Western Kenya

After visiting Kisumu to see partners and to pick up our SALTer David, we took a few nights to visit nearby Rusinga Island on Lake Victoria, and Ruma National Park.  We took a different route back to Nairobi, through Kisii and Narok.

We laugh at our guidebook that says "Kenyan cuisine has few culinary masterpieces, it consists mostly of survival food."  Well, that's pretty much true.  The Kenyan chapatis, shown here, are great though.  And the fish in Kisumu is great, we had a couple of big tilapia cooked "dry".

Wayando Beach Ecolodge had a resident dog Rafiki that was all puppy, and all big!  We all enjoyed him immensely.  Lake Victoria has risen, so their beach disappeared, but still there is a great view of Lake Victoria.

As always, lots of interesting birds.  Here lesser striped swallows

Rusinga is known for its fossils, so we had a person from the camp take us on a hike looking for fossils.  Indeed, found fossilized trees, branches, bones.  And lots of wonderful rocks.

"Rusinga diamonds" are found all over, here embedded in the rock.  They are possibly black garnets, or so we were told.  Beautiful, whatever they are, and very common.

Rusinga must be in a micro-climate, much drier than nearby mainland.

Looking down on the side of the island, towards where Tom Mboya's home was (key person in Kenyan independence)

Rusinga diamonds

Camping at Ruma National Park.  We seemed to be the only ones in the whole park, which was fun.  In fact the KWS woman at the gate seemed 1) somewhat puzzled what exactly to do with visitors that show up, and 2) excited that somebody actually came.

White-browed Coucal

Topi's were common in the park, a new species for us.

A big herd ("corp") of Rothchild's giraffes, we'd never seen them galloping before this sighting

Fog in the morning light

Alex's favorite animals were the "less than intelligent" chicken-like spurfowl and francolins that like to run in front of the truck

Just before heading out of the park we found a herd of Roan Antelope, our prize sighting.  Roan's are only found in Ruma in Kenya, so rare at least in the region.

Astonished on the drive between Kisii and Narok to find big fields of wheat...looks like Kansas!