Day One

We had to wake up pretty early on the first day because we had to go the Immigration office to register for a bunch of stuff. Before we left, myself and a few other people went out to watch the baboons play in the trees and to walk some of the trails on this hostel compound. It was pretty neat but not worth its costs. When I came back to my room, my iPod and headphones (not my good ones) were gone. I assumed that I had already packed them away somewhere else but that wasn’t the case. I went back to check again but again, it was nowhere to be found. I found out later that one of our program staffers went to check through everyone’s bed for lost belongings. She didn’t find it either so the iPod was either stolen or for some reason I can’t find it in my bags. Jane called the hostel after I told her about it and of course, they said they hadn’t found anything. Yeah it definitely sucks to lose my iPod but it was my fault entirely for not locking it away and I can also use my phone as an mp3 player. Mostly it was just a rude awakening to where I was. After we finished up at the Kenyan Immigration office, which took many hours, we got some lunch and made our way to Nakuru National park. It was a three hour journey with a pit stop at a good viewing point of rift valley. Rift valley is a very large area of Kenya where the land literally dropped off. We stopped off the highway for about fifteen minutes to take pictures and to get swarmed by vendors. It was a fantastic view. It reminded me a lot of being in the mountains in Ecuador. I took some really good pictures/videos. By the way, I’m taking a lot more videos than pictures. So be prepared for a lot of videos during story time. We arrived at Nakuru National Park at around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. We had to wait at the front gate for about 45 minutes while everything was getting settled but we were highly entertained. Once we pulled into the parking lot there were baboons everywhere. And I mean everywhere. We got off the bus to watch them play and fight which made for some great video material. After about 20 minutes or so someone started screaming “Baboon!!!”. I looked over and I saw that a baboon had taken someones water bottle and ran up a tree. It was yellow Nalgeen bottle. We watched for about five minutes while the baboon tried to take the top off. Baboons are very good with push this or pull that but twisting is not their forte. He/she baboon was able to rip off the piece of plastic that connects the top to the bottle but gave up after a while. The water bottle was sterilized, filled and reused within the hour. After all was settled with the park office, we made our way into the park where our hostel was. During the early 1900’s Nakuru National park was owned by a british farmer. He built a big house for himself and his family which is currently called the Guest House and a house/barn for the workers. This house was turned into the hostel for the Kenya Wildlife Club. There is a big room with 8 bunkbeds for the guys and two other rooms for the girls. It is completely fenced in, although the baboons don’t care, with an area of about three or four acres. This is a small fenced in area in the middle of a national park. Very rare and very awesome. Just outside the fences are countless water buffalo, zebras, impalas (small antelope looking animals of which the Chevy Impala was named after) the occasional rhino, and of course more baboons than you can count. The baboons are a part of the compound and you have to be very careful with locking doors and windows. When we are in our group activities they are usually less than fifteen feet away fighting and yelling. We had some tea when we got there, played some soccer and Frisbee and then ate dinner. After dinner we had our first orientation activity where the compound director talked to use about Nakuru National Park and about the Kenya Wildlife Clubs. A group of us stayed up for a few more hours talking and eventually broke out the cards to play spoons and turrets. It got pretty rowdy. After a long day it was time for bed