Not your average day at the lake...

Remember when I mentioned a little while back that we were taking a mid-week jaunt out to Lake Naivasha, due to a federal Kenyan holiday observing the end of Ramadan?  Well, while it's true that I'm not Muslim -- something tells me that my big mouth and headstrong personality wouldn't go over so well in more of a "women should be neither seen nor heard" environment -- nor would I handle fasting all day every day for a month very well, I'll certainly pretend, if it gets me Wednesdays off of work to have the kind of adventures we had on this particular day!

Aaron didn't tell us much about where we were headed or what we were doing; he just asked if we'd like to go hiking at a lake in the Rift Valley on a "work retreat, to discuss important business things" (wink, wink).  Umm, sure.  Why not?  So off we went.  Only there should have been less emphasis on the "hiking" part and more on the "lake" part.  It was more like 

half-nature walk, half-boating day -- which added up to a full day of awesome.  Aaron may be a trickster, but as it turns out, some of his tricks really aren't all that bad.  

Not a whole lot more to say here except that, if you ever find yourself in Kenya, I'd definitely suggest adding a day at Lake Naivasha & Crescent Island to your to-do list.  The surprise of it may have been half the fun, so I may be ruining that part for you, but even if I'd have known what to expect, it'd still have been very, very cool.  I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Overlook of the Great Rift Valley on the way to Lake Naivasha -- The clouds didn't clear out until later in the day, but if
you look straight out, you can see Mount Longonot, the dormant volcano that we hope to go hike soon!

Heading out onto Lake Naivasha in our tiny boat...still no idea what's in store at this point.
(Note: Aaron is quietly chuckling to himself this entire time.)

So far, so normal -- Just regular lake birds

It's no Mighty Ducks Flying V, but it'll do...

Ever heard that old saying?  "Birds of a feather flock...with waterbucks" (in the background)

NOW we start to see what the chuckling is all about -- A pile o' hippos!

Snuggle Time!

Hippo family nap-time in the sunshine -- Check out the baby!

So we're boating along, soaking up the sunshine and checking out all of the animals -- while purposefully staying away from the hippo families, since most of them have babies in tow -- when our boat driver (also named John; I swear, every driver in this country is named John) heads in toward a totally different docking place than the one we left out of.  Another trick.  Aaron's eyes are gleaming at this point.  Something is obviously  up.  So we all pile out of the boat, and Aaron tells the guy we'll be "back in maybe 2 hours."  Whatever this trick is will clearly take awhile.  Interesting...

We go walking up from the dock and see signs indicating that we've just arrived at Crescent Island, whatever that is.  After a bit more walking -- I guess this is where the "hiking" part of the day comes in? -- we start seeing signs of life: little thatched-roof huts and shelters.  We then encounter a park ranger "trainee" wandering around all by himself who inquires as to whether or not we've registered for the day.  Why no, we haven't, thank you.  So he radios in, tells whoever is on the other end that he has 4 guests who need to sign in.  Then the person on the walkie-talkie asks if we're Kenyan residents or not -- residents pay significantly less money to visit any of the parks in Kenya than non-residents do; Aaron is a permanent resident.  Aaron flashes his little ID card showing his legal residency status and, with that Sundsmo charm he wears so well, proceeds to tell the guy that the rest of us are also permanent residents.  No IDs, no questions -- just Aaron's smooth-talking trickster ways -- and we paid about $5 each instead of $50.  Well, ok then.

We walk off, and the little trainee guy calls back something to us.  Crap, I think.  We're busted.  Apparently not.  All he wanted to tell us was to "stay away from the buffaloes."  I'm sorry.  Buffaloes??  Not even then did we catch on...

Welcome to Crescent Island -- Where you really have NO IDEA what awaits you!

Maybe this is where the little guard-in-training hangs out?  Who knows...

General African cuteness --And then I around...

...AND A ZEBRA IS STARING AT ME!!
(Note: Aaron's quiet chuckling has turned into a full-fledged belly laugh at this point.
He was a little too excited to see how surprised we were at just exactly what this place was...)

OMG.  Fuzzy baby zebra -- Could you die??

Seriously obsessed with how beautiful these guys are -- And keep in mind, this
was before we went out to the Mara, so these were my first Kenyan zebra sightings.

Another turn-around, and look what we have here -- It's like we stepped off of a boat into the African version of Narnia!

Funny to see a giraffe all crunched over like this -- Something must've been awfully yummy on the ground.

Watching giraffes reach for their food is pretty entertaining -- This exercise went on
rather unsuccessfully for quite sometime.

This guy was so funny -- I have probably 15 pictures of him making hilarious faces and ear wiggles.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B -- The one of him sticking his tongue out is a bit blurry, so this
will have to suffice as my favorite giraffe face picture of all time.

One of the many DLTs on Crescent Island
(Note: If you need a DLT refresher course, see Chapter 2 of my Masai Mara adventure.)

The stare-down continues -- And bear in mind that we are walking here, so this
thing could have decided that he didn't want to have his picture taken and
charged me with those giant horns on his head at any point in time, if he felt so
inclined.  After all, he was only about 15 feet away.  A wee bit disconcerting, no?

The Crescent Island Menagerie -- DLTs of all sorts, wildebeests, zebras, giraffes, the buffaloes
we were told to stay away from.  It was most unexpectedly awesome!

When we were finished walking around our treasure island of wildlife, we headed back to the boat, still amazed at what our day had turned out to be, and also pretty floored that you're just allowed to traipse around amongst wild animals with seemingly very little worry that they'll get mad and attack you.  No way in the world would a place like this ever exist in the U.S. without you first signing your life away.  There are no cats or elephants on the island, but there are water buffalo, and the horns on these DLTs are no joke -- yet there was no talk of us having to sign any kind of release form, taking away our ability to sue them if we got attacked by an animal.  I guess not every country is as litigation-happy as ours, huh?

Anyway, so as we're pulling back out of the dock, I overhear Aaron say to the driver, "When we get to the place, we want to get the fish."  Huh?  Fish?  Oh, I see.  More tricks.  It's to be expected, really.  It is Aaron, after all...

So we drive along for a bit and then come up to a place where there's a guy sitting on the shore surrounded by buckets.  Our boat driver waves at him, and he starts hurling fish in our direction.  They aren't terribly big fish -- similar to what you'd feed to a seal or something -- and then it hits me.  OhmiGod.  Crocodiles are going to come flying up out of the lake to get these fish, chomping their huge jaws -- and of COURSE he threw them on my side of the boat, immediately next to where I'm sitting.  

Well, not to worry, because that's not what the fish were for, but even if it were, my panic was entirely misplaced, since my biggest concern was not that I was going to die by crocodile-chomp, but that I had the wrong lens on my camera and that my pictures therefore wouldn't be very good because no one had warned me about what was coming.  I was actually ready to yell at Aaron for ruining what coulda-woulda-shoulda been my awesome crocodile feeding pictures, if only I'd have been adequately prepared.  Can we say out-of-whack priorities??

So what were the fish actually for, you ask?  It took a few minutes for us to find out, but it turned out that in the time that I had spent rapidly whipping my head around in search of the crocodiles that I was sure were going to be jumping up out of the water at any second, the boat driver was busy grabbing the fish out of the water and pulling them into our boat.  After he gathered them all up, we drove off in search of the bird in the picture below.  A tiny bit anti-climactic, yes, but...still a cool trick.  And no one lost any limbs, so that's always a win.

This is a Fish Eagle -- It's no crocodile or anything, but...still kinda cool.

When our driver would spot a Fish Eagle, he would do a certain whistle at it, and once he was sure it was paying attention, he would throw one of the fish way up in the air and let it splash down in the lake.  The Fish Eagle would then come zooming out of its treetop in our direction, circle around a bit, and then dip down just above the surface of the water and snatch the fish off of the top.  Not the easiest thing to get good pictures of, as they fly freakishly fast, but...pretty cool to watch.  

Let's just pretend I got the whole thing in the frame, shall we?   Because it's the ONLY
picture I got where you can actually see the fish in its feet!

After Aaron had finished using up his bag of tricks for the day, we wrapped up our boat ride and came back in for what turned out to be a very  leisurely late afternoon lunch.  And by that, I mean that, at one point, it got to be so ridiculous that Aaron actually bypassed asking the server (again) if our lunch was almost ready and just marched his smooth-talking self right on into the kitchen to see "what step in the process they were at."  In his words, "sometimes you just have to do things a bit differently in Africa if you ever really want to get anything done."  I see him operate this way every day at work, but I'd yet to see him march into a kitchen to check on the progress of our food.  Hil.AR.ious.

The rather idyllic setting for our incredibly leisurely lunch -- Not bad for a "work" day, eh?

Since Kenya clearly doesn't care about Columbus Day, we're working on Monday, but we hope to play hooky again soon to go volcano-exploring at Mount Longonot.  I'm also hoping to sneak away to Mombasa for a little beach time before I come home (ideally sans any Somali pirate attacks, of course), so hopefully there will be a few more scenic blog updates before I dip outta here.  My time here has been extended for roughly an extra month, so I've got a bit more adventuring to do before Kenya is done with me!

Hippo Skull