Mount Kenya, the Coast, and Zanzibar!

Hello again everyone,

After I last updated you while we were in Nairobi we traveled north of the city to Mount Kenya. We stayed for five days at Castle Forest Station, a former Kenyan Wildlife Service monitoring post which has been leased by them as a small campground and hotel. We were on the south slope of the mountain so the weather was cool and rainy. I dont' think it was ever below fifteen degrees but after the heat we had been in we were all sleeping in long underwear and wearing our touques all day.

I'm taking a biology class for this session so I spent most of my time working with a local guide in the forest on a project to design a vegetation monitoring program for the south slope forests. Other groups designed bird, mammal, and human influence monitoring programs. Our proffessor is responsible for a similar monitoring program being undertaken on the more arid north slope and is hoping to use some of our work to start a monitoring program in the area we were in.

One of our days was spent on a hike up the mountain with the entire group. It is a very strange experience when you are used to backpacking in Canada to go on a hike with four guards with rifles. Forest elephants are very common in the area, and although we didn't see any, one group came close enough to hear them trumpeting and even feel the ground shake as they were moving! Unfortunately they are usually very quiet in the bush and it is amazingly easy to surprise them, even though they knock down trees wherever they go! When they have been in an area in the past twenty four hours however you can tell by the smell, a fresh elephant trail smells like nothing else.

We hiked up the mountain for a few hours until we reached the end of the rainforest and entered the bamboo zone. We had lunch sitting on an elephant trail with bamboo fifteen feet tall over our heads. It feels like a completely different world. We only walked into the bamboo for about twenty minutes, but if you starting on a trip to climb the mountain you woudl walk through bamboo forest for another eight hours before you reached the moorland and sub-alpine vegetation.

Although we were camping again in Mount Kenya the lodge at the campground had a beautiful little restaurant and sitting area and we all spent out evenings sitting in front of the fire doing homework by lantern light, with real drip coffee. Surprisingly in a coffee exporting country it is very hard to come by.

From Mt. Kenya we drove back to Nairobi and then east towards the coast and Tsavo West National Park. We spent one day driving through the park. We visited a 'recent' lava flow, which was 500 years old. Its amazing how barren it is even after that much time. It looks like it could be ten years old. There is almost no vegetation, only sharp black volcanic rock. The park is more of a woodland savannah than areas like the Maasai Mara that we have been before. Although this means it is sometimes harder to see wildlife we still saw plenty of giraffe, zebra, impala, kudu, buffalo and other antelope species. We also visited Mazinga springs, a river where you can walk along the edge and watch crocodiles and hippos in the water. There is an underwater viewing area as well where you can see fish and if you're lucky a hippo underwater.

The final part of our visit was a trip to the rhino sanctuary. The sanctuary is a fenced 70 kilometer area of the park that has 50 rhinos. We saw one for a few seconds in the bushes - I have a picture but I'm not sure that any of you will believe me that its a rhino! The highlight of the day however was when I caught sight of a leopard right beside the truck as we drove out of the park. Its very rare to see them at all let along on the ground during daylight.

After our day in Tsavo we spent our last night camping on the other side of the park and drove on to Mombasa, and then up the coast to Watamu in the morning. Arriving at the coast after the long dusty drive was spectacular.

The place we stayed on the coast was a five minute walk from a small white sand beach, surrounded by palm trees with coral isalnds in the bay that you can walk out to at low tide. Needless to say going to class was a challenge. I'm very glad I chose a class that involved being on the beach!

While we were in Watamu we also visited Gege, the ruins of an ancient Swahili city. The coral stone ruins with huge fig and baobob trees growing up through it was fantastic.

After two days on the coast we flew on to Zanzibar. Even though Zanzibar is part of Tanzania, a country similar to Kenya in many ways, Zanzibar really is a very different world. The arab, african, portugese, and even british influences here are all obvious, and intertwined in the architecture, the food, the music, and even the smells on the street.

Zanzibar is actually an archipelago which includes Unguja Island (commonly called Zanzibar), and Pemba Island. We stayed in the old part of Zanzibar Town, known as Stone Town. The Stone Town itself is white as all of the older buildings were built out of coral limestone and cemented together with lime made from fossilized coral. The city has narrow winding streets which are lined with traditional Swahili and Omani homes. Both types of homes have beautiful carved doors which tell you things about the owners education, family background, and values. They range from very simple geometric carvings, to ornate depictions of plants and gold decorations.

For a relatively small island Zanzibar has a huge diversity of flora and fauna. While we were there I got a chance to snorkel on a coral reef on an offshore island, visit a mangrove forest, visit a seaweed farm, and a natural aquarium which houses the four different kinds of sea turtles that nest on the shores of the island. On our first day there we were also able to visit a spice farm and see vanilla, cardamon, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, lemongrass, and cloves growing. Zanzibar really is a spice island. As well as being a trading center for spices in the past due to its position in the monsoon wind system it exports eighty-percent of the world's cloves.

Now we are back in Nairobi and the program is finished. I have also finished my undergraduate career. What a way to end! Although I am excited to be going home it is hard to leave this place and these people. When I am home in a few days I will try and tell you more about coming home and post some more pictures from the rest of the trip.