Lake Naivasha and Mount Longonot

Lake Naivasha

After four days in Maasai Mara and a day in Nairobi, we headed to Lake Naivasha, which is northwest of Nairobi at 6000ft elevation. We stayed at Bilashaka lodge, a very quiet and very nice spot. The Dutch owners of the lodge grow roses and export over 100,000 stems per day to the Holland flower auctions. The immediate grounds of the lodge were visited by giraffes, baboons, zebra, and hippos while we there there and when we walked to the lake shore we also saw vervet and Colobus monkeys, waterbucks, and dik diks. I was fascinated by a line of safari ants crossing about 5 meters of the forest floor from one tree to another.
Bilashaka also offered a safari vehicle and driver that we used to get to the boats that take people out on the lake. The driver was an experienced birder and we saw many water birds (in addition to a few hippos).

Giraffe wandering the grounds of our quiet lodge at Lake Naivasha.

One of the greenhouses growing roses.

 Mount Longonot

Fairly close to Lake Naivasha is the Mount Longonot National Park , where we went with the car and driver. The driver appeared to have little trouble with the hike, but we struggled and were pretty sore the next couple of days since we hadn't walked up any hills since leaving Seattle.

We hiked the trail around the entire crater – about 7km in addition to the 3km hike to rim.
It reminded me of Olomana Ridge on Oahu, but it wasn't nearly as treacherous.

Summit of the mountain. Just above 9100ft.

Whistling-thorn Acacia. Large thorns, black bulbous growths that provide food and shelter for an ant species in exchange for defending the tree.

Back to Nairobi

After the quiet stay at Bilashaka and enjoying the outdoors both by foot and by boat, we headed back to Nairobi for a final night before returning to Lubumbashi. However, there was one last stop on the way back. Karen and I had both done some volunteer work with a group in Seattle called CAGJ that has ties to a bio-intensive farm in this area called G-BIACK, so Karen arranged for us to visit. It is in Thika, a moderately large town northeast of Nairobi, and the drive from Lake Naivasha to Thika was along the "forest road" that passed through beautiful forests and lush fields. Kenya's number one export is tea, and the bright green tea bushes growing on steep hillsides were stunning. We also saw pineapple fields and other crops.
Our driver was pretty concerned about getting caught in Nairobi's notorious rush-hour traffic jams, so we were in a hurry to get back. However, we took the time for a pretty complete tour of the G-BIACK site and test gardens, including some fish farming test ponds

Back to Lubumbashi

We took our early morning flight back to Lubumbashi; R picked us up and drove us to our new apartment. We had moved all of our stuff into the new place, but hadn't actually stayed there before we left. 

We've been back for a couple of weeks. This past week has been interesting on the political front. On Monday, the national assembly voted to require a full census before federal elections could take place, which was seen as a sneaky way to extend Kabila's second term. Protests engulfed parts of Kinshasa, Goma, Bukavu, and Mbuji-Mayi, but not Lubumbashi. Today, the senate pruned that clause out of their bill, but we'll see what the final bill looks like.

The government shut down the internet and SMS texting this week. It's been partly restored now, and we hope that we will have more consistent internet access. The government shut it down to prevent people from posting images or text, but it also had a very negative impact on business!