Kerry flew back home last week to prepare for the baby--still a few weeks away, but the airlines restrict your flying well in advance--and I found myself the unfortunate position of trying to find something to do with myself. Our friends Devin and Mark were planning on going camping up near Mt. Kenya and invited me along. Although we've done several tented safari's since we've been here, I haven't actually been camping-camping, so I jumped at the chance to go.
We left early Saturday morning from Nairobi and headed North up the new Thika Road highway (which was surprisingly nice). Our destination was the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, touted as the largest Black Rhino sanctuary in East Africa, although I'll highlight that I saw no Rhinos during the entire trip.
It takes approximately 3.5 hours to get up and we made a pit stop in the closest town, Nanuki, for some extra supplies and some lunch. The British military also has a large training area in the region so we encountered numerous military vehicles along the way. We entered the park and searched for our campsite, the location of which was not readily apparent, and after tracking down some workers, finally found it. I managed to forget to take any photos of the campsite, but it was a great location on a riverbank with several good-sized trees for shade.
We immediately set up our tents knowing that we probably wouldn't want to do it later in the dark. The campsite was enclosed with a single, approximately 5 foot high, single-wire electric fence to keep out elephants, buffalo and hippos (luckily, the cats and hyenas would have no problem casually walking under wire if they wanted to). The guides showed us how to "close" the gate at night, which consisted of grabbing two live wires buy their insulators and wrapping them around themselves. Since I was the oldest in the group, I decided I wasn't going to do it and left it to Devin, our resident Marine, to do it (and quite frankly, he did it much better than I would have).
The conservancy, unbeknownst to me, housed a large chimpanzee sanctuary, which we got to just before it closed. I've only seen chimps at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., so it was great to see these chimps--primarily rescues from Rwanda, Burundi, and South Sudan--up close and personal.
(this guy was really cute but I thought he looked like Teenwolf)
We also got to observe some, shall I say...interesting?...social habits among the chimp families. Being that this is a family blog, I won't share them here, but needless to say we've definitely come along way.
(we nicknamed him Burt Reynolds)
We got back to camp at dusk and began collecting firewood, stoking the fire, and getting dinner prepared, which I'll shamelessly admit was hot dogs/bratwurst and Doritos. Following our feast, we settle around the fire with some drinks, talking politics and Mark and Devin reminiscing about life in the service. We were far into the country so the stars were abundant. We turned in around midnight hoping our trusty electric fence would keep us safe.
Morning came and I had no desire to get up. I had a great night sleep--awaking only a couple times to the sounds of Hyenas far in the distance--but still couldn't quite get it in gear. We cooked a good size plate of bacon and eggs, got pack up, and headed out of the conservancy for Nairobi. We passed some more animals on the way out, including a striped Hyena, which I'd never seen before, and got a clear view of Mt. Kenya, which we all concluded was not as impressive looking as Mt. Kilimanjaro.
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