Loita Hills

We left Lake Naivasha "early" at 8am. Definitely not early compare to the last tour! We stopped for some shopping - we stocked up on more 5 litre waters (the chemically sterilised water from the truck isn't so appetising when there is visible dirt floating around!). We stopped for lunch at a spot with some tables under an acacia tree and there was also a curio shop and toilets. Lunch was sandwiches and coleslaw with orange slices that resembled lemons. After we finished lunch, washed up and flapped the dishes we headed in to the curio shop to go to the toilet. Mo hung back and was watching some other people in our group bargain for an ebony giraffe. The starting price was 15,000 shillings (1 usd to 85 ksh or 1 gbp to 140 sh). Mo then gracefully knocked over one of the ebony giraffes, catching it, but creating a domino reaction and leaving a trail of downed ebony giraffes. She later told me this telling me that we almost bought a zoo of ebony giraffes at 15,000 each, but luckily the curio man was busy bargaining with our serious buyer friends and told Mo, "haknah matata"... Whew. And for those of you who haven't seen the lion king.. It means no worries.

After the giraffe scare we headed out fir our first acrican massage road ride... 2.5 hours of crazy riugh road bumps. About 5 minutes in, Mo says.. "There is a lot of water coming from somewhere." I looked and saw a trail of water coming from the safe (under our feet). For a moment I though...there's nothing in the safe...did someone put water in the safe?? By the time I finished my thought, my eyes had continued to one of our 5 litre water bottles and I see water pouring out.. I screamed "THERE'S A HOLE!! THE CORNER OF THE SAFE POKED A HOLE IN THE WATER"  And as any normal person would react I picked up the water bottle with the hole.. Put it on my lap and covered the hole as best I could. The hole was about 1/3 of the way down the full bottle and the best solution I could come up with as the truck was violently bouncing about was "do we drink it!?!?!" Then I set myself off laughing at my stupid idea and water poured over me. Shortly after we got the driver to pull over and poured enough water into another jug so the water level was under the hole. We set off again, me with a soaking left leg and a 5 litre water bottle between my feet that soaked my left foot every bump (about once every second) because the water sloshed out the hole.

 

I was dry by the time we got to the camp at Loita Hills. Next to the Masai village of our tour leader (his father has 6 wives and be had 42 siblings!). Oh but the dryness did not matter, we are definitely in the dry season, but as soon as we pulled in to camp it started pissing down rain. We set up our tents and in 5 minutes our tents and ourselves were saturated. It rained for about an hour at a pretty good rate and then slowed when our local guide (Steve, our tour leader's brother) took us to the village to see the women sing and dance for us...we got to join in. We also got to go in to one of their huts and learn how to shoot a bow and arrow.

We had dinner.. Spaghetti with mince & veg and then the Masai made us a camp fire. Steve told us about the Masai, their warriors (men aged 17-25), how the women build the huts and look after the children, the ages they marry (16 for women, 25 for men) and a whole host of other good Masai information.

After some riddles, we visited the toilet, picked up a bunch of biting ants!!! And headed to the tent. We basically had to strip off our clothes outside the tent and inspect them so no ants would make it in to our tent for the night!

The next day we watched the warriors dance (and jump ridiculously high). The boys had to jump with the warriors and the girls danced and got smacked in the face with their hair. Check out the action shot here of me getting warrior hair smacked in my face. The guy with the hat is the hero of the group because he was the first to spear the lion. He is wearing the lion's mane.

After shopping at the village market (bought blankets for cold nights!) we threw clubs and spears and they made fire for us. After that we headed out of Loita Hills for a 2 hour African massage road ride to the Masai Mara!