Safari Part Three: Baringo

We bumped and banged our way towards the arid north, to Lake Baringo Island Camp where we celebrated Nico's birthday. We stayed in rondovaal cabins and used motorised canoes to get about.

Baringo was primarily a birding site with a resident birdwatching guide called Terry Stevenson, though we are not related. He had trained up the locals to lead tours, which they did spectacularly well. (Actually, better than he did!) Later he wrote a definitive guide to the Kenyan birds.

We joined Terry for an evening walk, followed by "Tusker" beers which we consumed during a spectacular thunderstorm. As the storm abated nightjars circled us on the terrace, the wind dropped and the sky turned deep purple.

The shore was lined with tall reeds, but a pass had been cut through the barrier to let boats through, and this is where the hippos were waiting to mug us. Apparently, game wardens had killed one recently (we passed the corpse on our way out) and that had wound them up a bit. Our boatman cruised slowly by as though nothing was amiss and then gunned us through the gap. A hippo launched himself at us with jaws that opened unnaturally wide for a mammal, revealing brown tusk-like teeth in the four corners of his pink-lined gob. It made him look enormous; which is what I guess he intended. All the same, we learned that hippos and buffalos account for more tourist injuries than lions ever do.

The Rift Valley is quite narrow up there and you have red cliffs all round. In the late afternoon, lightning flashes almost all the time and the sky can be the deepest blue-grey that you have ever seen. The lake is very shallow, but the waster is fresh, not alkaline like Nakuru, so it holds fish and has beds of papyrus that hold herons, egrets, lily-trotters and crocodiles. It is a magnificent, primeval and alien place; the perfect location for a Sci-fi movie.

The early morning canoe trip round the lake was a highlight of the trip for me. The two local guides were very good at spotting and identifying birds, and they never used binoculars. It took two of them to manage the boat because one of them spent a lot of time in the water pushing us through the vegetation. It reminded me of the film "The African Queen", without the leeches.

We drove back to Nairobi via Lake Naivasha and Hell's Gate and said farewell to the beautiful Emma.