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I don't know how I manage it but I always seem to wake up ten minutes before my alarm, even this morning when my alarm was set for 5am. I got up and dressed and went to find the truck, this was not difficult, it was the biggest overland truck I had ever seen and it was bright yellow and named Eeyore. I met the other tour leader who is training, Leeane and the three of us started to cook breakfast for ourselves and the two passengers.
At 6:30am the safari van arrived to take me and the passengers Adriana and Julian to Nakuru national park, somewhere I had already been, but I wasn't looking a free safari in the mouth.
It was about a twenty minute drive to the national park and we arrived a bit too early as the park hadn't opened yet. The last time I was here I spent the first two hours sleeping, due to the fact that I had already been overlanding for nearly three months and was borderline exhausted. After my day of sleeping yesterday, I was well rested and could actually enjoy the morning in this park. The first thing we saw was a black rhino, who came up behind us while we were stationary and looking and a heard of buffalo and zebra and scared the hell out of our driver. Black rhinos are shy and territorial, you're not supposed to get within 200m of on and this one was only about 20m away from us.
The lake was much higher than it was last time, as it is wet season now, so there weren't many flamingoes on it, but there were hundreds of pelicans and we even spotted a few hippos. At one point the driver absolutely sped off while we were all hanging out of the roof. When he stopped, he stopped near two other vans and said there were lions in the long grass. We caught a fleeting glimpse of a male and two females before they disappeared. The male then climbed up into a tree and we could see him at a distance, these are a special type of tree climbing lion, only found here and in one other place in Africa.
We went up to the view point and some stupid tourist in another van, thought it was ok to eat lunch near a troup of baboons. They were bananas, (pardon the pun) especially the dominant male who basically attacked him for his sandwich. The man tried to shoo them away, you can't shoo baboons…they don't shoo. It scared the hell out of me, I hate baboons and they were now all riled up. I kept close to the driver in case I needed to take a flying leap back into the van.
We left the baboons and went in search of a nice spot for lunch, we stopped near a beautiful waterfall just long enough to eat. It was now the middle of the day and hot and all the animals were hiding from the heat, so we decided to go for a drink a Nakuru lodge.
The three of us had cocktails on the terrace overlooking the park, we had gotten in there just in time because as soon as we were settled with our drinks it pelted down with rain, which was actually quite refreshing. I sat there staring out at the park in the amazing weather, thinking all I was missing was a pith helmet.
We left the lodge, with me knowing that was it for the safari, you never see anything when its wet. We drove around the park for another two hours seeing basically nothing but a few giraffes, before making our way back to the campsite. Once back at the camp, Leeanne, Sue and I set about cooking dinner. Meatballs and roast potatoes, I'd forgotten how good camp food is. It took ages to cook but it was really worth it. I went back to my room at about 8:30pm, completely exhausted, watched a movie on my laptop and went off to bed.
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