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October 14, 2005
Thrills in the wilds of KenyaWAITE GETS TOO CLOSE TO A LIONESS; CAMERA STOLEN
By MARK WAITE
NAKURU, Kenya - I was sitting on the window of a Jeep, leaning out as far as I could, photographing the gory scene of a pride of lions feasting on a wildebeest carcass when suddenly I felt someone pulling at my belt. It was my driver. Another driver in the group of onlookers said I was getting too close to the action. A lioness and I were having a stare-down. Though she looked like she was well fed, I could've easily been her next meal. I was touring the Masai Mara, easily Kenya's most well-known game park. It is the extension of the world-famous Serengeti Plains from Tanzania. During August and September, millions of wildebeest and zebra migrate from Tanzania into Kenya to feast on the tall grasses. They provided an easy meal for the numerous lions I saw in the reserve. Kenya newspapers reported the country saw its best tourist numbers in 2004 in 15 years, earning $561 million. The number of foreign visitors took a nosedive after the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in 1998 and the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa in 2002. For the first half of 2005, Kenya tourist officials reported the number of foreign visitors was up 30.2 percent from the same period in 2004. American visitors increased by 50 percent in the first quarter of 2005; Americans made up the second largest group of foreign visitors after Britain, tourist officials reported. I had signs from the start Kenya would be more tourist-friendly to visitors than my last destination, Ethiopia. I was able to use my Visa ATM card at the Kenya Commercial Bank in the border town of Moyale. But transportation for the first two days through northern Kenya would involve rough travel by truck on dirt roads. A driver for an overland truck, taking passengers from Cairo to Capetown, offered me a ride to Marsabit, normally a one-day drive. There were tribal wars in the region recently, with 95 people killed. Author Paul Theroux, in his book "Dark Star Safari," about the Cairo to Capetown journey, related a tale of how he was shot at traveling on this stretch of road by bandits called "shifta." There weren't any shots fired at me. In fact we didn't even require the usual convoy. The only incident was a blown out tire; it required a group effort to hoist the huge tire on the back of the overland truck. The only sight to liven up the trip through the barren, desolate desert was the presence of a group of wild ostriches. The inside of the truck was caked with dust by the time we pulled into Jey Jey Centre, the hotel and campground in Marsabit. The owner of the hotel in Marsabit then took me in his Toyota Land Rover for the one-day journey to Isiolo, after which the roads were paved. I finally arrived in the Kenya heartland. From here on, much of my travel would be by matatu, a collective taxi of sorts and a uniquely African mode of transportation. The Kenyan government prescribed new rules for the matatus. The vans could hold no more than 14 passengers, they had to use speed governors to keep their speed below 50 mph and passengers were even required to wear seatbelts. Nanyuki, a small city with a view of Mount Kenya, was pleasant enough to be almost reminiscent of a small town in Australia with its verandas, roundabouts and boulevards. The British definitely left their legacy in Kenya, including a bland diet. A few British colonials were spending their retirement in the area, enjoying the ideal climate, comfortable lifestyle and wonderful scenery. Two miles south of town was a sign marking the Equator. There were pitchers of water on the ground so tourists could see the water draining clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, then walk a short distance and watch it flow counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. A 90-minute drive by matatu from Nanyuki led to Nyahururu, a small town 7,800 feet in the Aberdare Range, with picturesque Thomson Falls on the outskirts. I rode out to the falls on another unique African invention, the boda boda, a bicycle with a big pad on the back for passengers to sit on, a rather wobbly ride with driver and passenger, but cheap. A few people dressed up in native, tribal attire posed for photos for 100 Kenya shillings, about $1.30. The quaint, English Tudor-style Thomson Falls Lodge, complete with fireplaces in the rooms, was an ideal place to relax by the falls. Another short matatu ride led me to Nakuru, the fourth largest city in Kenya. I found I could book a wildlife safari to the famous Masai Mara out of Nakuru, instead of having to travel to Nairobi. I was wary of spending much time in Nairobi after hearing all the tales about the horrific crime rate. The Kenyan newspapers reinforced my fears. I booked a day safari to Lake Nakuru just outside of town for $60, plus I'd have to pay the $30 entrance fee. I later found out I could've just hired a taxi in Nakuru for half the price, as the road around the lake was easily traversed. In fact, the tour operator used a regular Nissan sedan. My driver, a young man named Sammy, I nicknamed "Smiling Sammy" for his wide smile. I noticed a pink tint around the edges of the lake and thought it was due to rare algae. I later found out it was actually the 1.5 million flamingos that come to dine on the algae spirulina platensis, a delicacy for the colorful, pink birds. The Kenya Wildlife Service reported Lake Nakuru was the most popular national park, with 246,000 visitors in 2004. But while foreign visitors and a couple busloads of Kenyan schoolchildren snapped photos of the flamingos, Sammy told me many residents of Nakuru, a couple of miles away, never even visit the lake, though Kenyans pay only 100 shillings to enter the park. A cape buffalo startled me as it jumped out on the road from a bush in front of us. Lake Nakuru has an estimated 2,300 buffaloes, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service. Soon a group of giraffes were staring down at me. Baboons scurried around the road. A rhino seemed to pose for photos in front of the millions of flamingos at the lakeside near the end of the tour. Vultures were perched on a nearby tree. My tour agent agreed to throw in a visit to the nearby Hyrax Museum, named after a rodent found on a hill in close proximity to the museum. The facility contained ruins of an ancient culture that hid from raiding tribes with their livestock in circular corrals. The most interesting artifacts were two skulls unearthed by the famous anthropologists from the Leakey family, of Australopithecus and Homo erectus. Kenyans like to drink their beer warm so to find a cold beer I was directed to Le Rhino Hotel bar. It was Friday night and a traditional Kenyan one-man guitarist and singer was entertaining patrons. Soon everyone was on their feet dancing in the traditional African style, men danced with other men, women danced with other women. The music was fast with no slow, romantic numbers like in America. I booked a three-day tour to Masai Mara from Nakuru for $70 per day, which included transportation to the park, game, drives, food, camping and entry fee. That was about as cheap as I was going to get it, as the entry fee was $30 per day, while the price of gas in Kenya was about $3.50 per gallon. James, from Wellington, New Zealand, and Anna, from Cebu City, The Philippines, joined me in the Jeep. We saw zebras grazing in fields before even entering the game reserve while baboons were scurrying around bridges. It was a five-hour drive from Nakuru. I don't know how the Kenyan government distributes the millions in entry fees foreigners spend on the game parks, but they sure don't spend it on improving access to the parks. The road was rough and bumpy. The drive to the park included a toilet stop at one of the many tourist shops selling souvenirs with animal themes, like wooden salad spoons and forks with animal carvings on the handles, or Masai shields. We arrived in time to take a late afternoon game drive, but we had to be out of the park by dark. Our driver, John, provided us with a lot of information on the wildlife, besides pointing them out to us, for people who don't know a topi from a hartebeest, a Thomson's gazelle from an impala. An elephant stood in the distance. John said they eat 300 kilograms per day, an amazing 660 pounds! John said 4 million zebras and wildebeest migrate to the Masai Mara annually, returning to Tanzania in April. We asked why a giraffe's skin was so dark. John said it was an old giraffe, adding giraffes only live to be 40 to 45 years old. Almost all other visitors to the park were riding in the standard safari vans with a pop-up top. There weren't enough visitors in our group for the tour operator to use the van. But vans afforded a higher view of the animals, which was particularly useful for seeing lions in the thick grass. Most of the time we knew where the interesting game was by looking for the vans. At one place, a line of vans were backed up to view some lions feasting on a zebra carcass, a gory sight with the lions' mouths buried inside the carcass and the black and white striped skin lying on the grass. Later a bunch of vehicles were parked next to a cheetah perched on top of the rocks. Unfortunately, the Masai Mara is hugely popular, particularly around the migration period. A hyena was sitting right on the road next to the jeep as we drove back to the campsite. Our driver said we weren't allowed to leave the vehicle and he was serious - his license would be yanked if we did. Nevertheless, we found a few spots to relieve ourselves while driving around on the bumpy roads. I was glad we had a new Jeep with four-wheel drive, as passengers in one van were stuck in a stream. Dinner was buffet style served in shifts in the large camp, which was supervised by young men in Masai tribal attire. European tourists sat around a campfire afterwards. The second day was the big one, the full-day game drive, starting about 8 a.m. The best times for viewing wildlife are early in the morning after sunrise, and late in the day before sunset. A dominant, male impala was sitting with his harem of females, while a few dozen bachelors were sitting across the road waiting to duel over the harem. The migration of the zebras and grunting wildebeest, ambling along awkwardly was an amazing feat of nature -- how do they know to march in double file through the reserve, interrupted only when we drove through the procession? We stopped by the Mara River to watch the bellowing hippos and crocodiles. John, our driver, said the migration of zebras and wildebeest crosses the Mara River mainly at night, by day they're afraid of being eaten by the hippos and crocs. We drove quite a way in the middle of the day without seeing anything. Then late in the day, a big crowd of vehicles signaled more interesting wildlife. This time, it was the pride of lions feasting on the wildebeest. Anna put a rag on her face to hide the smell of the carcass. It was a sight people would never see in a zoo. The next morning we enjoyed another game drive. This time we departed camp at 6:30 a.m. Finally we enjoyed some peace and serenity all by ourselves as we eyed a handful of giraffes striding gracefully across the savannah while the sun rose up amid the clouds over the Serengeti Plains. It was a magical moment that made me wonder what it must have been like thousands of years ago, when humans were hunters and gatherers and wild animals were abundant throughout the world. African wild animals were abundant in Europe at one time, Romans used to feed the Christians to the lions in the coliseum, while Hannibal invaded Rome on an elephant. Camels used to roam North America, along with millions of bison. Anna spotted a male lion and a lioness. "They're on their honeymoon," John remarked. A few vans pulled up. I heard the chuckles from a nearby van as the two lions began mating. John said the honeymoon only lasts a week, after which the male lion will search for another mate. We stopped at a Masai village or "manyatta," for a tourist show. We were charged 500 Kenya shillings each, $6.66. They showed us how the walls of their homes were constructed out of cow dung; invited us into a hut to see the campfire burning inside; performed a couple of dances for us including the famous Masai jumping; posed for photos with us, including placing a lion's fur hat on our heads; and showed us how they made a fire with sticks. In the market I bought a lion's tooth and a colorful bracelet. Back in Nakuru, I wanted to avoid the bumpy road to Nairobi so I found out there was still passenger train service every other day. Unfortunately, the train wasn't scheduled to arrive in Nakuru from Kisumu in western Kenya until 2 a.m. The staff at my hotel woke me up at 1 a.m. to catch the train but I could have copped some more Zs - it didn't arrive until 4 a.m. The train station had seen better days, now only perhaps a dozen Kenyans waited for the arrival. The assistant station master herself, Mary Kimani, helped carry my bags and unlocked the upper class waiting room where I had the place to myself. It was warmer than sitting outside in the chilly night air. When the train arrived Kimani helped me book a second-class sleeper berth for less than $5. But the journey was very slow as the train crawled through the mountains to Nairobi, arriving at noon. After seeing the animals it was time to eat some wild game at the famous Carnivore Restaurant in Nairobi. I took the No. 125 matatu from the front of the train station to the turnoff to the small Wilson Airport and walked around to the restaurant. A ride by matatu is normally considered too dangerous in Nairobi at night, but it was lunchtime. The exotic meat listed on the board on this day included camel, ostrich and crocodile, of which the crocodile was probably the most delicious. The cooks also did a super job cooking more ordinary meat over the fire, like tasty pork ribs, chicken liver or gizzards, turkey, lamb and beef. Waiters came to my table with skewers of different types of meat they carved off onto my plate. I was instructed to take the flag off my table and throw it down when I had enough food. It was all-you-can-eat for 1,600 Kenyan shillings with all taxes included, a little more than $21. The train that night from Nairobi to Mombasa was very popular with European tourists heading for their August beach vacations in Kenya, who packed the coaches for the 7 p.m. departure. The fare for a second-class sleeping berth was 2,275 shillings with dinner and breakfast, $30. The conductor walked down the narrow aisles banging chimes to signal the hourly dinner seating. I would've been better off buying a ticket for 1,000 shillings without food, the train was so packed I was given a 9:45 p.m. seating time for dinner, which wasn't served until 10:15 p.m., and the beef curry was so tough I practically had to swallow the meat whole. Some diners had lively conversation with other passengers while sharing a bottle of wine. We pulled into Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast, 14 hours later, about 9 a.m. I expected a typical hot, ugly port city of a half-million people. It turned out Mombasa had an attractive Old Town. I toured Fort Jesus, built after the Portuguese captured the port in 1593. Omani Arabs captured the fort in 1698, a large exhibit displayed the Arab artifacts. The Portuguese reoccupied it in 1728. The fort was eventually used as a government prison from 1895 to 1958 when it was made a national monument. A look at the map showed how close I was to the Arabian Peninsula. The people also were an indication that the Indian Ocean coast was very Islamic, with large mosques and a lot of women were covered in a black veil with only a slit for their eyes. However, there were also some bars and hookers propositioning customers on busy Moi Avenue in downtown Mombasa. It was a six-hour trip north to Lamu, an historic Arab port town founded in the seventh century on an island about 120 miles from the Somali border. Two soldiers boarded the bus as bandits had robbed buses in the past. We were dropped off at the ferry pier. Only one other foreign tourist was aboard the short boat ride, the women wearing black veils sat together in the front of the boat, the men in the rear. On shore a few young tourist girls giggled as they rode donkeys with their mother, the primary means of transportation on the island. The streets in Lamu are too narrow for cars. There was even a Donkey Sanctuary for sick or injured donkeys. I stayed at the old Bihari Hotel, where the call to prayer from a nearby mosque practically knocked me out of bed at 4:30 a.m. every day. The Petley Inn, a three-story hotel near the pier, was one of the two places in Lamu town to buy alcohol, with a bar on the first and the top floor. It was 120 shillings for a pint of Tusker beer, $1.60, back in Mombasa they were only 70 shillings. I quickly saw many of the foreign women had African boyfriends, usually guys from outside Lamu wearing Rasta caps or dreadlocks who quickly latched onto any women not accompanied by men. It was Saturday night and a disco outside town was packed, mostly with men dancing together and several women hookers, a typical scene in African bars - which are seldom frequented by ordinary African women. It was an hour's walk from Lamu town to Shela Beach, an almost deserted place with huge sand dunes. Nearby Shela town had more historic Arab architecture, a tour guide told me Princess Caroline of Monaco has a home there. I didn't notice her on the beach. Some tourists relaxed at the bar at the upscale Peponi Resort, where rooms with breakfast started at $170 per night. A hotel clerk was arranging frangipani flowers for a group of newly arriving tourists. I paid 1,000 shillings, $13.33, for a day excursion on an Arab dhow with three young French guys. A dhow is a traditional wooden sailboat that has been used for centuries by Arabs traveling around the Indian Ocean. We sailed to a river channel across from Lamu island and caught several mackerel, snapper and other fish using shrimp for bait. We then sailed to Manda Island across from Shela town, where the deckhands cooked the fish on an outdoor fire, which we ate under the shade of the acacia trees on the beach. Over a few beers at Petley's Inn afterwards, we could all tell fishing stories at the end of the day. The seafood on Lamu was superb at both the Hapa Hapa Restaurant and Bush Garden Restaurant, they didn't seem to mind if I mixed Gilbey's Gin I brought from Mombasa with their delicious fruit juice drinks. The almost weeklong stay on Lamu Island, however, didn't go without a hitch. One day after a short stroll to the surf, I noticed an empty spot where my backpack had been with my digital camera and felt that sinking feeling in my stomach after being ripped off. I handed out photocopies of the picture of the camera from my owner's manual to a lot of grubby-looking Rastas hanging around Lamu town - along with the promise of a $50 reward - hoping they would turn it in. No luck, but I reported it to the police who told me some riff-raff hung out behind the dunes drinking homemade palm wine. It was a convenient hiding place for a thief. I had a bad taste in my mouth for Lamu now, though most people in town were friendly, greeting me with "Jambo!" or hello in Swahili, as I walked to the beach. On my final day in Lamu town there was a festival complete with a dhow race, swimming race and the most amusing donkey races. While traveling back south, I stopped in the upscale resort of Malindi, two hours north of Mombasa. Those present were almost all Italian tourists, the local Kenyans walking the beach greeted me with "Ciao beni!" A sign at a travel agency offering airline tickets read, "bagliaterri aerei." There was an Italian supermarket with Italian red wine and prosciutto. Well-tanned Italians relaxed around the pools at the fancy resorts, with security guards watching over them rather than on the white sand beach. The Malindi Casino was smaller than Pahrump's main casinos, but had the usual variety of games like blackjack, craps, roulette and a card game named pontoon. It reminded me of home to hear the coins of a slot machine dropping in the metal box. The sports book had betting on mostly English soccer and Formula One auto races, while another room was for players' only, or "solo giaccatore." A tour operator, who said his name was Nelson Mandela, booked me on a half-day snorkeling tour by glass-bottomed boat to the Malindi National Marine Park. He wanted $24 but after bargaining settled for just under $20. Later the captain, Ali, said most of the reefs were destroyed by an El Nino event 10 years ago. There were only small groups of coral, with an octopus floating along effortlessly. I wanted to see some of the 10,500 elephants the Kenya Wildlife Service estimates live in Tsavo East National Park, Kenya's biggest game park at 8,523 square miles in area, only two hours from Mombasa. I booked a two-day tour for $80 per day out of Mombasa. But most of the elephants I saw were gathered around manmade water wells, many of the natural water holes had dried up. There were also giraffes and zebras. The Ndololo Safari Camp where I spent the night wasn't a primitive tent with a pad on the floor like at the Masai Mara, this one had a luxurious enclosed canopy with two single beds and a mosquito net, a western toilet, shower and, interestingly, gnarly-wood furniture. Baboons and monkeys roamed the campsite over lunchtime and were constantly being chased away by camp staff. There was a magical moment when I returned from the afternoon game drive and saw a giraffe striding behind my tent; when I walked up to the tall, lanky animal, the animal ran away, afraid of this small human a fraction of its height. Over the campfire after dinner, a local guide explained Masai customs, how they could marry a wife after giving 10 cows to the bride's family and could have multiple wives. The crowd of about 30 people was all Italians staying on the Kenyan Coast, one of them translated his remarks into Italian. While I asked the travel agent a bunch of questions about the Tsavo East safari, I wasn't aware we would lose valuable safari time since the clients stayed at three different locations. A two-hour late afternoon game drive the first day turned into only one hour after we picked up and dropped off everybody. The last day, before heading back to Mombasa, we stopped at the Voi Safari Lodge, where we saw a family of elephants drinking from the water guzzler below from close up in a brick room with bars over the windows. At the lodge I saw my only lions, from a distance, eating a carcass while eyeing up some cape buffalo nearby. We couldn't drive close up to the lions however like in Masai Mara. My 35mm camera turned out to be more useful for wildlife safaris, as the 200mm zoom lens could be used for binoculars and it didn't take as much time to pull it out of the case, turn it on, zoom in and focus like a digital camera. Our travel agent saved some money by paying the 24-hour entry fee for each of us, $27. We had to be out of the park by 11 a.m. the next day. We visited another Masai village on the way back to Mombasa, with the same entry fee, 500 shillings and the same show including the fire-starting demonstration. A final beach stop was on the South Coast, about an hour south of Mombasa. I crossed the Likoni ferry, a real African scene with sweaty laborers pushing carts full of goods, pedestrians and bicyclists packed aboard the ferry along with vehicles. Tiwi Beach was less than an hour's drive south of Mombasa, it was the perfect beach for a few days of relaxation, with dazzling white sand, crystal-clear water and quiet enough to just hear the rustling of the leaves on the palm trees. A full moon rising over the Indian Ocean was an irresistibly romantic setting. It was easy to see how the combination of beaches and wildlife make Kenya such a popular destination in Africa. The experience made me forget all about my digital camera. |
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