Lunch in a treehouse

We (me, Toby, Ella, and my colleagues Fire and Kari) finally drove north to Ol Pejeta Conservancy on Sunday, July 29! I have been doing research at Ol Pejeta since 2002, and Fire and I have been working there together since 2007. Kari is a Finnish ecologist who works with Fire and who we have invited onto our project.

Fire and I have a tradition of stopping for lunch at the Trout Tree Restaurant which is about a 3 hour drive from Nairobi, very close to Nanyuki, the town where the turn off to Ol Pejeta is. The Trout Tree Restaurant is built in an enormous Fig Tree along the Burguret River, below Mount Kenya, and trout is farmed and cooked there. We had a really nice leisurely late lunch (including fresh trout for the non-vegetarians) as it rained a little bit, and then got on our way to Ol Pejeta.

Fire, Toby and me

Toby was totally captivated by the trout ponds

Toby at the entrance to the restaurant

A good view of the tree that the restaurant was built around

Trout farmers

Ella, Toby, and Fire enjoying the enormous slices of chocolate cake we got for dessert

Toby found a playground I didn't even know was there

Toby enjoyed climbing on the playground

There are black and white colobus monkeys that hang around the restaurant

Toby feeding geese at the restaurant

Comments

D minus a week and a day

I'm leaving for my annual migration to Kenya soon, just like the wildebeest.... well, only there's a few million less of me than there are of them. Also, I'd like to think I run in a few less circles than they do, given that they spend their year basically making a big circle between Kenya and Tanzania in the Serengeti/Mara ecosystem (though that's debatable!). I'm going through my usual 'I'm leaving soon' routine: getting together with friends who want to spend a little time before I leave for a few months; making sure I can take care of all my (as my fab friend Fire calls it) "personal admin" online while I'm gone - banking, paying utilities, etc.; adding things to the duffel bag I keep stocked during the rest of the year with my 'going to Kenya' things. It's always hectic, and no matter how well I plan - and those of you who know me know I plan! - there's always a lot to do at the last minute. So it's D (departure) mi...

But... where do you go to the bathroom out there?!?

[NOTE: PLEASE IGNORE THE RANDOM BLACK SPECK IN THE UPPER RIGHT QUADRAT OF ALL OF THESE PHOTOS. SOME IRRITATING PROBLEM WITH MY LENS, I THINK. GRRRR.] This is one of the most common questions I get, so I decided to let you know all about our bush bathroom! I go to the bathroom in a long drop "choo" (Swahili for toilet, rhymes with "yo", not "you"). When you enter in the "front door", You can see it's a big hole dug in the sand, with a toilet seat on it, surrounded by a wooden frame wrapped with muslin on all sides and open on the top. We make sure there's plenty of toilet paper, and insect spray - which you can see tucked away behind a post on the right - for the flies that invariably like to hang out there. To discourage the flies, we also scoop sand from these buckets and throw it down into the hole to cover the, uh, stuff. Unfortunately, whoever designed this toilet seat - with the ring part made of wood, but the rest made of metal - di...

a shout-out to Solomon

I just want to give a shout-out to our armed guard this year, Solomon (he's the one on the left in this 2011 research team photo). We've worked with a different guard each time we've been here and they've all been great. Solomon has a particularly good sense of humor with a great laugh; keen eyes that can see elephants from a few hundred meters away as well as bones seemingly hidden in the grass; and is always patient as we ask him questions about animal behavior and footprints while we're tromping around the bush. Thanks for keeping us safe out there, Solomon!

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