Leah’s Travel Page

Once we left Nairobi, we headed off for Mt. Kenya, which also happens to be the 2nd tallest mountain in Africa. It was totally different from anywhere else I’ve seen in this country, especially considering the lack of rain in most parts. It was lush rainforest, with some of the most amazing waterfalls I have ever seen, a little bit of rain, and actually quite chilly – reminded me of B.C. in a way… well, except for the massive piles of elephant dung all over the camp (I am so unfazed by dog poo now) and hearing the forest buffalo calling at night. Unfortunately, in true Leah style, I was sick with a fever for most of the time we were there, so I got to know the inside of my tent quite well (at least it wasn’t like in Nguruman, where we woke up one morning to discover probably 2000 ants crawling all through our stuff, which then forced me to engage in a large-scale massacre, DEET being the weapon of choice). I did manage to get up enough to climb up Mt. Kenya with the rest of the group…well, we didn’t go the whole way, that would have taken five days, but we did get a good ways up, far enough to where the vegetation changed to bamboo forest, which was so awesome – I definitely never thought I’d stop to have a picnic amongst a natural forest of bamboo. The campsite was also really great, except for the fact that we had some sanitation issues when our toilets stopped flushing and the showers stopped running because 40 people over-extended the system. But of course, we could solve the latter problem by showering in the waterfall that was 500m away – insanely cold but very surreal.

After Mt Kenya, we had to make our way to the coast, which was about 30 degrees hotter and 100 times more humid than where we had just come from. Enroute, we spent 2 nights in Tsavo National Park, which is where ‘Out of Africa’ was filmed and is the biggest national park in East Africa. The coolest thing here were the baobab trees, which look absolutely amazing – massive stocky trunks and then wild thick branches – like something out of Ichabod Crane. In Tsavo I also saw my first leopard!! Now all that is left for me are the elusive rhino and cheetah. Also, as we were leaving the park, the sky was so clear that you could very clearly see the distinctive Mt. Kilimanjaro in distant Tanzania, which was really exciting.

We got to the coast via Mombasa, and then headed up to a beach just south of Malindi, called watamu. The water of the Indian Ocean was the most perfect colour of turquoise I have ever seen, and was warmer than a bath (WAY warmer than most of the showers I’ve had on this trip, for sure). Dhows (the coastal sail boats) dotted the clear waters, and the white sand and palm trees were gorgeous…the environment definitely made it difficult to concentrate on school work (not withstanding the fact that when we woke up in the morning it was 31 degrees, and easily hit 41 by eleven o’clock)! Whenever we could we all ran to the beach, which was interspersed with giant coral boulders. This part of the country is very Muslim, so the architecture and the culture and the dress was so unique compared to what we’ve seen so far. All the houses were built out of coral and seashells. The Islamic influence, though, had nothing on the traditional and amazing experience of Zanzibar…I’ll write about that very soon!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.