the road, but I wasn’t being very analytical that day. Earlier I found a few bottles of champagne in the kitchen tent and asked what they were for and Sam said wild dogs. Wild dogs had been spotted in the area, but with even half a thought I could have wondered how she had known that they were going to be spotted and why hadn’t the celebration taken place yet? But, as stated, I wasn’t being very clever. I spent most of the day doing the math and making sure that I was indeed 30. The views at Sampu camp are incredible - you can sit in the kitchen tent and look out into a watering hole at the animals that come to take a drink. The lodging tents even have in tent plumbing. We had a lovely meal of goat curry and a homemade carrot cake by the neighboring hyena camp’s cook - and then a dance party.
The next morning we drove to Nakuru national park where we fell out of love with vervet monkeys. An early morning game drive gave them time to use our empty tents as a bounce house and destroy them. There wasn’t any food in the tents, just sleeping bags. We came back at 9:00 in the morning to one tent completely down and holes in the other one. The monkeys were bouncing on the tent still standing and a few more were sitting in my sleeping bag which had been pulled out. Oh – and to further the insult, they pooped and peed on everything – and stole Kim’s travel pillow. I was driving back to camp when we made this discovery and I off roaded to ground zero and blared on the horn, which mildly annoyed the monkeys. Paul jumped out and took off after some of the trespassers and Josh took a few moments to whip out his camera and get one good picture in before joining the fight. To make the situation worse we still had to camp that night. We drove to the Suswa caves and pitched our rain flies over bent poles duck taped back together. It wasn’t an enclosure, more like a canopy, and we wet wiped the poop off our sleeping bags and hoped scorpions wouldn’t come and attack us in the night. The caves are part of Soralo’s community projects and they were incredible. (Soralo is the organization responsible for the creation of the resource camp where we are based) The caves had just been mapped out last year and they are working on making them more of a tourist attraction. Two of the caves were filled with a million bats and we were walking on about a thousand years of bat guano. I enjoyed the bat free caves a little bit more - due mainly to the ability to breathe in them.
We weaned Kim and Josh off of bush life with a few days at the coast. Local fishermen came to sell us fresh fish and coconuts every morning and it proved to be a very relaxing goodbye to Kenya. I’d like to thank Kim and Josh for being such great guests. I’d also like to thank Bill Lydon for his autograph. Upon arrival Kim presented us with a signed picture of the San Diego bungalow crew. Top left hand corner was Bill Lydon in his best doctor’s scribble. Underneath it he wrote – I was told to sign it, then they made fun of me for not writing a note, so this is my note. Awesome – you couldn’t even try to replicate friends like ours.