Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Impala Park, Kisumu

Tuesday, August 30

Another fun excursion with the Nyausi/Anyembe family. First, though the photos don't do it justice, all six of us cram into a tuk-tuk.





Akwanyi took this picture holding the camera out in front of her. Not bad!!



At the entrance.





Ha.


Lots of birds here, evidently, though the only one I recognized was the hadada ibis.





What I called the hammerhead in the post on Lake Victoria is evidently more accurately called a hamerkop.


Enclosures with, variously, ostrich, monkeys, baboons, cheetah, lions, jackals, hyenas, guinea fowl. Felt sad for them.


Off for a walk in the woods!


An impala peeking out. There were three or four back there.






This was the path we wanted to take, but the rains had another idea. It was a fairly crisply moving creek.



I almost never succeed in getting butterfly photos. This poor little fellow was nearly drowned. I tried to rescue him with a twig after I took the shot, but he was not looking grateful as I left.






Shute is an explorer, Hidaya, for all her mischief-making, is a daddy's girl at the moment. I would say that Akwanyi is an inquisitive academic.


Weird caterpillars and chrysalises (evidently also called chrysalides. why??) These guys are known to make your skin sting and itch if you touch them. Oddly, it actually looked more like tiny caterpillars were coming out rather than butterflies. We ran into a park scientist, who was going to get back to us on which butterfly comes from these caterpillars. Anyone know?








I took random shots of the ground, which was swarming with dragonflies and butterflies. Managed to get this black and white butterfly.


Sundowner tower. We stopped here for some trail mix (cashews and raisins) and water.






The railway walk. Anyembe walked along to see whether we might want to give it a try, but it only led further away from the entrance and we needed to start back.






Back toward the entrance.





We finally saw the famed impala in groups, just free along the lakeshore.






A sausage tree. Evidently some Luo (at least used to) use one of the fruits to bury in a grave if someone had died but the corpse was missing. The fruit is supposedly edible but not delicious. None of us was tempted to test that statement from our guide Duncan on Sunday.



Hidaya, left in red, and Shute.


A really fun excursion. When we tuk-tuked back, Everlin and I went to a meeting with commercial sex workers at Cadif (more later) and Anyembe and the kids played at Jomo Kenyatta Park, across the street from my hotel, until we got back.

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