Maasai Mara to Kisumu

Thursday, 31.10.2013
The night air was filled with smoke from the dying fire, shouts from animals and our Masai guards. Together with smells from salami, moldy oranges and dirty socks, currently being stored in our tent, this was creating some pretty weird dreams in my head.

The alarm sounded at 5 AM. People were slow getting up and we left camp a bit later than planned. No worries though, Hakuna matata. We could see many zebras and wildebeest, left overs from the Great Migration which ended a few weeks ago. Our Masai guide soon led us to a lioness resting on a slab of rock. Next there were more lions, seven of them! Elephants, giraffes and buffaloes were common. There were some birds as well, but I didn’t always get a good look at them. Apparently the 25th giraffe or 98th topi was more interesting than a new species of eagle. We saw hippos and crocodiles in the river. Lots of skeletons as well, more left overs from the migration!

Pfffrrrrrt! We had a flat tyre for the second time in 24 hours on the road west from the reserve. Now there was no spare, so our driver had one tyre fixed in a small town. He then wanted to get new rear tyres close to the Tanzanian border. He didn’t find any, and we were now several hours away from our destination for the day, Kisumu. The drive was slow in the dark, we passed the time by counting and betting on the number of “slow down bumps” until Kisumu (149). The winner was Ilgonis with the guess of 150! Agnese and Ilva started to sing to keep everybody awake and many joined in. Karioki was asked to sing us a Kenyan song but he declined, saying he would think of one for tomorrow. Luckily I was never asked to sing something Swedish!

Finally we arrived at the seemingly deserted Kisumu Beach Resort well after midnight, only greeted by barking dogs, grunting hippos and clouds of mosquitoes. The place hadn’t seen any improvements since the 70’s and had a spooky air about it. I was waiting for zombies creeping out from the dark but the risk of being trampled by a nearsighted hippo was probably bigger.