Watamu: Days 13-18 of our Kenya Overland Trip

We arrived in Watamu after a long drive through Tsavo East, ready to enter into relaxation mode. We were happy to put away the camping gear for a time, sleep in a real bed, and enjoy seafood. We were ready for a bit of pampering. Unfortunately, I had made the poor decision to save money by booking an AirBnB with no previous ratings. I’ll spare you the details, but although we did have an air conditioner, a bed, and a warm shower, we were not made to feel welcome and it was not a safe place for the kids, resulting in 6 days of tension and disagreements with the owner. Because we didn’t feel comfortable in our room and the boys were easily bored there, we spent most of our days out and about. This meant we had to carry two children and a large basket of our belongings around in the hot sun, making Eric and I so very tired. I also didn’t realize the beach closest to our room had more of a Rasta vibe than a child-friendly vibe. It wasn’t what we had in mind.

Although our time in Watamu wasn’t as relaxing as we had planned, there were still many highlights, although I didn’t pick my camera up very often to capture them. On Christmas Eve, I went around town in a tuk tuk, looking for small gifts to put into the boys’ stockings and that night we gathered with just about every other mzungu in town for Christmas caroling. We spent a good portion of Christmas Day being convinced to go on a boat ride (with a glass-bottom boat and where we would surely see dolphins!), waiting hours for that boat to materialize while we tracked down snacks for our hungry children, and riding on that boat (with cracked glass and algae so thick you couldn’t see through it. No dolphins.) Thankfully, Pax fell asleep on the boat and although we saw no marine life, Leo enjoyed the ride nonetheless. The best part of Christmas Day was when we insisted on getting off the boat and found a lovely beach with few people. There was nothing spectacular in those hours that followed - just our family splashing in the waves and digging in the sand, but it was my favorite part of our time in Watamu.

We were also lucky to find friends from Kampala, also with young boys, who took us out on their boat on the creek. They failed to catch any fish, so we stopped at a beach among mangrove swamps and the boys caught crabs instead - another highlight.

Watamu afforded us plenty of Italian food, ice cream, seafood, and a chance to restock our food for camping, but it did not afford us time to relax, which is what we wanted and needed the most. We were so very tired. We tried not to complain, but the truth was we were having a hard time. I had set my expectations high for this time on the beach, since going to the Kenyan coast for Christmas was a tradition for our family, as it had been for Eric’s family and even his father’s family, who would drive to the coast from eastern Congo every year. The pure exhaustive effort of traveling and camping with two children was wearing on us and we were getting short with each other. On top of it all, I was having strange abdominal pains and my eyes had been dry and itchy for at least a week, so I couldn’t comfortably wear my contacts.

We set off from Watamu, knowing the only way to get home to Kampala was to drive there. We turned back around and headed West, steeling ourselves for more driving, more exhaustion, and more camping as we set our sights to Chyulu Hills.

Tsavo East: Days 11 - 13 of our Kenya Overland Trip

We left the truck stop campsite after breakfast and headed to Ndololo campsite in Tsavo East. The park was a muddy mess and we slopped through the mud, spotting some animals, mostly elephants, here and there on the way to the campsite. The campsite was a mud pit as well. We found a dry spot and set up camp while the boys promptly took to the mud.

Ndololo is a public campsite attended by a couple of helpful Maasai men who helped us identify the strange sounds we heard at night (hyenas vs elephants) and ward off the vervet monkeys. There was a screened-in kitchen available to keep our food, should we need a safe place away from the monkeys and baboons. We were relaxed about the primate competition at first, until the monkeys surrounded us from the ground and above in the trees, jumping onto our table as soon as I turned my back while cooking. One took a precious squash and ran up the tree with it while I threw a fit down below. We dug out Leo’s slingshot and found some pebbles, shooting them at any of the pests who dared get close. From above, two monkeys fought over the squash and they dropped it, which I proudly retrieved. Half of it was still good. Leo worked on making a monkey trap out of rope.

Primates were not the only wildlife around the campsite. A herd of antelope came through in the middle of the day and on our second night, I heard several snorts and sighs outside our tent. I shone my flashlight out the window to see 6 elephants not 20 feet from us. Those were the times I was grateful our tent was high on top of our car.

On the second day in Tsavo, we toured the park. Tsavo is a huge park, known for its elephant population, still recovering from poaching wars, and for its stunning landscapes. We drove from one landscape to the next, enjoying the opportunities to get out of the car with the kids and walk near the Luggard Falls on the Galana River and on top of the huge Mudanda Rock. The scenery was truly incredible and it made for a fun day exploring with the boys.

Despite all the beauty and exploration, Eric and I were becoming more exhausted every day. I wasn’t getting much sleep at night, thanks to the strange sounds, (several which seemed concerning), and mosquitoes who mysteriously kept finding a way into our tent, yet seemed to only target me. My eyes were also causing me problems and they hurt like hell every time I put in my contacts. I cleaned my lenses several times and changed them, but nothing seemed to help except wearing my dreaded glasses for a while. By the time we left Tsavo, we were tired of the mud, tired of packing and unpacking, and just plain tired. We were ready for the beach.

Hitting Refresh: Days 9 - 11 of our Kenya Overland Trip

The drive from Ol Pejeta to Nairobi was a hot, miserable one without a working air conditioner. Eric had made an appointment at Nairobi’s Toyota dealership to get it fixed early the next morning, with the hope that we could be back on the road by early afternoon. We knew we would need our air conditioner in good condition going into Tsavo and on toward the Kenyan coast.

We didn’t know where we would stay until we got to Nairobi. All along the way, we looked at hotels online, shooting for a decent and cheap one near the Toyota dealership, but as we drove, our standards kept changing and we gave in a little more and a little more until we admitted just how tired we were and just how much we wanted a no-hassle place. We were only a quarter of the way into our month-long trip, but we splurged and decided to pamper ourselves for a night. We found a deal online for Ole Sereni, a luxurious hotel overlooking Nairobi National Park, meant to cater to safari-goers staying in Nairobi between Kenya’s other national parks. We were also on safari, although hardly not the clientele this place had in mind. They were looking for the kind of people who fly to their 5-star lodges in national parks, have drivers and rented Land Cruisers; the type of people who bought safari clothes for their adventure in exotic Africa and who would be served 5-course meals during their adventure. Needless to say, on this trip, we were not that type.

We pulled up to the hotel with our Land Cruiser covered in mud and packed to the brim. We were haggard, climbing out of the car with our sunburns, filthy bodies, and (surely) body odor. Nevertheless, the concierge met us with a smile and showed us to our room. The boys could hardly contain their energy in such a small room and immediately fell to wrestling on the bed. Pax picked up his bucket and shovels, but there was no dirt around to play in.

We took full pleasure in our stay. Although what Eric and I really wanted was to collapse on the beautifully soft bed and sleep, the boys (as always) had other things in mind. So we made use of the pool, had a nice dinner, and took long, hot showers. Before dawn the next morning, Eric took the car in to the garage to get her fixed up while I stayed at the hotel until the last possible minute with the boys, eating all we possibly could from the breakfast, and then some, stuffing our pockets with apples and croissants. The rest of the morning, we were split up, with Eric at the garage with Pax and me doing shopping and errands with Leo. Upon investigation under the hood, the A/C compressor on our Land Cruiser was kaput, and the A/C gas leak was traced to a worn out evaporator behind the glove-box, so spare parts for both were promptly sourced and replaced. Thankfully, the work was done around 3pm. We settled the bill and hit the road, aiming to make it to a roadside restaurant on the Mombasa highway, where we would camp for the night.

We arrived to Jet Inn Gardens just before nightfall. It was certainly not a destination - it was practically a truck stop with a lawn, but it was a decent stop on our way to Tsavo. We were shown a nice grassy area to set up the tent. We did a quick set-up while enjoying some sundowners and while the boys played on the playground with a large sand pile. Leo declared it his favorite place yet. We had dinner and breakfast at the restaurant and slept between the highway and the railroad tracks, hearing trucks and trains pass all through the night.

Ol Pejeta: Days 6 - 9 of our Kenya Overland Trip

We had a long day of driving between Lake Baringo and Ol Pejeta, made to feel even longer by an air conditioner that wasn’t keeping up. We drove through Nakuru, where Eric dropped the kids and I off for lunch and took the car in to investigate. We had a leak in the air conditioner gas, which couldn’t be fixed quickly, so we simply topped up on the gas to give ourselves some relief for the rest of the day’s drive. These long drives were one of the hardest parts of the trip, with the boys, being children, anxious to move and expel energy. But we had to push on or else we wouldn’t made it to our destination, Ol Pejeta, before the gates closed.

We flew into the private conservatory in a flurry, with only a few minutes to spare, and racing the setting sun to get to our campsite before dark, whizzing past a beautiful elephant by the side of the road and a mama + baby rhino on the other side. There was no time to enjoy them. We were tired, hungry, and needed to set up camp.

Due to so much recent rain, the whole park, including our campsite, was quite muddy. We stayed at the Hippo Hide campsite, on the lovely Ewaso River. We had reserved a different site, which we were told was unusable due to the rains. Thankfully, the conservatory has a restaurant that can deliver meals to your campsite, so we didn’t need to hassle with dinner on the night of our arrival. We had two cranky children and I couldn’t imagine trying to cook AND set up camp in the dark, fighting hundreds of unknown insects flying into our faces constantly. Not to mention, we had climbed significantly in elevation, now at the foot of Mount Kenya, so we were suddenly quite COLD after the sun went down. So we received our pre-ordered meal with a great deal of gratitude and by WE, I mean Eric and I. The children wanted nothing to do with our overpriced meal. Perhaps they had already filled up on digestive biscuits meant to keep them moderately content during the drive.

We didn’t do much to set up. We unflipped the tent, dug our pjs out, cleaned up after dinner, and collapsed into bed, layering up in all our blankets and warm clothes.

The next morning, we awoke to the sounds of the birds and the river and peeked our head out of the tent to see the dew still chilled on the grass around the campsite.

We spent the entire next day around the campsite, getting acquainted with our surroundings and keeping busy with all the work that camping entails. The site had a large tank of water for our use and a long-drop toilet, but otherwise we were truly bush camping. The sun was brutal and we moved our chairs around the bushes throughout the day, squeezing into any shade we could find while washing dishes, doing laundry, and cooking. Leo kept busy “helping” in these tasks, which mostly meant stealing my basins to use in his puddle, where he took a cue from the elephants and soaked his entire naked body in the mud - natural sunscreen!

I had my camera by my side while I washed and Leo would often call to me from his puddle: “Mama! Mama! Look! Something beautiful!” And sure enough, he had spotted another lovely butterfly. I would snap a few photos and return to work.

On that first evening, while I cooked dinner and Eric played with the boys on the bank of the Ewaso River, I looked up and saw an elephant right on the opposite side of the river. The boys and I rushed over to watch it. It was stunning to be so close, on foot, to such a huge, beautiful beast. It was a reminder that we were not at any typical campsite, but truly in the wild.

I had arranged a night drive for Leo and I that evening, thinking he would appreciate the adventure and novelty of being out after dark. He insisted that he wanted to go and insisted I wake him up at 9:00, when the drivers came to pick us up. He is never an easy or pleasant child to wake, but he let me haul his sleepy body into the van, tried to perk up, and quickly dosed right off again. When we came close to some elephants, including a mother and her calf, I woke him again and his eyes lit right up. Those were the moments that made it all worth it - to see the wonder in my boy’s eyes at the magic of East African wildlife. He informed me that I could wake him again if we saw anything else nice and he dozed right off once more, bundled in two shukas. The rest of the night drive was quite uneventful. I enjoyed seeing a striped hyena, but otherwise saw only some hares, jackals, and a hippo from a distance. I was so tired myself by the end of it that I, too, fell asleep on the drive back to the campsite. Considering our level of exhaustion and the price of the night drive, I’m not sure it was worth it, but at least I got to put the new spotlight to use that I got for my birthday.

The following afternoon, we got away from our campsite and explored the conservatory a bit more with an arranged lion tracking drive. On our way to camp headquarters, where we were to pick up another family, we spotted a stunning cheetah, gazing through the tall grass. This was my first cheetah sighting ever, so I was a bit enthralled.

On we went on our search for lions. Our guide had a radar, which would beep if a collared lion was somewhat close. We looked and looked and looked. The boys were bored. I hadn’t brought snacks. The sun was starting to set. And then we got stuck.

Our tire fell quite decidedly into a hole and our guides hopped out, doing all they could to get us unstuck. The entire party had given up on any chance of seeing lions, but I told myself that at least Leo got to watch how to get a car unstuck. He quite enjoyed that.

Once unstuck, our guide lost his shovel and spent another several minutes looking for it as the sun sank lower and lower. I assumed we would head straight back to the park headquarters, but alas! Lions!

It was a welcome sighting and cheered us all up a great deal. We spotted 4 cubs, who seemed a bit alarmed at our presence without their mothers there to watch over them. We later saw their mothers prowling through the tall grass on the top of a hill, searching for dinner to bring back to their young.

On the day of our departure, we toured the conservancy on our own after having breakfast. We enjoyed the scenery, with wildlife in the foreground and Mount Kenya looming in the background. We made a last stop to visit the special rhinos of Ol Pejeta, before taking our lunch at the restaurant and going on our way. First, we visited Baraka - a blind black rhino who is a beloved member of the conservatory. One of the fantastic guides helped us feed him and pet him.

We then took a short drive around a large fenced-in area where we could see Fatu and Najin, the last 2 northern white rhino remaining on our planet - both females who are unable to carry a pregnancy. The last male, Sudan, died in 2019, leaving this species on the verge of extinction. There are great efforts being made to use Sudan’s sperm and the egg from one of the females to do in vitro fertilization, using a southern white rhino as a surrogate mother. However, as we left the conservancy, we were aware that this may be our only chance to glimpse the particular manifestation of Wonder that the northern white rhino offers our world.

Lake Baringo: Days 4-6 of our Kenya Overland Trip

After our initial first few days on the road, we headed for our first “real” destination: Lake Baringo. The scenery quickly became awe-worthy as we left the guest house in Bungoma and drove down into the Great Rift Valley, slowly savoring the stunning landscapes and pulling over here and there for a better view. The road trip we had been waiting for had found us.

We arrived to Robert’s Camp on the shores of Lake Baringo around lunchtime and did our first unpacking and our first tent set-up. It was real now. This was it. We were doing the camping and overlanding thing. And what a great place to break ourselves in! Robert’s Camp was calm and inviting, with a restaurant, bar, and good water access. But when I say it was on the shore of the lake, I mean it was RIGHT on the shore. Similar to Lake Nakuru and Lake Naivasha, both of which we visited earlier in the year, Lake Baringo was flooded bar beyond its natural banks. In all three lakes, you could see dead trees reaching out of the water far before you, their skeletons still seeming to call for help. Nobody really knows why the lakes in this region are so flooded, but one of the dominant explanations is that deforestation has caused so much soil erosion that all the dirt has washed into the lakes, filling up their beds, and overflowing their banks in recent years. This, matched with the unusual amount of rainfall throughout East Africa in the last couple of months, and the restaurant of Robert’s Camp was only a few feet away from being flooded itself.

The kids entertained themselves easily in the dirt with their buckets and shovels as we set up. After dinner, we tried out a new bedtime routine, which included s’mores around the fire. After getting Pax to sleep, I struggled to hoist him up a ladder without waking him or injuring either of us. I realized I needed a new method. From then on, I pushed him up into the tent, still awake, and, usually after a period of time getting his final energy out by wrestling and pretending to be monster trucks with his big brother, I rocked him in my lap to put him to sleep.

We didn’t realize it at the time, but Lake Baringo was our most relaxed stop on our month-long trip. We had a free day, which we started with a family boat ride. We passed the ruins of buildings affected by the flooding, with water up to their windows or roofs. We spotted all kinds of birds on our boat ride, including the Northern Masked Weaver, which is endemic to the area. Later, I took another bird-watching walk with a guide.

We wiled away our time cooking and cleaning, washing dishes and diapers, and watching birds in the process. Leo giggled as hornbills, starlings, and weaverbirds hopped up to him while he ate his lunch, anxious for a crumb or two. I even had time to write the only blog I ever wrote on our trip about our packing list. We didn’t realize just how relaxed we were. Compared to the rest of our trip, we had a great deal of free time at Lake Baringo.

In the middle of our free day, I walked out of the shower and back to our rig. The children were playing beside the car with Eric nearby. I went to put my toiletries away when I saw a sudden splash into the lake: a crocodile - no, two! - jumped into the water after sunbathing on the grass, startled by my approach. They weren’t large - about the size of Pax, but they were crocodiles nonetheless, and they were disconcertingly close to my small children. From then on, we pointed to a tree by the lake and forbade them to go past that tree, not that Pax understood a word of my forbidding. At night, we could hear hippos all around us. I had an rumbly stomach one night, but didn’t want to leave the tent on behalf of the hippos to find my way to the bathroom. I held it in, which cost me a restful night of sleep.

We got into the rhythm of the work of camping - cooking, cleaning, and handwashing laundry, including cloth diapers. We quickly realized that it was worth the reduction in work to wear clothes until they were unbearably filthy, although admittedly I had a different standard of what “unbearably” meant than Eric. I’ll let you decide who had the higher standard. We also allowed the kids to be naked as much as possible, since cleaning skin is much easier than cleaning clothes.

It all helped me realize how and why my African friends manage to stay incredibly clean while living much of their lives outside, even in the dry, dusty season. They will often click their tongues at me if I sit down on a dusty rock, for example, or even a chair without dusting it first. Now I realize, with embarrassment, that it’s my privilege of having 1) a washing machine, 2) a maid who uses the washing machine, and 3) plenty of clothes, which allows me to laugh about dirtying my clothes without much of a care. Even if my Ugandan friends have these same privileges now, I can see how past generations set up habits of cleanliness because there were consequences and work to be done when you got things dirty. No wonder they are meticulously clean in their appearance. So while camping, I was afforded none of my typical privileges. We became more cautious about getting things dirty while simultaneously accepting of the inevitable, riding out our grossness as long as we could. After all, we had no one to impress.

Knowing we had a long drive ahead of us on the day of our departure, we opted for breakfast at the restaurant so we could take off early in the morning. We headed to Ol Pejeta, via Nakuru, also knowing something wasn’t quite right with our air conditioner, which we would have to further investigate along the way.