Kenya: Nairobi - Lake Nakuru - Eldoret

We met our group last night, which consists of 15 people, mostly Aussies and mostly female. This will be our group for the next 16 days, although one girl is continuing with us all the way to Victoria Falls and another couple is continuing on to Zanzibar.

Day 1 we left Nairobi around 7:30am on our overland tour bus, with our guide, Albert, our driver John and our cook Albert (Snr – although not related). Once clearing the city, we headed for our first stop – a look out over the Rift Valley. We stopped only briefly to take some photos, being harassed by some local flogging their wares.

Next stop was an orphanage in a small town called Gil Gil. We stopped here as the Intrepid Foundation is involved in giving back to the community so we spent some time listing to how the orphanage was set up, how the children came to be there and about different ways we can help keep the orphanage running (i.e. sale pitch for more cash). The ophans took us all around, showing us their beds, where they did their homework, where they played and, of course, the beaded jewellery they had for sale.

After the orphanage, we drove about an hour to the town of Nakuru. Here we ate some lunch down by Lake Nakuru, which is also our camp site for the night. We were all shown how to put up our tents and then got some time to chill out. Whilst having lunch, we had our first encounter with the wildlife – a cheeky baboon ran right into the middle of our lunch circle and snatched a sandwich one of the girls was eating. He was quickly shooed away by a park ranger but we had a good laugh. A little later on, another monkey snuck into our food prep room and took off with half a loaf of bread.

After lunch & some down time, we went on our first “safari” in the Lake Nakuru area nearby the camp site. It wasn't long before we spotted water buffalo, zebra, impala (like a gazelle), water bucks, guinea foul and even a couple of white rhinos, all just out having a graze in the grass and wet lands surrounding the lake. Oh yeah, and plenty of baboons – they were everywhere!

That night in camp, we spotted and heard several animals loitering about the campsite. During the night we had quite a lot of water buffalo in and around the camp but no damage (mainly thanks to the ranger who moved them on!).

The next morning we awoke early to go on another game drive around the lake, but in the opposite direction to the previous evening. Again, we had some luck with our animal spotting, this time getting a glimpse of two hippos (although too far away to get a good photo, even with the zoom lens), a lioness (which we nearly missed as she was very, very well blended into the grasslands, more white rhino, a rarer black rhino and a giraffe. Lots more photos, lots more baboons, impalas and water bucks later and we were back at camp. We finished packing our tents (we had previously emptied their contents to ensure the baboons didn't get in and steal anything) and hit the road, stopping briefly in Nakuru to pick up suppiles, heading for another camp site just out of Eldoret.

Eldoret is still in Kenya and our campsite was a bit more deluxe than the night before. Not only did it have hot water and proper western toilets (with TP and soap) but it also had a really funky bar, where the tour group sat back and enjoyed several local beers called Tuskers. Shortly after arriving at camp and getting our tents up, we had a bit of rain, which made the camp (and our bus) quite muddy, but nothing was going to damper our spirits with cold beer and warm showers on offer.

Progress between cities in Kenya is slow going, with a lot of road works, detours, speedbumps, heavy traffic and generally ordinary roads. Distances of 150km take far longer than you might think, which means we spend a fair bit of time in our tour bus, which is a customised Mercedes Benz truck, that has had its back section custom build to seat 24 people, each with a locker, store tents and other camping gear underneath the passenger cabin on one side and food, gas bottles, water tanks and the like under the passenger cabin on the other side. It's pretty basic inside but comfy enough when doing distance. We have a charging station so we can keep our music players, laptops and cameras all charged whilst on the move.

Next update from across the border in Uganda.