day two of camping. ICE CREAM, paved roads, and elephants playing with our tents

Day 33 (10/7)
This day was our big day trip to the Chyulu hills to have a lecture. On the way to the lecture spot we saw paved roads! Its been a month since we had seen any paved roads so we were all shocked. It ended up being the Nairobi-Mombasa highway and there area we were in was a huge truck stop so there are big rigs all around us, people selling things, bars and truck-stops. All of it looks very American. We stayed on that road for about a minute and immediately turned off and the road progressively got worse and worse.

We drove for 2 hours, saw a lot of schools (which means lots of screaming kids in uniforms, some were hanging out the windows and others ran up to the fence.) We had to leave the park to get into the area we were trying to get to, which is why there were schools and farms. So we went up this literal bolder-road for a while and then finally we started to drive in the Chyulu Hills. It was all so stunning and beautiful. It kind of reminded me of Jurassic Park, with all the trees and hills and you could see animals grazing really high up on the hills, which just looks so wild.

Long story short, we hiked up this smallish hill but that went straight up and had a lecture. Our professors love bringing us up hills to teach. Which is cool because then in lecture we can look around and see for miles. After lunch and the lecture we climbed down, some people hiked up an even bigger hill for fun and some hung out around the KWS base. The view was spectacular but the climb was intense at points. Very steep and you feel like you could fall right off the hill if you sway at all.

We stopped at the truck stop (in that paved section) on the way back, and got ICE CREAM. So amazing, ice cream is really hard to find in Kenya because no one really like sweet things and most places don’t have electricity. When we got back to our camp there was an elephant hanging out behind the bathrooms. He had to be 10+ feet tall, and I guess earlier in the day the askaris had to chase him out of our campsite because he was checking out the tents. Haha only in Kenya, right?

I forgot to explain the campsite. The bathrooms consist of 2 stalls, about a 20 foot ditch and a concrete bottom with a hole. There is a 2 roomed brick building that we used for food and water. We brought an iron-stove, tables, and all the food and water we needed. It was amazing that our cooks were able to make the same food they could at our base camp (KBC). Arthur even made a cake over a camp fire..and it was DELICOUS. And it was basically just a cleared area. Our tents were set up closer to the middle of the site and staff tents were on the outside. The campfire was about 30 feet from the kitchen but outside of the cleared area was a decently dense brush-shrub land. We brought 2 of our own askaris, 2 of our cooks, the professors, our SAMs (they are sort of like managers), and then about 5 of other staff, including the mechanics and others to drive the cars. At night there were 2 of the KWS guards (with AK-47s) that would come to stay up and night and watch over the camp site.