Loita Hills

We had a free day in Nairobi to attend to basic needs (laundry, showering, sleeping) before heading off to another five-day hike through Loita Hills, a region of Kenya populated by native Masai. The hike itself was fascinating, although our tour guide, Patrick, was a strange and unpredictable character. The first day was supposed to be a drive from Nairobi to Magimoto (literally "water hot", a hot springs) followed by a couple hours of hiking before setting up camp. But because of "Akhuna Magi" ("no water"), we ended up hiking after dark and for several hours. Only with the assistance of motorbikes from one of the modern Masai towns were we able to get to a campsite with water. This was supposed to be the campsite for our second night.

On the first day, the landscape was very sparse. There was only very short patches of dry shrubs and the occasional spiky, thorned tree. We were surprised to see Zebra in this barren environment. It was quite exciting, though, to be hiking next to them with no car between us. The guide mentioned that although there were not lions in this part of Kenya, they occasionally saw leopards. The prospect of seeing a leopard during the daylight was exciting, but as it grew dark, less so. Perhaps it was because I had just finished a chapter in a book I was reading about the lost boys of Sudan in which some of the boys were picked off by lions during the nighttime, when the big cats usually hunt, but I was not thrilled about hiking in the dark. This feeling grew after we walked through a stand of trees and I heard a rustling in the branches followed by a whooshing past my head. It was probably only a bird, but I still screamed and ran.

We thought we were seeing things when, in the middle of nowhere, we saw a big blinking tower and were passed by several motorbikes. We were grateful, though, to reach the "modern Masai village" and to get a ride to our campsite. We slept well.

The next day was a much more interesting hike. We passed through more Masai towns, piquing the interest of nearly everyone we passed. Many did double takes at the three white girls hiking through their villages. "Supa", the Masai word for hello was often exchanged. We were able to visit a school while we were there. In addition to the 48 composition books and pencils we had purchased for the children, Savanni's bookstore in Nairobi donated pencil sharpeners and colored pencils for us to take to the children. The school's administration was quite happy with the donation and invited us to sit in on one of their classes, the 8th grade. It was a very strange exchange. Although there were very sophisticated words on the chalkboard such as biodiesel and solar power, the only words the students spoke to us were to tell us their names. They sang us a song. We tried to teach them a song. And we left.

Samwell, our Masai guide, explained to us that there were only three girls in the classroom because many of the girls had already been circumcised and sent off to be married. We ended up camping near to the school and, as a result, had children visiting us for most of the night. Like our previous exchanges, at first they were shy, keeping their distance, but eventually they ventured closer and before we knew it they were touching our skin, our ears, our hair, and our polished toenails or examining our watches and bracelets. Most of these exchanges were friendly and somewhat humorous, at one point Regina had pulled out her camera and the kids had run screaming. Samwell explained that they thought the camera would steal their soul. But older groups of kids welcomed the camera and, in fact, were quite delighted to see the photo of themselves appear at the back of the camera. Like the children we had met earlier, all of the kids (and most of the adults) had shaved heads. It was more difficult to tell the boys from the girls here, though, because the traditional Masai dress for met is a blanket draped around him as a dress or skirt. Also, adults greet children by putting their hand on the child's head.








The third day was very similar to the second day. We hiked through more villages. The one difference that really stuck out, though, was that there were several young girls wearing a crown of sorts and a royal-colored blanket. Samwell explained that this meant they were circumcised (a barbaric operation that is apparently still practiced) and available for marriage. It seemed impossible that these young, blushing girls who giggled, but refused to have their picture taken would soon be married and having babies. We also noticed that although many of the older Masai men and women had stretched ear lobes with beaded coverings that very few of the younger Masai, including Samwell, had such ornamentation. Samwell explained that many of the civilized Masai no longer observe this practice because it is very painful.





That night we had a beautiful campsite next to the river. It had been very hot, and we were excited to sit down by the river and write. I chose a big rock in the middle of the river to write postcards to my family and friends. Not 20 yards upstream from me was a woman washing her laundry by beating it on a rock. She was doing this while holding a very young infant. While watching her, two young Masaai boys herded their cows across the river. The cows and the boys seemed equally surprised by our presence and both stopped in the middle of the river to examine us. One cow came up behind me and brushed me with his nose. It startled me because I had never seen a cow willingly approach a human unless it was holding hay.


Before dinner it started raining very hard. We had to set up a tarp over our tent, which did not have a rain fly, while it was pouring and immediately afterwards it stopped raining. We tried to dry ourselves next to the bonfire (they had built giant fires every night of our trek to scare away wildlife) until dinner was served. Then we quickly changed into dry clothes and headed to the tent before it started raining again. We had only been in the tent for about 20 minutes when we heard this crazy noise that sounded like a donkey hee haw followed by a horse whinny and sigh. THis kept happening over and over again and eventually we opened our tent flaps to see Samwell hopping around the fire, teaching his Masaai song to our excellent cooks and porters, Joseph, Desmond, and Jasmine. By this time Patrick had transformed into Tito, and he was (trying at least) to pull off the full Masaai look. I wish I had grabbed my video camera because the scene was indescribable and I will never in my life be able to re-create that sound.

The next day was a beautiful, but incredibly steep hike down to the Masaii town of Gurimon. My knees ached. There were seven river crossings, one of which resulted in me sitting in the middle of the river trying (successfully) to save my camera while Samwell ran after my runaway chaco. Gurimon was also very modern by Masaai standards. There were some cars and trucks and electricity. We were excited to sleep in beds again and to Shower! Samwell invited us to see his home and meet his wife, Esther, and their two children. The house was a very modest brick hut, but Samwell insisted on carrying out padded chairs for us to sit on. It was a bit awkward trying to communicate, but an enjoyable experience.

The next morning, we loaded a local bus very early in the morning. It was packed full of people and produce. All luggage was stored on top of the bus along with many passengers. The other passengers crammed into the seats and aisles for the four-hour ride to the first drop off point. Some of the people standing in the aisles would lean over the back of seats, trying to sleep. The bus was so loaded down and the road so rough that at hills those who were physically capable had to exit the bus, walk over the hill, and meet the bus on the other side. At one point a very young woman entered the bus holding a very tiny infant. It was hidden in her sling, but when I noticed it was a baby, I made room on my lap and asked if she would like to sit down. She misunderstood me and handed me the baby. While the baby slept, it was so tiny and peaceful, but as soon as she opened her eyes and saw me she did not know what to think. She started wailing and my efforts at consoling her were unsuccessful. It was funny, though, by taking the baby for that short time, I broke through some kind of barrier. Before that, we were just being stared at, sometimes warily, by the Masaai surrounding us. After I took the baby, people started smiling at me and the woman sitting behind me even started stroking my hair, examining its length and color.


After handing the baby back to her mom, the mom started breastfeeding while standing in the aisle. I quickly offered her my seat. As I stood next to her in the aisle, the woman behind me tried to subtly touch my arm to examine my freckles. When she noticed me watching her, she smiled and put her black arm next to mine and pointed at them. It was a brief moment, but it reminded me why I love to travel. I love having my mind opened and opening the minds of others.

Mt. Kenya

Only a day after finishing our safari, we headed out on a mountaineering trip to Mt. Kenya. Although we had not done much planning before our trip, the one decision we had spent a considerable amount of time considering was Mt. Kenya vs. Mt. Kilimanjaro. One the one hand, Kili is the tallest mountain in Africa and one of the "seven peaks." On the other hand, it is much more expensive and supposedly littered with hundreds of tourists and the trash they left behind. In the end, we unanamously came to the conclusion that Mt. Kenya was the way to go, each of us for different reasons. Regina was excited about the challenge, apparently Mt. Kenya is much more technically difficult than Kili. Kaitlan was sold on the fact that Mt. Kenya was significantly cheaper and she had no interest in "bagging" one of the seven peaks. What got me was the scenery. We googled photos from both climbs and the photos from Mt. Kenya were so much prettier than the photos of views from Kili.

The first day was a relatively easy hike, but the drive to the park entrance was more problematic. The recent rain had caused the roads leading into the park to be several feet of mud. We were stuck for almost an hour. This ended up resulting in my favorite experience during the hike. While we sat on the side of the road, the three of us were surrounded by the young children that lived in the area. At first they kept their distance, just examining us from a few feet away. Some asked how we were--"How are you?" was uttered to us in English by nearly everyone we passed during our stay in Kenya. Others were bold and asked for sweets. Kaitlan shared her unsweetened peanut butter, which they weren't very thrilled about.

All of the boys and girls had very short hair. In most cases, you could only tell the difference because the girls wore skirts and dresses. Many of them were barefoot and the clothing looked like it had been worn for a long time. After a while, when we got bored of answering to "How are you?" and asking their names, we decided to play games with them. We taught them the hand clapping games that we had learned in grade school and "Down by the Banks". We performed some dances for them like the "sprinkler", "running man," "roger rabbit", etc. They expressed their joy/excitement by screaming/laughing in a very high-pitched manner.

They also performed the cutest rendition of the ABCs we had ever seen. [Video to be added later]


When we finally started hiking, it had started raining again. The path was not too steep or difficult, but the water was running down the mountain on both sides of us. The terrain changed quickly. One minute we were in the dense, rain forest, an hour later we were walking through sparsely vegetated mountainside. The plants were really incredible, though. Like nothing I have ever seen.



We saw no one during our hike to the first shelter on the Sirimon Route, Old Moses, which was named after the first man to summit Mt. Kenya. Unbelieveably, we were able to meet Old Moses, a white man who is now relatively old, on our last day of the hike. He was preparing to climb Mt. Kenya again with his friends.
In the shelter, there were 20 or so other hikers. The shelter were very basic, really only a drafty building with a room for eating and a few rooms for sleeping. There was nothing to heat the shelter, and it was quite cold. After dinner, we convinced our guide, another Jon, to teach us some dances to warm us up. He taught us a funny dance/stretch to a very fun song, "Jambo, Jambo Kenya . . . ." We taught him the hokie pokey. We filled our water bottles with boiling water and tried to stay warm in our poorly constructed, rented sleeping bags. It was a long and restless night.

The next day, it was not raining, but it was still very wet. That may have been because we were basically hiking up a stream bed. At first we tried very hard to keep our shoes dry, but at some point we just gave up and settled on mostly dry. This day was much steeper, and I started to have altitude sickness issues. To be honest, I'm not sure whether the tingling in my hands, feet, and face were a result of the altitude or the medicine that I had taken to prevent altitude sickness, but at one point I was basically staggering up the mountain like a drunk because my feet were not responding to me and my head felt really fuzzy. As beautiful as the landscape was, I'm not sure I really understand the draw of mountaineering, especially in high altitudes. It seems that either the altitude or the medicine to prevent altitude sickness cause you to be miserable and unable to enjoy your hike. And because the medicine also causes extreme sun sensitivity--something my white skin already has--you either hope for a rainy day which is cold and miserable or a sunny day that will fry your skin.

It was so cold at the next shelter, Stilton I think, that we wrapped up in our sleeping bags before dinner and went to bed (with a hot water bottle) as soon as it was over. It was a short night, with some people getting up to summit as early as 12:30 a.m. That morning was miserably cold. Even though the sunrise was beautiful, we were still in the shadow of the mountain and freezing in the snow every step of the way. I was so winded and sick from the altitude, but every time I stopped moving, I immediately started to freeze. I had to rely on the kindness of our porter, Libre, to help push/pull me to the top of the porter's route. What had been a shallow, flowing stream the day before was now a thin layer of icicles that broke in jagged edges as we tromped down the hill. This day, down the Chogoria Route, was supposed to be the prettiest day of the hike. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate and most of the views we saw were as outlines through dense fog and rain.







In the afternoon, it cleared up a bit, and we were all happy to make it to the last campsite, Bandas. We stayed in a tent, which was much warmer than any of the other shelters, but still too cold to get a good night's sleep.

The next morning, we started the long, muddy road to the park's gate. We were met halfway by a jeep, which proved to be a very scary/exciting ride. I think some of the rides at Universal Studios must have been modeled after this road.

Jambo Kenya!

Note: I wrote this entry so long ago, but I have had a hard time finding internet connections fast enough to upload all the pictures. So this will have to do for now. I promise to add more pictures later.




After Egypt, Kenya was a breath of fresh air . . . both literally and figuratively. The people here are so nice and genuinely welcoming. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I was expecting that it would be completely different than anywhere else that I have traveled before. Instead, I have been surprised by the similarities. Other than the obvious and expected differences--the skin color of most of its residents--it is very similar to many other towns I've visited in South America. Yes, there is some poverty in places, but there is also some wealth and lots of industry. One of our first days in Nairobi, we were directed to a mall to buy groceries and hit the ATM.

Some truly awesome differences are that you don’t get cat-called every time you walk down the street, taxi drivers don’t think that honking at you a bajillion times somehow increases the odds that you would take a cab instead of walking, and, for the most part, everyone speaks English.
Our first week in Kenya was spent on a safari of the Maasai Mara and Lake Nakuru. We got there at the prime time too, while all of the animals were migrating to Kenya from the Serengeti in Tanzania. We were told that if we had arrived a few weeks earlier or later, there would only have been 1/3 or less of the animals that were there during our visit.
There were animals EVERYWHERE! By the last day, we were completely jaded, “Oh, another lion. That’s cool.”

On the first night, we got to our cabins in the late afternoon and did an evening game drive. Even in the space of that two-hour drive, we saw hundreds, if not thousands, of wildebeests, Thomson gazelles, Zebra, impalas, and African Cape buffalo. We also saw guinea fowl, ostriches, lions, maasai giraffe, elephants, huge storks, and vultures. We couldn’t believe it when John, our awesome guide from Mt. Kenya Tours, promised that we would see many more animals the next day. We had already gotten our money’s worth, and we still had two days to go.

The next day was incredible. In addition to seeing everything that we had seen the day before, including a ton more lions (and their cubs),
we also saw a cheetah (very briefly), jackals, hippos,
eagles with a fresh kill, foxes, Topi, pik-piks (sp?), warthogs, secretary birds, hartebeast, red bucks, crocodiles, and the suberb starlings.

During one truly amazing encounter, we were sitting directly between the lion and his six cubs that were gnawing away at their freshly slaughtered wildebeest. We also saw a lot of this . . . .

(picture to be added later)
Apparently lions mate 25 times a day!

John was also able to get us very close, although only briefly, to a cheetah and an ostrich nest.
The next morning, we did an early morning game drive to see if we could see the big cats in action. It was unbelieveable. At one point I was hanging out of a van taking pictures less than 20 feet away from a lion and lioness. I kept fluctuating between feeling thrilled, terrified, and maybe a bit guilty (it can’t be great for all of these animals to be so used to humans).

We also got to see a lion hunt, though, unsuccessfully. (video to be added later). Our guide told us that the lioness is actually a much better hunter than the male lions. Maybe they need to make a new disney movie, The Lion Queen.

Now I’m sorry to disappoint all you Lion King fans, but there were no baboons holding up any of the cubs. And, although we saw plenty of warthogs, we never saw any hanging out with any meercats (sp?).

At Lake Nakuru, the next day, we saw Vervet Monkeys as we drove into the park and as we waited at the gate, one hopped into our van long enough to steal the guide's banana. Although Masaai Mara and Lake Nakuru are very close in distance, the landscape was vastly different. Except for the Acacia trees that define Kenya's landscape, Masaai Mara could have been any desert plain. There were few water features, large distances between trees, and tall grasses. It was very brown. Lake Nakuru is a park surrounding huge lake and, as such, was very green. Outside of the wetlands surrounding the Lake, there are dense thickets of trees everywhere.
It was very strange to see so many of the same animals from Masaai Mara in this environment. I'm not sure why, but I have always pictured giraffe, rhinos, lions, etc., as living in landscapes like those present in Masaai Mara. In Lake Nakuru, we saw one black rhino from a distance and many white rhinos (we were now 4 for 5 of the Big Five, only missing the elusive leopard) in addition to thousands of flamingos, many Nakuru baboons, more lions, more zebra, the Rothchild giraffe, some rock hyrax, hyenas, and the colorful agama lizard and inaptly named gross starlings.

The highlight for me, though, was when we saw a lion near a fresh kill being chased off by a herd of buffalo. The buffalo, smelling the blood, all starting moving towards the lion. After the lion was pushed off to a safe distance, the buffalo also chased off the hyena and jackals that had been circling the area waiting for the lion to tire of his kill. The buffalo also helped a warthog mom and baby excape from the hyenas. I was amazed that the lion was scared of the buffalo, but apparently they move in herds and will work together to kill a lion that it deems a threat to their herd.