Out of Africa

Lake Naivasha, Kenya



Finally! Wish granted! Hippos!!! Have you ever heard them grunting??? Their grunting sounds like a heavy desk being moved around! Har-har!

At first, we thought it was just rocks there in the water... Then we started noticing eyes and ears... =) Aren't they cute? Our guide said that you can find hippos only if the water is deep enough because they want their whole body submerged in the water to protect from the sun since they have very sensitive skin.




This one even yawned at us!!! What big teeth! Or should I say what big two bottom tooth! Hehehe!




We were on a boat here in Lake Naivasha to take in the sights, see different birds. Look here, white pelicans! Did you notice the right most bird has spiky hair? =)




It wasn't just birds that we saw here... Look at the Defassa water bucks! I know, I kinda like the common water bucks too with their bulls eye on the butt, but, the defassa water bucks are also beautiful! Hee-hee!




This are cormorants.




Of course, I forgot the name of this bird... Hee-hee!




That's the very first Tawny eagle we saw at the lake! One of the boat guides has a bunch of fish with him and threw one up for this tawny eagle... Well, we think this eagle is full. He didn't even bat an eye when the fish flew up in the air! =)




    

Luckily, we found another eagle on a different tree who was hungry! ;) When the guide threw the fish, it swooped down and caught it!!! That was really amazing to see the eagle swoop down really close to the water!




You're probably wondering about the title of this post, "Out of Africa"... Or maybe not... Anyways, the island pictured is called Crescent Island and was the actual location they used for the film "Out of Africa" with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford! I have yet to watch the movie but I have read the book and wow! The descriptions used in the book was exactly how it was! Well, minus all the progress that has happened in Kenya... =) I wish I had read the book before going on this safari! Well, regardless of the sequence of events, I'm still glad I read Out of Africa, for me, it's a pretty good book!

This is our first sighting of Masai giraffes!!! You ask how can you tell it's Masai giraffe? Just look at the pattern on their bodies, it's shaped like an oak leaf! Of course our location also helps in the identification of the giraffe, we're getting closer to the Masai Mara! Aren't the giraffes beautiful?




The nice thing about Crescent Island is we were allowed to walk around there, because there are no cats on the island! When they did the film, they said they only had 4 giraffes and 5 wildebeests. Look at how many they are now! I guess it helps a lot when there's no predators, huh? =D




Gnu! That's the actual sound they make! Boy are they noisy too! They seem to like running around! I like our boat guides description of the wildebeest. If you look at it, it's got the horns of a cape buffalo, the beard of a goat, the front legs of an antelope, the hind legs of a hyena and the tail of a horse! My-my, it's a mixed up animal! He said because of that, it's described as one of the ugliest animals! Har-har!

Lakes in Kenya!

Lake Nakuru, Kenya



We are now on our way to Lake Nakuru and of course, we're all still like kids full of excitement trying to figure out what new animals we'll see today! Well, this is not Lake Nakuru, but the view along the way from Samburu to Lake Nakuru is beautiful! =)





This is our second time crossing the equator in Kenya. First, we crossed it on the drive from Nairobi to Mt Kenya, then on the drive from Samburu to Lake Nakuru. On our second crossing, we stopped by an equator marker and of course had the obligatory demonstration of the coriolis effect... Well, you know, they said if you flush the toilet in the northern hemisphere, the water drains in a clockwise fashion and the opposite in the southern hemisphere. Since we were right at the equator, the guy had 2 buckets, one 20 ft north of the equator line, and the other one 20 ft south of the equator line. I brought my gps with me there, and yes, it did not say 0.0.0, but, it was close though! =D




Since it's a long drive from Samburu to Nakuru, we stopped by Thomson's falls for a few photos. I love water falls! Oh yeah, we noticed there's a lot of things named Thomson there in Kenya... Our guide said most things were named after the person who "discovered" them. Turns out this Thomson guy discovered a lot of things there. Hehehe!





We're finally there! Let me tell you that the roads are no piece of cake, it seems like some areas are like washboards! Hehehe!





Here's a view of Lake Nakuru! It was actually raining when we got to our lunch stop! Real rain! Can you see the black line of dots just before the tree? We found out that those are cape buffaloes!





    

Can you see the lionesses in the grass? Unfortunately the grass was too tall at the time, but you can still see their heads above the grass. Those lionesses were stalking some zebras! We were hoping to see some action! One of the lionesses was getting closer to the zebras... Unfortunately again, the wind changed and the zebras smelled the lionesses! You can see the zebra's ears pointed up once the wind changed! They smelled the lionesses, and unfortunately for the lionesses, dinner is canceled! =D


     

Beyond the zebras, we saw a bunch of cape buffaloes!




This is the first time I have seen flamingoes fly! All the flamingoes I have seen in zoos and what nots are all just standing there! This was very exciting for all of us too, because our guide let us get out of the van and walk a little bit closer to the flamingoes!




This is what I normally see in zoos, flamingoes just standing! =D





As we were trying to walk closer to the flamingoes, our guide suddenly told us to halt, and move back slowly... What do you know, we did not notice there were cape buffaloes nearby! We were joking that it was fine, as long as your not the last one to be running away... hehehe! So we were all asking each other how fast can they run! =D





Well, here's another photo of a cape buffalo. Can you see his fuzzy ears? So cute!





     

Oh wow! Now we can put a tick mark next to another big 5 animal, the rhinoceros!!! These are white rhinos, and no, they were not called white because of their color, they were called "white rhino" because something got lost in translation, when the dutch guy described the animal as having "wide" lips ("widj" in dutch I think). Well, something like that. So, that's how you distinguish a white rhino from a black rhino. White rhino has the wide lips, since they eat the grass on the ground. The black rhino has a prehensile lip (a curve) since they eat the young leaves on branches. See, we learn something new everyday! =)





Well, I'm just showing this because this was the first time we saw cape buffaloes actually in the water. Hee-hee!





Can you see the baby baboon nursing from mom? =)




The baboons here did not leave the middle of the road until our van where really very close to them!!! Look at how many there are of them!




Vervet monkeys monkeying around on a tractor. Har-har! It was funny too, because there was a car parked on the side of the road with a woman inside the car, when suddenly, a vervet monkey went inside! The woman tried to shoo it out, but it just went circling around inside the car! Finally, a guy came over and brought out some crackers and managed to get the monkey out! I should add that all the people involved there was laughing so hard! So were we. Hehehe!




Finally, we're home for the night! Our guide told us for this place, there was going to be a lot of mosquitoes because the university just released mosquitoes to kill the malaria carrying mosquitoes, and that we shouldn't be worried if we get bit since they won't be carriers. He reassured us that the mosquitoes would be gone the next day since they will die off! Very comforting right? Hahaha!

More Samburu Game Reserve Wildlife

Samburu Game Reserve, Kenya



Another day, another area to explore at the Samburu Game Reserve! In the beginning, we thought we were going to explore the same areas at Samburu that we explored the previous day, what do you know, the place is ginormous!!! The gate we entered last had the zebra stripes, this one has the giraffe pattern! =)




The first animals we saw, was the zebras! We saw two types of zebras in Kenya, and this is the second type, that our guide just named as common zebra. Hee-hee! Aren't their stripes just lovely?




Here's a dik-dik, or as we were joking to our guide, a "Richard-Richard". Har-har! =D Isn't it cute? And by cute, I mean small... The dik-diks are small, maybe the size of a chihuahua! Hehehe!




I think our guide said that this is a lilac breasted roller... I looked up some pictures online and it doesn't look like this bird at all... Anyways, in my memory, this bird is a lilac breasted roller. Hehehe!




Notice the long necks? We thought at first that they were impalas... Then we started thinking, how come they are standing up on their hind-legs to eat? The neck looks a lot longer too, like a giraffe! =) Our guide said that these are gerenuks, but we prefer calling them the giraffe gazelles! Hehehe!




I didn't realize there are different types of ostriches. This is a male blue-necked ostrich. You'll know if the ostrich is male because their feathers are black and white! Female ostriches are brown. I believe our guide on the Mt Kenya trail mentioned that the name of the country, Kenya, came from the word "Kiinyaa", referring to Mt Kenya, which looks like a black and white ostrich, and if you think about it, the mountain does look black from afar and if there was snow on it, it would look like the black and white male ostrich feathers!




It was funny, have you noticed we haven't seen as much wildlife so far this day? Our guide also wondered about it! It's like all the animals were hiding! We didn't even see any elephant! The day before, whenever we spotted elephants, we were like, oh, it's just elephants... hehehe! Well, I guess it was okay, we still saw different things, mostly the birds now, and we started really looking at the landscape there. This is a desert rose bush. Isn't it beautiful? It's a splash of color among the brown grass and little bit of greens around!




This are yellow billed ground horn bill I think. Aren't they cute? At first, we only saw one, then, what do you know, there was two of them! I love the yellow color of their bills!




Yey! More elephants! Hehehe! You can't tell from this photo, but elephant tusks are not the same length. They said you can tell whether an elephant is right handed or left handed by looking for the shorter tusk. If the left tusk is shorter, the elephant is left handed. This is because, for the left handed elephant, they use their left tusk more for rooting around, which gets filed I guess. We learned so many things, didn't we? Har-har! =D




Hahaha! I can't remember the real name of this bird now... All I can remember is our nick-name for it, the "take a look at me" bird! Hehehe! It's because of their teased hair! It's like telling us, look at me, look at me! =D




Can you see the tree with a bunch of nests hanging from the branches? Those nests belong to weaver birds! The weaver birds creates lots of decoy nests, so the eagles won't be able to steal their babies from their actual nest! All the work they have to do, huh? Oh yeah, the weaver birds were also really colorful! We saw yellow, red, white weaver birds! =)




We have seen enough elephants so far, but this was still a wow for us! Elephants crossing the river!!! The thing is, you know when you watch nature shows, when you see elephants in single file, they look like their connected, trunk to tail... This was not like that at all. Still pretty cool though!




A herd of elephants showing their best sides to us! =D




Our very first mother and cub lion! The mom wasn't too happy with us, can you see her sort of growling at us? There were actually two cubs there, the other one is asleep! =)




We did not stay here, but just stopped by to use the wash room and cool off with a drink. Isn't the place lovely?






     

This are Samburu people. The top photo shows Samburu men doing the jumping dance. They said the higher they can jump, the better to attract the girls! The girls also showed us one of their dances where their necklaces seem to fly in the air! We tried it and it's really hard! Or maybe I just don't have the dancing genes! Mweheheh! Can you see their houses? The houses are made of sticks and cow dung! We went inside one and no, there was no smell at all from the cow dung walls... They told us that they are semi-nomadic, staying in one place for 6 months, then they pack up everything, breakdown their houses, collect the sticks and build a new home in their new location. And guess who builds the house? It's the women! It's a completely different way of life! Of course, at the end of our visit, they sold us their crafts, where all the profits goes to the community for everyone to share, so it doesn't matter who you buy from!




Aren't the giraffe's cute? Hehehe! Our very first family of giraffes!




A pumba! We found out that pumba is not a swahili word for warthog! Ngiri is the Swahili word for warthog! Can you tell I've seen Lion King one time too many? Hehehe!




Love the bulls-eye on the bottom of this common water buck! Hehehe!




Finally, baboons up close! Hehehe!




A hare! Look at his ears!




Can you believe that's a termite mound? It's gigantic! And look at the acacia tree growing on it!




We saw more elephants! Hehehe! Look at how wrinkly this one is!




This is a helmeted guinea fowl! Yes, it's similar to the guinea fowl, except that it looks like it has a helmet! Love the blue in this bird!




Isn't the horns of this impala just amazing? He looks magnificent!



And here is the buck's harem!




Another gorgeous end, for a gorgeous day!