Thompson Travelers

We drove six hours north, on our way to Samburu, our next location.  

Halfway there, we stopped for lunch in a treehouse.  Yep, that right, think Robinson Caruso and the Disneyland treehouse, and you’ve got the idea….only it’s a real treehouse. 

The Trout Treehouse is actually a trout farm, with tanks where all the trout of various ages are kept. As you enter down the cobblestone steps, you enter their wold of rickety wooden bridges held together by a sophisticated labyrinth of ropes as you cross into the treehouse.  

Billowing smoke surrounds you as you pass by the open air kitchen, where fresh water trout is being filled over smoking wood, the scent of the fragrant burning wood filling the air.  

Above us, scampering  in the trees were colobus monkeys, anxious for a handout, with waiters standing by with slingshots to scare them away of they get a little too aggressive.  

What a charming and unique place to have lunch.  You have to know about it to find it…it’s a bit hidden, but well worth a visit.  

Mid afternoon, we arrived at the entrance to the Buffalo Springs Game Reserve, 650 square kilometers of wilderness.  We have arrived at our first site for our safari tour.  

We popped open the top of the Jeep, and prepared for the next few hours to be rocking’ and rolling over dusty, unpaved, there’s hardly a road there.  You get really dusty just because the tired stir up the dirt which ends up everywhere, but you really don’t care.  Everyone is so excited to see what might be hiding in the wilderness.

We learned that in this area, we are looking for the Samburu Special Big Five:  the Reticulated Giraffe, Grevy’s Zebra, The Gerenuk, the Somali Ostrich, and the Beisa Ornx. The reason they are named in this group is that they are unique to Northern Kenya and found nowhere else in the world.   

At first, it’s a whole lot of nothing, just wide open fields of land, grasses, and trees…then slowly, the animals start to appear.  

Considering that this was our first day for only two and a half hours, we saw so many animals, and we could not be a happier bunch of people. It’s pretty darn exciting, and we can’t wait to see what we will discover tomorrow.