28. To mount or not to mount

We have left the area of Lake Turkana. It is such a beautiful part of the country where you can see so many tribe people just walking towards wherever they go to (we do often wonder). No need to pay the entry at one of those ridiculous ‘tribe villages’ where people get dressed up for tourists. How in the world can that be an interesting experience? It is as fake as it gets. I tell you, when we passed the village of Longanyano, we saw some amazing people. Unfortunately we don’t have any pictures of that as we didn’t want to offend people with sticking up our camera right in front of their noses. But trust me on this one, it was beautiful, intriguing and highly fashionable LOL. To be honest, you would think that most young men are gay when you look at the way they are traditionally dressed, with their pierced ears and the necklaces they wear. But gorgeous to see, really fantastic!

At the equator

But so we drive further on to Mount Kenya. And very important, we are still driving on tarmac. : ) In Naru Moru we park The Cruiser at the lovely Mt Kenya hostel and camp.  We have the place all to ourselves. It is only The Cruiser, Kosta and me… and our new little furry friend.  For three days we have the company of this incredible sweet dog that must not be older than 4 months. If we hadn’t talked about getting a dog beforehand and decided against it, we would have taken this one with us. Unfortunately travelling with a furry friend is not always easy. You need to get the right papers, you can’t entry any national park with it  and you need papers for rabies which we won’t get in time for South Africa.  But this little fellow stole our harts.  Obviously maltreated by others and too skinny, but such a sweet dog once he was relaxed around you.

Kosta trying to keep the dog away from Furry Friend. We know that ‘jumping’ each other is a way of showing dominance, but really, this was more assaulting the puppy than anything else.

As Kosta was planning on hiking up to mount Kenya we set of to the entry of the national park the next day to enquire about it. A nice walk of about 7 to 8 kilometres one way. The sun is shining, but not far after we start our journey we can already see the clouds at the top of the mountain. After having done our little research on the whats and hows of climbing Mount Kenya, Kosta decides against it. Not only is it expensive and are the clouds present at 10 am, also the fact that the 16 km walk made us tired says enough about us being in need of some serious rest. The digging at lake Turkana has drained more energy than we thought (thinking about it now, when the trucks were stuck we were in bed at 7 pm and fell asleep within 5 minutes).  So no Mount Kenya but more rest : ).

On our way to Mt Kenya

After a couple of days we head towards Nairobi. We need to go to the capital as we have not been stamped in yet in Kenya. At lake Turkana there is no passport control and there are no customs. So after already having spend 14 days in the country we go and get our papers sorted out. No problem at all. It’s all very straightforward. They ask you when you’ve entered and they stamp you in.  Mission completed. Time to go and spot some animals in the Masai Mara National Park!