Heading north from Tanzania to Kenya

• Saturday, 26^th of July, Sunrise Beach

I drive to the airport, because today is not only Kirsty’s arrival but also my relative Annegret who will spend a couple of weeks in Tanzania with her church choir from Göttingen. It is great to see her, although her group leaves straight away for Bagamoyo and we unfortunately only get to spend half an hour at the arrivals hall.

After being stuck in Dar traffic jam for a while and doing a major grocery shopping as preparation for our onward travels, I make my way back to the airport to pick up Kirsty. We spend the next 4 nights at my favorite campsite at Sunrise Beach. The first day doesn’t turn out so favorite though with a pretty noisy party being held there for 400 staff of the Aga Khan hospital! We meet a Swiss couple with their neatly kitted out Toyota Land Cruiser and an interesting rooftop tent fitted by www.off-road-boehlen.ch My cell phone disappears somehow L

• Wednesday, 30^th of July, Sunrise Beach to Snake Park past Arusha

We head into Dar, change money and to fill up ever thirsty Anse. The rest of the day we spent driving to the run down Snake Park Camp past Arusha.

• Thursday, 31^st of July, Arusha to Lake Natron

Kirsty and I decide to skip the crazy expensive Ngorongoro/Serengeti Parks and rather do our own ‘Northern Circuit’! From MtoWaMbu we take the gravel road which winds its way north around the Ngorongoro Conservation Area to the Engaruka where we go on a very informative walk around the Engaruka Ruins with a knowledgeable local guide pointing out house foundations, irrigation canals and graves made of piles of rock to us.

Engaruka not only strikes us for the dustiest place we have so far experienced, but also for being as genuinely Masai as it can get! Everybody is dressed in their traditional red, purple or blue drapes, ornately decorated with beaded bracelets, necklaces and earrings and all men carrying the iconic stick and wearing a sheaved machete on their belt.

In the shadow of the impressive (only a few months ago) active volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai we carry on over rocky old lava streams to Lake Natron Camp which is run by Jens and Sandra, a German couple from Bielefeld (30 km from my hometown!)

• Friday, 1^st of August, Lake Natron

We wake up with an annoying surprise – a flat tire! A sharp rock went right through the metal mesh! After changing it, a friendly safari vehicle driver and I manage to mend it with a plug.

Exploring Lake Natron is a fun and pretty surreal experience! Barefoot we walk on the salty crust, often breaking through it and ending up in the blackest, stickiest (and smelly) mud one can imagine! It’s amazing watching the huge flocks of flamingos so closely, sifting the water for algae with their bent beaks.

After hearing that the active volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai is climbable, I am really keen to do it and organize a local guide in the evening. The climb starts at midnight and after collecting our local guide from the village, Jens gives us a lift on the hectic road to as close as one can drive towards the base of the mountain (which is still almost an hours walk away).

• Saturday, 2^nd of August, volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai, Lake Natron

It is pitch dark and in the distance we can see the dim beams of torches from another group. My guide Lemolo initially leads the way with a pleasantly slow pace, resting every half hour or so. With vision only limited to our torch lights, I can hardly grasp what awaits me! Only at times during a rest when we switch both our torches off and as my eyes gradually adapt to the darkness, this black monstrous cone slowly appears, towering right in front of me - rather intimidating! Slowly we climb up a ridge and every now and then when Lemolo’s beam moves around to look for landmarks, shadows of deep crevasses gape to the left and right of us. As we progress, the loose ashes, which feel like coarse grey sand form a rough crust (compacted over time by nature’s elements) which in places is strong enough to carry our body weight, but often enough it crumples underneath our steps exposing the loose ash which makes for strenuous walking.

Further into the walk I get more and more frustrated with my guide as he stops almost every 5 minutes, grasping for air and continuously interrupting my steady pace. He also slips often due to his bad shoes which to my surprise are not even hiking boots! My thoughts about what would happen if he was loosing grip and sliding downhill into me made me decide to overtake him and keep up a constant pace, following the clearly visible footsteps of the group ahead of us. In my mind I hope that we can catch up to them, but at the same time I don’t want to distance myself to far from my guide and stop every half an hour or so to let him catch up to me.

When I was resting at one of those stops, wedging myself into the path not to slide downwards, I could see Lemolo’s beam way below me, sometimes resting, sometimes moving around. I take a few sips to drink and get out some energy bars out of my backpack (thereby opening the waist strap on which my digital camera pouch is attached), and - next minute I don’t see Lemolo’s beam anymore, just darkness below me! ‘He must be resting with his light off’ I am thinking and wait a while. A few minutes pass, I whistle. Darkness. I whistle again. No response. I get worried! I shout his name about five times. Again no response, only the darkness swallowing my sound. I am really worried now and fearing something could have happened! Without being able to move much around in my wedged in position, I quickly shove all my goodies back into my backpack with one hand and quickly close my waist strap agai – FUUUUUCK!!! There goes my camera, slipped off the strap and rolling down the mountain at great speed, disappearing into the darkness out of reach of my headlamp’s beam. Damn it stupid me!!! How could I be that foolish??? Whatever! I can’t care less about the camera right now. I worry a lot more about my guide! What happened to him???

I descend about 100 meters and see Lemolo just sitting there with the back towards me, sleeping! After I call him three times he suddenly wakes up out of his snooze. I ask him if he’s ok, if he needs anything but he says he’s fine and it’s just his shoes that are keeping him back. I think it’s probably the couple of beers he had last night… I offer him my spare head lamp so that he doesn’t need to keep his torch in his hand and can rather use it for getting a better grip, but he doesn’t want it. We rest for a while and then head up again. Lemolo again falls behind and I get really annoyed. I got up at a crazy hour to be on the top of the mountain by sunrise and here I am, having to watch out for my ill-equipped, hung over guide who supposed to lead my way!

I carry on ascending slowly at my own pace, sometimes walking on all fours because of the slope getting gradually steeper, I am guessing about 45 degrees. Thank god this compacted ash is as rough as grid 0 sandpaper. At least it gives good traction! I can feel the altitude and thinner air creeping in, even though the volcano is just less than 3000 m. Every step is an effort and I rest often. Through the gap between two huge rocks which looks like the top…but it’s not! The scariest part is still to come: The last 300 meters up to the crater rim from here, across a steep slope on a hard crystallized white crust and nothing else to grip or hold onto. Weird sulphurous smell, patches of hot air, every now and then rumbling deep down, I am shitting myself!

As I come around the bend, now again on safer ground, I see the other hikers and finally join them on top of the rim after a 6 hour ascent! From the rim one can look into the huge crater which is so deep that one cannot see the bottom of it. The most unreal thing is experiencing the noises that are coming deep down there out of that hole! Rumbling, trembling, exploding, bursting, gases streaming out and this indescribably weird smell! We walk around the rim a bit to get a different perspective and take in the incredible view. It’s cold up there and after I let one of the French hikers take a photo of me, we slowly make our way down again. At the two big rocks we pick up Lemolo who was fine and had just parked off there without joining us at the top. On the 4 ½ hour descent all of us look everywhere for my camera, without avail!

I get a lift back to the campsite with the French group and after negotiating a discount with the villagers for the poor service (turns out that Lemolo wasn’t even an official guide!) Kirsty and I go for a fantastic walk to a waterfall (this time with an awesome official guide!).

• Sunday, 3^rd of August, Lake Natron in Tanzania to Nairobi in Kenya

We leave Lake Natron and drive 124 km eastwards on a track that traverses some of the dustiest terrain I’ve ever experienced (we had been warned!) hitting the tar road just north of Longido, 25 km short of the Kenyan border. The border crossing is fairly straight forward (apart from the customs officer commenting on my dusty shirt and asking me if at least my underwear was clean!) and we push on to the Jungle Junction in Nairobi. A hot shower and a pleasant meal at a good Thai restaurant in the neighborhood compensates for a long day’s drive.

• Monday, 4^th of August, Nairobi to Hells Gate NP

After washing, dusting and cleaning Anse from the powdery dust, we head off, hit a local internet café and then go shopping at Nakumat shopping center which truly amazes us by the huge choice it offers! Get a new camera, a new cell phone (sigh!), do some grocery shopping, and then head to a place Chris from the Jungle Junction was recommending where we can find another gas cooker top. The third one and it will hopefully last!

After our shopping spree we finally make tracks and reach Hells Gate NP situated south of Lake Naivasha just after 6 pm (luckily gates are open until 7 pm). We spend the night at the beautiful Endachata campsite on top of a rocky ridge overlooking the valley.

• Tuesday, 5^th of August, Hells Gate NP to Lake Naivasha

We game drive around the east side of the park which boasts a lot of antelope, gazelle, warthog and Burchell’s zebra and then explore the Lower Gorge with the help of a local guide who leads us over several rocky obstacles through the narrow chasm past some incredibly hot springs (one of them so hot that we saw somebody had boiled an egg in it!)

Apart from the viewpoint overlooking Lake Naivasha, the west side of the park was a bit disappointing for us, mainly because of the presence of two geothermal power stations which were built to exploit the hot steam (304 degrees Cesius) occurring in this area 3km under the surface. As impressive and forward thinking the utilization of alternative energy might be, we just think that these industrial plants and hundreds of kilometers of gas pipelines enmeshing the natural environment and suffocating its simple beauty should not be part of a National Park! After also not spotting any buffalos on the so called buffalo loop, we are good to leave the park and spend the night at the nearby Carnelly camp on the shores of Lake Naivasha after a wholesome meal at the camp’s recommendable restaurant.

• Wednesday, 6^th of August, Lake Naivasha to Masai Mara

We leave early and drive to the Masai Mara NP, entering through the Sekenani Gate via the bad roads of Narok. After getting a map at Keekorok Lodge we head west to the South Bridge of the Mara River. The migration of wildebeest is still happening and there are still big herds of them around but the biggest river crossings are mostly over, as we can see by heaps of dead wildebeest bodies which have been washed down the Mara River and piled up on rocks or floating in eddies where vultures and marabou storks are already waiting for their annual feast. After passing the Mara Bridge we are lucky enough to observe a pride of lion for a long time. We watch how they get up from their resting spot, drink at a stream crossing and can even see through our binoculars how they try to (unfortunately unsuccessfully) plan an ambush at one of the wildebeests standing unwary grazing away from its herd for a while.

We overnight in the bushy public campsite of Serena Lodge, where we meet an overlander couple from South Africa.

• Thursday, 7^th of August, South Bridge Camp Site, Masai Mara

This morning we are fortunate enough to be only a few meters away from 12 hyenas devouring a wildebeest which must have been killed only moments before we got there. It’s an at the same time primal, astounding and disgusting sight with the hyenas ripping out bloody flesh out of an opening in the skin, nibbling on the eyes and gnawing on the wildebeest’s bones while fiercely competing for the best position amongst each other. Later on we go past the carcass again, now it’s a different picture: Only one of the hyenas is still occasionally chewing on it, but gets distracted and annoyed with more and more vultures flying in to pick their share. Initially the hyena tries to chase after some of the unwanted intruders but being outnumbered it eventually looses the battle and another rivalry between the vultures begins. The funniest character of the scene is a marabou stork that just stands there amongst the vultures observing. Every now and then he sees an opportunity and with a smart, swift strike with his enormous beak he snatches a piece of meat from a vulture and strides away quickly to save it from the pursuing crowd.

Later on during the morning we see a male lion laze in the sun and further on we drive again through herds and herds of wildebeest. We heard that for watching the river crossings one supposed to have a better view from the eastern banks of the Mara River, so we exit the park at the Oloololo Gate, cross the north bridge of the Mara River and head south east on a stretch of real bad dirt road through some villages and then south towards the Musiara Gate. Thank god for Priscilla (our GPS)! Because finding our own way in the maze of tracks without her would have been quite a time nerve wrecking task! Then the Musiara Gate: Not sure if we missed it or if it doesn’t exist… for us it will always remain a mysterious spot on the map!

Not much luck with river crossings though. We speak to another couple at a potential crossing spot: They’ve waited there for two hours and seen wildebeest approaching the river, but when the leading animals got aware of crocodiles (and there were some incredibly huge exemplars waiting on the riverbanks there, some at the width of a hippo!) they withdrew again…

We have more luck with other creatures though… giraffe, waterbuck, zebra, elephant, a wandering hippo and very close a cheetah! Finding the crossing of the Talek River to go back south proves to be a bit of a challenge, but eventually with directions from one of the lodge’s staff we make it back to the south bridge of the Mara River and stay there for the night at their public campsite.

• Friday, 8^th of August, Masai Mara to Kisumu

This is our last morning at the Masai Mara and we head north again. Being initially appalled by the off-road driving habits of every tour operator’s game drive vehicles, we feel like fools staying on the designated roads and now sadly also join the crowds parked around any attraction way off the road…bad but rewarding! This way we get to see the same pride of lion at a different spot and find a hyena’s den with two fluffy hyena cups peeping out! We also get to check on ‘our’ wildebeest carcass again, which is now completely dissected and hollowed out, with vultures still picking on it.

Driving along the Mara River again, we hope to witness a wildebeest crossing, but unfortunately no luck!

We leave the park through the Oloololo Gate, head west to Lolgorien and then north via Kilgoris and Kisii to Kisumu on surprisingly good roads. Kisumu’s run down beach resort on Lake Victoria in an industrial area right next to the local pipeline oil depot is the only camping option and we head straight for the bar to numb our nature-spoiled senses! After a few beers the surroundings don’t seem so bad anymore and now it’s even sinking in that all that marching that’s happening on the tiny blurred TV screen is part of the Olympic Games opening ceremony!