Flight to Madagascar is Booked!

We have booked our tickets, and fly to Madagascar in less than two weeks! We are super-excited to go, not only because of the uniqueness of the flora & fauna to be found there, but also for it's incredible geographical features. Because of its long isolation from neighboring continents some ecologists refer to Madagascar as the "eighth continent". It's the fourth largest island in the world, and has numerous species which can be found nowhere else in the world.

The next two weeks for us will be quite busy. My sister & fiance are returning to Nairobi after volunteering in Uganda for the past two months tonight, and will fly back to Canada on Sunday. Next Tuesday two of my good friends from university, Chris Newcombe and Chelsea McCullough, will be arriving in Nairobi. They have also just finished up volunteering in Uganda, and are currently in Rwanda penetrating the "impenetrable forest". While they're here we hope to get in as much adventure as we can, but so far our plans are undecided. On top of the visits, Jessica & I will be wrapping up the projects we are involved in here at ILRI.

Battlecat has been sold, and we have been prepping it for the transfer to the new owner by fixing up the radiator and muffler (the Kenyan roads rattled the exhaust manifold loose once again). The "bad gas" problems seem to have been resolved.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Off to Tanzania

We're off to Tanzania tomorrow until Dec 29th. We'll be staying at the base of Mt Kilimanjaro at the Marangu Hotel courtesy of my aunt Mary and uncle Duncan.

We will probably be out of internet reach until we return, but we'll have our cell phone with us in case anyone needs to reach us.

Here's a shot from Google Earth (Nairobi is just visible as the yellow tack at the top of the map):


Pictures coming soon!

Off to the Aberdares!

I have a busy two weeks coming up at work where it looks like I will have few days off, so we have decided to go on a 2-3 day safari to Aberdare National Park which is in a mountainous region north of Nairobi.

The park is quite different from other parks found in Kenya. It encloses two different environments: moorland, peaks and forest atop a high plateau, and an outcrop of dense rainforest known as the Salient. Because of this the park is in stark contrast to the open savannah of Amboseli, Masai Mara, and previous parks we've been to.

Aberdare National Park was formed in 1950 to protect the forested slopes and moors of the Aberdare Mountains (the 4 main peaks in the park range from 3500m to 4000m). The dominant species are elephant (which we still have yet to see in the wild) and buffalo, but there are also chances of seeing black rhinos, spotted hyenas, bongo antelope, bush pigs, and black leopards! The terrain however is a bit rough, and the roads can get quite muddy when there is a lot of rain. Because of this the park is rarely visited by safari companies, and even less by individual travelers! Of course this is very enticing to us.... (and Battlecat of course).

Here is a shot from Google Earth, with just a bit of the data from Tracks4Africa overlayed. The Rift Valley is to the east, and you can see the park (outlined in green) is all up in the lush vegetation of the hills (click to enlarge).


On top of the mammals I just mentioned there are hundreds of bird species present, and in general the park has varieties of fauna, flora, and scenery not found elsewhere in east Africa. We are especially looking forward to the Gura falls, which drop 300m down into the thick forest.

We'll be back on Thursday!

Two adventures for the weekend!

We have two one grand adventures planned for the weekend. First, a day trip where we return to the Rift Valley once again to the southern-most lake in the valley called Lake Magadi (something came up at work today, so we're going to save Lake Magadi for next week!). Second, a two day trip to the ILRI-owned ranch in Kapiti. Here is a shot from Google earth that shows lake Magadi to the left, and Kapiti to the right (click to enlarge):


Lake Magadi:
During the dry season, Lake Magadi is 80% covered by soda and is well known for its wading birds, including flamingos. It is a saline, alkaline lake, approximately 100 square kilometers in size, which is made up of a dense sodium carbonate brine. In places, the salt is up to 40 m thick. The lake is recharged mainly by saline hot springs (up to about 80°C), and there is a single species of fish, a cichlid called Alcolapia grahami, that inhabits the hot, highly alkaline waters of this lake basin. The lake is featured in the film The Constant Gardener, although in the film the shots are supposed to be at Lake Turkana.

Kapiti:
We don't know too much about Kapiti, other than the fact that it's a ranch that ILRI owns and there's lots of animals there. In fact, some lions apparently got into the sheep pens not too long ago and killed quite a few of them! It's not too far away from Nairobi, and the road is good getting there. We were invited to come by some friends here at ILRI, and we couldn't pass it up!

Pictures/video to come!!!

update: We still managed to have the afternoon off today, so instead of Magadi we got some supplies at the local market. One new piece of kit that we picked up is a spotlight for our 4x4 (which is henceforth named 'Battlecat'). One of the really cool things to do when on safari is not just day trips, but also night trips because it's a whole different game at nighttime. You have to have a spotlight though, cause that's how you find animals and also identify them from afar (ie predators eyes tend to reflect a bit different colour than grazers). Anyway, where we're going tomorrow is apparently very good for night trips, so we're excited to have the new gear. It's also probably our best chance of finding lions since they're often hard to spot during the daytime cause they're hiding out from the heat. Hopefully we'll have some good video ready for posting sometime next week (I've now figured out a way to get footage from our real video camera online instead of our digital camera, so the quality should be much better!).

Our new house:
Also, here are just a few shots of our new place for those interested:

This is the view coming down the stairs into the living room & dining room:


And this looking across the dining room into the kitchen:


And this is looking up the stairs:

Back on Sunday!

We got our new 4x4 today! We took it for a test drive, and everything seems to be going well with it. So we're off to Lake Nakuru for the weekend, and should be back before 6pm our time on Sunday.

Pictures coming soon!

Heading back to the Rift Valley in our new 4x4!

We have finally secured ourselves a 4x4, and we're going to be testing it out this weekend (assuming we get our insurance sorted before then) on a trip back up north to the Rift Valley. It's a 1993 Suzuki Sierra, which is similar to the Suzuki SJ's or Samurai's on the North American market. Sort of like a small Jeep. I'll have a some pictures/video of it up soon, but for now here's a shot that I pulled off the internet which is somewhat similar:

The roof on ours is quite a bit taller, with small windows above the rear windows. Also, there is a cargo rack on top for storage and an extra spare tire. It's a small little 4x4, but it's supposed to be great off road, and also very good on gas.

This time we will be going a little bit further than last week to a lake called Lake Nakuru. It's about 150km away from Nairobi, and is just north of Lake Naivasha where we were last weekend. The lake is famous for it's numerous flamingo which come to the lake to feed on the abundant algae which thrive in its warm alkaline waters. There is a larger variety of animals at this park than at Hells Gate (where we were last week), and we're hoping to see Rhino, leopards, lions, waterbuck, and possibly even pythons! Here's a satelite photo of the park, and you can see Lake Naivasha just beyond it (looking south), and Nairobi (where the 4 thumbtacks are) at the top middle of the photo:

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In other news, this Friday is a big day for me as I will be sacrificing half of my 40 lab mice to test their blood for specific type of bacterial toxin. We infected them with the parasite that causes African Sleeping Sickness about a week and a half ago, and the whole experiment is now two weeks in the making. Hopefully the results are good! Since we are testing for bacteria in their blood, the big risk is contamination during the experimental procedure which could lead to false-positive results. That's what we have controls for though, but if contamination does occur then the past two weeks will be lost!

Off to the Rift Valley!

We decided today that it will be much easier to search for cars if we rent a car for a couple days so that we can go to all the dealerships, bulletin boards, etc. So we phoned up an ILRI-recommended rental place, and we got a great deal on a small sedan. They even came and dropped it off for us here at ILRI. I've never driven a right-wheel car before, so we took a few spins around the campus for practice, and then we were off! It was pretty easy to get used to the left hand shifting, and other idiosyncrasies of a right-wheel drive car. The blinker/wiper discrepancy was a bit weird at first, but then I realized that no one here signals anyway, so I gave up on it all together!

We got a lot accomplished today in the car search, and we've got some very good leads I think. Tomorrow is a holiday, so we've decided to head up north towards Lake Naivasha. We're going to camp just south of the lake at a national park, which is right in the middle of the rift valley (at least it looks like it is on Google Earth):

It's supposed to be an incredible place, so hopefully I've have some shots/video up soon!

Maps of where we will be!

Above is a nice view of Kenya and surrounding countries.


Click on the above to see a view of Nairobi, with ILRI to the west.



Here is a view of the ILRI campus.