My newest blog address (since MARCH!!) is
www.hazeyvint.wordpress.com
Had no idea this info was not up here. please go check it out
Thanks
Hazey's Things are different in Africa
Friday 26 July 2013
Tuesday 19 February 2013
Change of blog address
I have changed my blog address
although not quite upto date yet...
please check it out
http://artypirate.wordpress.com/
although not quite upto date yet...
please check it out
http://artypirate.wordpress.com/
Wednesday 24 October 2012
Naivasha (longonot volcano & hell's gate)
Trip to Naivasha
(Longonot Volcano and Hell’s Gate)
Four of us decided that a trip to Naivasha was a good idea,
especially for me as I have been in Kenya over a year and had never
visited.
We hired a car and drove via Narok, this journey took us
through the lush green areas by Kerricho, the savannah planes near Narok and
eventually arriving in the dark at Naivasha.
We stayed at the Crayfish Camp as all our other options were fully
booked. Kie had booked on the Wednesday
for 2 rooms for 2 nights, but as usual things didn’t get written down in their
books that way and we only had one night confirmed.
We were told that we were going to be shown
to our rooms, so followed a man to the rooms.
He was walking quite fast, but none of us thought anything of it. Then he opened the door and we followed him
in. I asked, “Are you sure this is our
room, as there is a bag already in it?”
One of the other girls asked the question, “But where is the other bed?” It turned out we had just followed a fellow
guest into his room and he was not working at the hotel at all!!! Opps. (Wonder
what he was thinking!!?)
We went to Carnelly’s for dinner just down the road and
gorged ourselves on an amazing selection of food; Pizza, Nachos, Crayfish,
Samosas (one flavour was camembert and bacon…. Absolutely to DIE FOR).
The next day we ate breakfast and asked about the room for
that night, they said that most likely we could stay but were not all that
convincing! So we left for Longonot
Volcano.
Thankfully the day was a little
cloudy so it wasn’t unbearably hot. The
first part of the hike was to the volcano rim, this meant walking up 2 very
steep hills. The ground was a mixture of
slippy sand and volcanic rubble which made walking a little hard and at times
needing to use our hands to climb certain parts was necessary. This was not a simple stroll.
Once at the rim, we took a short rest before setting off to
walk around the whole rim. (Total hike
that day was 21km…although I’m sure it was further!) Most people who had climbed up were not
walking the whole rim so this section was much quieter. There was one large peak
that was almost as high as the walk to the rim, at one point we were actually
rock climbing, with the rim only being a few feet wide. The views from the top were unbelievable, you
could see 360 degrees, lake Naivasha and back towards Massai Mara, it was
beautiful.
Walking back down was the interesting bit, as many parts I
found myself sliding on my ass. Crazy
Kenyan’s were actually running and jumping these parts, but that seemed like a stupid
idea to me.
We got back to Crayfish and rather than ask them if we had a
room I just approached the desk and asked for room keys 28 &29, they gave
the keys, no questions asked! :)
We decided the food at Carnelly’s was so great that we wanted to eat there
again. I was trying to explain my
friends about the Kenyan Cowboys (KC’s), who are basically the rich white playboys
of Kenya, born and bred but are notorious for being drunk, rude and
annoying. There were some in the bar and
when we wanted to leave one KC rushed over to buy us drinks and make us
stay. Needless to say that one drink
turned into several and before we knew it, it was 5.30am!!!
Two hours of sleep later we woke up to eat breakfast, see Hell’s
Gate and drive all the way back to Kisumu!!!!!
(It was going to be a long tired day.)
However once getting to Hell’s Gate and starting to walk, I felt much
better. Hell’s Gate is the place that
the Lion King is based on and also Tomb Raider was partly filmed there, you can
see why it is such an awesome place to use for filming. We walked through these tight gorges and saw
thermal springs; in fact there is a huge thermal system that is being used as a
source of power for Kenya.
Finally we had to make the 6/7 hour journey back to Kisumu,
thankfully there were 2 of us driving so we could take it in turns. That kept me awake and the fact I had 3 cans
of Redbull! The journey was pretty uneventful
until we had an incident where the car half fell off the tarmac road, where
there was a good foot drop and as the car tried to get back on the road, one
tire was stuck and we started to swerve into the middle of the road as a truck
was coming in the opposite direction. I
definitely think the word “FUCK” came out of my mouth from the back seat. We survived but 5 minutes later, of course
one of the tires was completely busted.
Stuck in the middle of nowhere, raining hard and becoming
quickly dark. We tried to figure out the
jack, but it was just rubbish. The spare
wheel had a ton of rips in it and also bulged horrifyingly in places, but we
had no choice. We managed to flag
someone over, who literally saved us from sleeping in the car. He came with his jack, in fact in the end we
had to use both jacks!! But the tire got
replaced and we steadily carried on home, in the dark.
Thank you to Gideon for saving our asses and
being a helpful Kenyan when the Wazungu’s were too stupid.
Tuesday 24 July 2012
Massai Mara
After 9 months living in Kenya I decided it was time to
visit the Maassi Mara. A group of
friends were renting a car, so I jumped in at the last minute in true Hazel
fashion.
The 9am pick up was obviously somewhat delayed and as I was
waiting I was sent to Integri tours to pick up the tents that had been
organised. In a mix up there were in
fact no tents to hire, but the boys said, “it’s not a problem, if worse comes
to worst we can sleep in the car.” Five
people in a Rav 4, that was going to be a comfortable evening!
We decided to take the turn off way before Nakuru and enter
the park that way. It was certainly a
funny experience, driving through bushland with no idea where we were headed,
no specific track to follow and the terrain was definitely too much for our
supposed 4 x 4 to handle. After about 2
hours the bar on the bottom of the car was bent so badly it was now touching
the back wheel. So we were stuck, no
tools, couldn’t bend it back… hmmm what were we going to do?
Luckily a safari vehicle came past and offered us some tools
to remove this bar and we managed to fit it in the boot of the car, covering
the end of the bar with someone’s shoe so it didn’t break the window. Off we headed again. We were trying to get into the park before it
closed at 6.30pm, but got distracted when a safari guide told us to follow his
car. We arrived about 5 meters away from
a young cheetah. It was just relaxing in
the sun, we couldn’t believe our luck, we weren’t even anywhere near the park
gates. And to think 10 minutes previous
I had been hiding behind a bush going to the toilet!!
It was a race against time to get to the gate. We managed to get 5 km from the entrance as
the sun was setting and we stopped a park guard to ask about options for
sleeping inside. Even if we did get there in time the cheapest option was about
$80 per person! So we followed to guard
back to the small settlement we had just passed, where we spent the night in
very reasonably priced and quite pleasant guesthouse. (Don’t ask the name or where it was as it was
dark when we arrived and dark when we left in the morning!)
The next morning we headed off early to be the first to get
into the park. Once past the gate we
drove straight into a group of elephants.
We were all sat taking photos and enjoying the beautiful giants, when
Mario said, “Hey guys take a photo of me.”
Before we understood what he meant he was out the car and the huge bull
trumpeted aggressively and very loudly.
Mario ran back to the car as the bull started charging us….. The bull was only about 4 meters away from
the car, all of us were screaming, “drive drive drive!!!!!” Thankfully we all got away and our car didn’t
suffer any more damage. Only from
looking at the pictures later did I realise that this bull had secretions down
its cheeks, which essentially means he was in the mating season with his
females. Mario you were competition to
him!
After that we had to give Mario a stern talking to… “You
never get out of the car in the game park!”
Mario’s response… “I thought elephants we gentle animals.” Pffhhh!
We headed to a group of cars in the distance thinking it was
another animal to view. It turned out to
be the hot air ballooning group that were setting up the breakfast for the
clients. They had bottles of champagne,
so naturally Fiona asked if we could have one of the bottles. As it turned out they said yes and gave us a
whole unopened bottle. So 7am and
already drinking champers! Hahahaha.
We found another group of cars and asked them what they were
looking at, they said lions and we kept looking way into the distance only to
realise we were less than 10 meters away from them. They were in the long grass in front of
us. One male and his female. Behind us came a small migration of wildebeest
and zebras, naturally this got the lions’ attention, they stood up had a parousal
and then the male decided the sight of all the food had made him horny. So we watched lion sex, which was short to
say the least!
Now only 9.30am we bumped into another hot air ballooning
group who were packing up. I could see a
whole unopened bottle of champagne, so Fiona and I decided to talk to the
pilot. It turned out he was a Yorkshire
man and was very happy to give the bottle to us. The boys were back in the car and looking
agitated so we were forced to get back in the car and keep moving, however
Fiona and I believe if we had kept talking for long enough we may have even
blagged a free ballooning ride from him.
We will never know.
So 2 bottles of free champagne blagged and drunk before
10am. Not a bad morning really.
In the afternoon we also saw hyenas, hippos, baboons,
monkeys warthogs, tons of giraffes, more elephants, (but this time we kept our
distance,) ostriches, gazelle and maybe even a rhino in the distance, although
the latter I doubt!
We left the game park around 4pm and headed back to
Kisumu. Gugi, Fiona and I acted like the
little children in the back, drawing on each other and generally annoying the
boys in the front. The owner of the car
called us and demanded the car back that night, or he was going to charge more
money. So that meant we had to fix the
car on the route home. By now the bar at
the back of the car was also so bent we couldn’t even open the boot! So as we found a mechanic to put the side bar
back on, the boys fixed the back bar and the girls went on the beer run.
I started to drive back in the dark and it was actually
pretty scary. Certainly after Kerricho
my eyes started to get tired. There were
no lines marking the side of the road and drivers not understanding the rule
about no full beams in oncoming traffic proved to make the journey less than
enjoyable. The road from Kerricho was on
tarmac, off tarmac, with only large coaches and lorries as oncoming
traffic. I didn’t even recognise
arriving at Ahero, the first thing I recognised was Mega City in Kisumu!!! I was happy we got back in one piece!
Maassi Mara 2 days, one night! You may think we were crazy but a damn good
road trip! :) Thanks Gugi, Mario, Ivan and Fiona!
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