Night drive and Lake Nakuru

After our long drive through the Great Rift valley yesterday we went on a night drive at Kigio Wildlife Conservancy. Roy, Tim and I got the back seats of the Toyota 9 passenger landcruiser with big tires and good suspension. The back row was quite a climb but I made it without looking like a klutz(got out gracefully too). It was a much smoother ride than our six passenger 4x4 Toyota and that was a good thing as we drove over huge rocks and god knows what else. A spotter sat outside in a seat and shone a powerful light about to look for game. Not much! We rode a long way and only saw giraffe's, common zebra and waterbucks. Eventually we saw a jackal, a rabbit and missed seeing the ardvark, a Thompson gazelle, and a fox. I somehow drifted off into a doze- how I don't know because it was really rough at times, especially when we crossed stream beds. I woke from a doze only to see Roy and Tim asleep on either side of me. We were obviously a tired crew. We were escorted back to our rooms and were happy to crawl into bed. They put hot water bottles in your bed here. It does cool off at night. The first night we got the hot water bottles everyone was surprised by them and the comments at breakfast were hilarious. Anyway, I slept the best I have since we arrived. Thewind in our trees and the monkeys chatter put me to sleep.

Roy has written about our wonderful day that started with a bush breakfast and the trip to Lake Nakuru. If only these places weren't so far apart. Lake Nakuru is a National Park and the animals there were amazing. We saw 10 white rhino today! Now we have seen the Big Five.
We watched a group of about 20 to 30 baboons for about 15minutes. What a hoot. Took lots of video of them. 2 were having a territorial fight, one was showing off his manhood ( you can guess what else he did), some were grooming each other, babies were romping around, one had a plastic juice container that he tried to drink from. Very entertaining.

We had a picnic lunch looking over the lake and all the flamingos and pelicans. When all the flamingos return there are around one million on the lake. They feed on Tilapia which are stocked in the lake. Watching the pelicans fish was like watching a well choriographed ballet! A group of 8 to 12 pelicans swim in a tight group, suddenly they all dip their beaks in the water, bums up at the exact same time. They come up, swim a bit and repeat the manouver.

We visited the village that works with the conservancy on the way home. The conservancy wanted the tribe to be on side with them and have worked to include them in all that is done here. They fenced the park with electric fencing so the wild animals do not eat the farmers crops and now the farmers don't kill the animals. The farm produce is purchased and used to feed the tourists and so the farmers don't hate having the tourists. They also work here and there are many ways that the conservancy helps them.

After much needed showers we headed to a delicious dinner and have now packed up and are ready to proceed to the Masai Mara tomorrow where we will have our first balloon ride.

The wind has come up and sounds quite neat throught our tent walls. Did we mention the stars? Wow, you can see so many but we haven't seen the Southern Cross. There is a sliver of a moon which is the reverse of what we see at home.

I'm off to bed, God bless everyone!