Crescent Island

This week we had a chance to try out a new Kenya activity: Lake Naivasha and Crescent Island. We had heard good things about it before--a private game reserve that happens to be on an island in the middle of a lake. You can walk around to your heart's content among giraffes and zebras and such. It was about 2 1/2 hrs from Tenwek, and we started at a place called Hippos Safaris to pick up a boat. We had the pleasure of our friends David and Cheryl Lee with us.

You can see the "kid sized" life jacket here:
Our boat driver took us through marshy areas off shore to begin our journey. We saw several hippos and a wide variety of interesting and exotic looking birds.

Maggie particularly enjoyed the water.
Our driver brought along some dead fish, and would call these fish eagles by whistling, then throw them a fish. They would swoop down from the trees and catch the fish out of the water.
We got to Crescent Island and started with a picnic lunch.
Then off to see the animals! In the background (although hard to see in this pic) are gazelle, zebras, and wildebeest.
A beautiful giraffe by the side of the lake, with Mt. Longonot (a dormant volcano) in the background.

A water buck:
Not 30 minutes into our walk, it started raining...then hailing! We took shelter in a small hut with a rather poor thatch job on the roof! At least it kept off most of the hail. Found out later this hut was built for and featured in the movie Out of Africa, which was filmed on this island in the 80s.
As the rain was letting up, a man stuck his head in the hut and said he had come to find us....so he could show us a python! Shar is pointing to it on the ground, the dark brown log-looking thing between the bushes. It was at least 12 feet long as as big around as my thigh. Apparently they can eat gazelle. Yikes!
Family photo by the giraffe!

A beautiful sight.