Sweetwater Tented Camp

To Sweetwater tented camp. We left Samburu with a full day of driving ahead of us again, and no intentions of stopping in the reserve on our way out. I'm not one who likes to not be prepared for picture, so I left the telephoto on until we got to the main road. Of course, as we drove the dusty, bumpy road, we happened upon a group of Oryx,

they are only seen in the North, so it was a nice treat. Then, expecting to swiftly leave a large trail of dust behind is, we came upon one Grevy's Zebra, thought to be special to this area as well, amazing. As we finally left the park, I got a chance to catch up on the blog and watch some scenery, it really is a beautiful place.

Snapped some pics along the road and even got some shots of camels, brought from neighboring Somalia. At one point of the journey, we noticed a group of school kids out in a soccer field with their teacher. Our driver was very accommodating and stopped so we could give away one of our soccer balls. Wen the kids saw us, they came running as fast as they could, excited and yelling. We made sure the ball was given to the teacher, to be sure no one felt we gave the ball to only them and not for everyone to share. The teacher was very happy and proud, and the kids were ecstatic to get a new ball. A bunch of the kids were asking me to take photos and then ask to see it. The excitement and joy on these kids faces was priceless, it warmed our hearts and brought tears to my eyes!

Then not long after that, we made a visit to a private girls boarding school. It's encouraging to hear the government helps these schools when it takes in girls sold off to early marriage or were in bad homes. They live in and are educated in a "compound" that is under construction, and they are there from 5th grade to 8th grade, the are tested to continue into Secondary school. The conditioned there are very rough, but the girls looked happy, healthy and well mannered. We visited the 7th and 8th grade classrooms, with 35 students in each class. Each class sang a beautiful spontaneous song about Jesus for us and we handed out ink pens to them and gave the teacher a soccer ball for the group.

The rest of the school supplies we brought, colored pencils, crayons, markers and paper were given to the head mistress Teresa so she can give them out as they needed them. It was amazing to hear of Teresa making this career a whole lifestyle for herself after she was widowed. It only cost $400 dollars a year per student for the cost of room/board and education, but to a Kenyan, it's more then most could afford. The construction of the building has been a slow process as well, since there is little extra money to go towards the building cost and they have to rely on donors. Directly next to the school is a weaving factory for women, where they spin, clean, dye and weave beautiful rugs and shawls from Marino wool.

While walking around the grounds of the factory, we noticed a kindergarten class at play, so we got permission to give the teachers soccer balls there too. These kids were much smaller then the last group and SO cute. They ran up to shake our hands and welcome us to there school. Everyone here in Kenya have been taught English in school, as well as Swahili, secondary to their mother tongue from each of their tribes. This made it extremely easy to talk with the kids and visit with the teacher. Again the kids were very grateful for the ball, and wanted their picture taken to see the images. It's fantastic to see their gratitude on their faces. Lunch was provided at the Mount Kenya Safari Club, quiet a plush British club, but a little too stuffy for our group. But, a cool feature of the club was that it was built on the Equator. So half the place was on the North Hemisphere and half on the South. The food was magnificent as well and the view of Mount Kenya was amazing, but the clouds were dancing on the top of the peak, hiding it from our sight. Finally after the extremely long drive and the multiple diversions, we arrived at the conservatory of Sweetwater. Just shortly after entering the park, we spot several Zebras, a Roan Antelope, a common Waterbuck, more Impala, an elephant and a lioness. Before we could spend a lot of time looking at the lioness, we headed off to the

Jane Goodall Chimpanzee conservatory. It was a little late in the day, so we only got to see a few chimps before they headed off into the trees to the feeding house. They are kept inside at night to keep them safe. We walked around the Chimp area (they are fenced in, so weren't close to them), and got to see an African Snake Eagle, looks like our bald Eagle. Lastly, we had about an hour of daylight left, so we popped the top of the safari bus and drove around the park. This is when we returned to find the Lionesses,

at a closer view, probably about 50 yards from us, maybe even closer. They are beautiful and being in a pride is the perfect name for them. We decided to move along and found other lioness, just laying in the grass, basking in the sun, not really interested in what the buses are doing alongside her. As we drove on, a blacked-backed Jackal crossed the road, away from a group of zebras, warthogs and further on we saw a Caped Buffalo and a Cokes Hartebeest.

An additional visit to a Rhino Conservatory gave us a chance to meet Baraka, meaning blessed, a blind Black Rhino, that was brought into captivity when found struggling and wounded. He was a sweet beast and he is humble enough to accept food from people, most black rhinos are stubborn and would rather die. By now, the sun was sinking fast and we were ushered to our best hotel yet, the 1st tent camp!!!! It's a wood foundation and basic structure, inside walls and thatched roof, with canvas tent enclosure. My tent had 2 rooms, bedroom and bathroom (probable one of the best bathrooms yet). All tents were positioned to face a watering hole for the animals, (our camp was fenced in) and we were in constant awe of the animals that came to visit. We also had free wifi, this is when I updated my blog last and posted to Facebook for the first time to say hello to my friends and family. After dinner I watched to watering hole while enjoying some tea, but it had been such a long day, we called it a night pretty early. What a day!