It’s a magical wonderland.
Crimson ribbons fly across a lustrous lake for its entire length. It’s the pink flamingos – more precisely the Lesser flamingos – of Bogoria, the caustic cauldron just north of the Equator in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley. In between the shorter more glamorous birds we see few of the less glamorous Greater flamingos. Continue reading “Bogoria’s Flaming Flamingos”
On Manda Island in the Lamu archipelago
Above: Green Turtles hatching on Manda Island – Copyright Maya Mangat
“The turtles are hatching today,” announced an excited Famau Shukri of Lamu Marine Conservation Trust ( LaMCoT) over the phone. With exciting news like this first thing in the morning, l jumped out of bed and raced down the two flights of steps of Amu House, the historical 16th century old house in Lamu. “The turtles are hatching today,” l relayed the news to everyone at breakfast and plans immediately changed to sail to Shela the neighbouring village to Lamu Stone Town to meet up with Shukri.
A red rock in the sky startles me. It’s unblinking and huge compared to the rest of the constellations littered in the Milk Way. It’s Mars, the Red Planet at its brightest since 2003 and close to reaching directly opposite the sun in the Earth’s sky, giving us the closest view of Mars in 15 years.
It’s raining in Lamu Stone Town that has continuously been lived in for seven centuries and hence boasts of being the oldest urban town in East Africa. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001, Lamu Stone Town is imbued with a richness of it past. Continue reading “On a Shopping Spree in Lamu”
Published 7 July 2018
Sun-burnished mangrove leaves float like skeins of gold thread on the blue waters of the Indian Ocean. We’re sailing from Lamu Stone Town on Lamu Island to Manda Island that lies across the channel. Our boatman points to the village settled by the Luo from the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya. The men quarry for coral on the island and chisel the hard rock into building blocks for construction. They are hardy men carrying up to five blocks on a shoulder to load the boats that carry them away. A statue of a quarry man with the bricks on his shoulder stands on the edge of the village that is called Jaluo after the people, so tells our Swahili boatman. Continue reading “A Trip to Takwa”
Moonlion Safaris 