For our second day in the Maasai Mara, Enoch was keen to show us something a little different. When you picture Kenya, dense woodland is probably not the first thing that springs to mind, and yet Kenya’s forest ecosystems are as vital to the sustenance […]
Category: Kenya
Day 15: Where the Wild Things Are
Our first full day in the Maasai Mara began at 5:30am, because apparently that’s when the animals are most active. Weirdos. We yawned our way into the jeep, shivering in the chilly morning air and waiting for some of that famous African sun to show […]
Day 14: To the Mara!
In the early hours of Monday morning, on the fourteenth day of our trip, we left the relative comfort and familiarity of Kiboko Camp behind to set off on a week of travels to the Maasai Mara and beyond. Packing our bags and saying goodbye […]
Days 11-13: Farewell to Kiboko Camp (for now)
We spent the last few days of our second week conducting more interviews, monitoring the camera traps, and preparing for the next leg of our trip into Kenya’s Rift Valley region. Mandela had left earlier in the week to return to his job at a […]
Day 10: Lion Lights and Late Night Frights
We began our tenth day with a feast. Chris had been busy all morning whipping up a huge batch of mandazi, triangular pockets of fried pastry which taste of sugary warmth and are best eaten by the bucketload. The supply seemed to be limitless, and […]
Lights, camera… try again
We had something of a rocky start with our camera traps. On the morning of the wedding day, we made a foray out of the camp into the surrounding bushland, ready to get the cameras up and running so that we could start collecting data. […]
A week of community interviews
Having spent a few days getting to know the area and its wonderful cast of characters, the time had come to start conducting our interviews and learning about human-wildlife conflict. This issue, which forms a major part of Enoch’s research, is a significant challenge for […]
Day 5: Maasai Marriage
I had been feeling a little apprehensive about the community interviews that we were soon due to conduct. There was no doubt in my mind that everyone we spoke to would make us feel welcome, but I wanted to give them reason to like us, […]
Day 4: The Big Beasts of Nairobi
Today I kissed a giraffe, and I’m not ashamed to say that I enjoyed it. Remarkably, this wasn’t even the most exciting thing that happened on our fourth day in Kenya – the giraffe-smooching barely made the top five. We had a packed schedule, so […]
Day 3: Getting kitted up in Kitengela
I awoke on Thursday morning to find Impi grazing outside my window. Our eyes met in a moment of polite acknowledgement: she was having her breakfast, I was about to have mine. As we tucked into our omelettes and Impi munched on her grass, Enoch […]
Day 2: Welcome to Kiboko
My first night in Kenya certainly lived up to expectations – the whirring of mosquitoes sounded like it was coming from inside my skull, the local dogs barked with such gusto that I thought half the lions in Africa had descended on them, and I […]
Day 1: Here be lions (probably)
I hadn’t expected to see a zebra in the headlights within an hour of touching down in Nairobi – but, then again, I’m not sure what I should’ve been expecting, and our driver certainly seemed unfazed. Fortunately, so did the zebra. Eight hours ago, there […]
CUWCS-CUEX KENYA EXPEDITION 2017 – SIGNING OFF
The last leg of our expedition was to take place back in Nairobi, checking the results of the two week deployment of camera traps and preparing the project for long term functionality following our departure from Kenya. Following the long drive from Amboseli we were […]
Amboseli – Elephants, Schools, and Mt Kilimanjaro
The next stage of our journey was to take us to Amboseli National Park in Southern Kenya. The park and its surrounding area is famous for its elephants, with much of the key work on elephant behaviour developed through study of the Amboseli families. With […]
Kericho and Nakuru – Tea, Frogs, and Thunder Storms
After saying farewell to our French amis, we left the Maasai Mara. The many rocky roads (not the kind with marshmallows unfortunately) that lay ahead were no challenge for the TVTC (the van that can), a 1.8L, two wheel drive, monster of a van that […]
MAASAI MARA – LIKE THE LION KING, BUT WITH LIMITED ELTON JOHN
A new day, a new destination, and a new means of travel. We were met at the house by Isaac and his van, a vehicle capable of amazing feats, largely as a result of Isaac’s immense driving skills, later becoming referred to as simply ‘the […]
CUWCS-CUEX Kenya Expedition 2017
In the early hours of the 6th of July three very fatigued members of the Cambridge University Wildlife Conservation Society (CUWCS) and Cambridge University Expedition Society (CUEX) touched down in windy Nairobi to embark on the CUWCS-CUEX Kenya expedition 2017. Battling through tedious visa forms […]