Six weeks has come and gone since the beginning of this school year. We're half way through the term! With that comes a much needed and earned midterm break. All the boarding students left this past Friday for an extended weekend break. They won't be back until sometime on Tuesday afternoon. It took a bit of time to get used to not having them here - they truly bring so much life to our home.
We spent yesterday (Saturday) with some friends on a mini-safari. We drove about a hour to a place called Hippo Camp. The whole day was amazing - and completely unlike anything I've ever done before. Starting with the roads to get there. We split our families into two vehicles and started driving. The boys in the 4 wheel drive SUV and the girls in the rented car from the school. About 15 minutes into our decent down the side of the mountain, Ryan calls and says, "I forgot you all didn't have 4 wheel drive. It's going to be a bit rough here in a couple minutes, but if you need to stop, that's fine - we can turn around and go another way there." The 'bit rough' was a steep, washed out, ditched filled road. We, Heather and I, figured we could do it and we did - laughing and grimacing all the way through it. We drove on and got waved over by a local policeman. What was wrong? Nothing.... he just wanted a ride seeing as he didn't want to walk down the mountain if he didn't have to. (Very common as most cops don't have cars here.) He hopped in with the boys. We continued down the mountain. Another rough spot. Worse than the first, but our choice was to go down or turn around and try to go up the other. I swear we were pretty close to vertical a couple times! Okay, maybe not, but at least it felt that way. A few scraps along the bottom of the car and some prayer, we made it through that one too. As we drove, we passed through a few small villages. There were no paved roads, tiny houses, and each had kids that raced the car and waved as we passed. One more challenging stretch of road and we finally made it to blacktop (and the cop finally exited). A very small percentage of roads here are actually paved, but they are working on more. I definitely appreciate them a lot more now!
We finally made it to Hippo Camp. We parked, looked across the street and saw zebras and gazelles less than 150 feet away! They were just grazing. We walked a bit closer - within 50 feet of the gazelles before they ran off. The zebras were still a bit off not paying any attention to us. Oh, were they fun to look at though! Ryan and Rusty were paying our entrance fees. We're grateful that we are considered residence here - and that its marked in our passports. Instead of paying 1000 shillings each adult and 500 shilling each kid, we paid 500 shillings for the whole family! (Difference between $45 and $7.50 for our family.) After proving we were all residence, we paid and then all piled into the Murphy's SUV and drove down the road to see what we could see.
We saw more gazelles - huge male ones with LARGE antlers, and a lot of females. Then a giraffe crossed the street within 20 feet in front of us! We stopped to watch and then saw more of them. I think there were 8-10 total, but 4 fairly close (two more joined later). There were also about 30 zebra on the other side of the road. I wanted to see how close we could get to get a better picture... we all decided that we were safe enough and walked towards them. There were about 80-100 yards from the road. As we walked closer, the one that had crossed the street and another one headed towards the group that was in the field. We went slowly and carefully - the giraffe were aware we were there, but didn't seem to care. The closest we got can be seen in my new profile pic. Can you see the giraffe in the background? It's about 20 yards away. It was really amazing being so close to them. Watching one run in the distance, another was laying down, a couple were eating, then the two that were wondering over to the group. Truly surrounded by nature and animals. Very cool. There were a lot of gazelle in the trees behind the giraffes too. They were a bit more skiddish.
Eventually we piled back into the vehicle and drove on. We saw more zebra, giraffe, gazelle, a water buck (it was only 30 feet off the road), and a herd of buffalo in the distance. We had a couple more giraffe cross the road. Mind boggling at times to realize that this really was my life, not a dream, that I was experiencing! We got to the end of the road - literally, it just ended, it was weird. We walked out towards the water and saw a lot of different birds - many I have no idea what they were as I had never seen them before. Off in the distance, we saw Hippos in the water. They were large black lines on the water that we could see splashing around and occasionally moving around. (They stay in the water during the day and graze at night on land.)
As we walked back to the car, we decided to see if we could find a place to rent a boat to see the hippos. We talked with one of the KWS (Kenyan Wildlife Services) guys and he pointed us in the direction to go. We never did find where he talked about, but we did find a Hippo Safari Boat place. They were tucked back down another road besides miles of flower farms. We had a picnic there before we got on the boat. While we ate, we were visited by monkeys. These were different than the ones that roam around the school. There were A LOT of them - everywhere in the trees around us. At least 20, maybe more. Just hanging out. A couple were really close - I couldn't help but wonder if they were seeing if we would feed them. I still enjoy seeing all the monkeys we do, but I'm also understanding how the locals see them more as pests than pleasure - they really do get into everything!
We got onto a boat - it had 8 seats + the one for our captain. Perfect for our group of 8! We rode out through a marsh filled with yellow-billed pelican, kingfisher, and a few others that I forgot the names too. We then past some fisherman who were up to their waist in water, pulling large lines of nets. Our ride lasted an hour, but it was absolutely amazing! We saw droves of different birds - including 50 or so white storks, 5 fish eagles and some others that flew behind the boat in hopes to catch bugs that flew out of the water.
The highlight was seeing at least 30 hippos. The largest family we saw had 8, another had 7, there was a mom with a two week old baby hippo on her back - she was teaching it how to swim, and a few more other groups. Once, we stopped to look at some hippos and another two popped up out of nowhere about 20 feet from the boat and yawned. Our captain floored the gas to get us to a safer distance. We later learned that hippos 'yawn' when they are mad. It truly was a great time though.
We had the perfect day - weather, company, being able to walk near and be so close to the animals. We also had paved roads all the way home which were greatly appreciated too!
(Want to see pictures? Look for them in the next day or so on our
website as we are planning on getting as many as we can up while the students are gone! I may try to get a couple on here as well!)
