Camp Carnellys- Lake Navaisha

   After a 5 hour flight from Abu Dhabi ,I was picked up at the airport by Gabriel, from Just Connections Taxi. We drove the more than 3 hours to Camp Carnellys along a  mostly two - lane windy road that was filled with trucks. The driver kindly stopped so I could like at the view of the Great Rift Valley.

     Camp Carnellys is an idyllic place along Lake Navaisha. They have signs about being careful of the hippos.

Apparently there are over 2,000 hippos in the lake! At night, they try to come up into the campground, but they built a trench and erect an electrified barbed wire fence at night.
      I finally got to see Mary Rose and Greg Dow and the children. They were all staying in tents and cooking over a stove. I was booked into a bandu that has it own shower and toilet.

The only thing that made me uneasy was that there was nothing on the windows but a few open bars. Also, it was my first time sleeping in a bed with a malaria net.

There was also a hole in the wood floor that worried me about something crawling in!
      All through the night and early morning I heard the sounds of animals. I learned and later saw there were two types of monkeys swinging from the trees all around the camp. In addition, there are many types of birds, some very colorful such as blue and yellow.
      Unexpectedly a giraffe wandered into the campsite for the first time. It took a real liking to Greg Dow.

I was able to stand in front of him and he was very calm.

Later we went on a 1 hour boat ride all around Lake Navaisha.

Our sponsored son, Duncan, counted 45 hippos in the water, many with babies.

We also saw zebras on the shore as well as a water buck.

There were many different varieties of birds such as herons and comorants. We were surprised to see men fishing in the lake submerged to their chest with fishing nets, given the large number of hippos. Also I was told the lake is filled with all kinds of bacteria and parasites.
     I met a woman from the Africa Yoga Project.

She said she was training a team of yoga instructors from the USA to do yoga as a way for healing with people in trauma,
     It was a great time at the camp.