Outamba Kilimi National Park

On October 22nd we decided to take and 'excursion' of sorts to Outamba Kilimi National Park. The park is about 14 miles north of Kamakwie hospital, but takes some work to get there. Because it wasn't safe to take a vehicle further up-country, we rented motor bikes and drivers to take the 4 of us to the park. That was an adventure, but actually the trip was my favorite part of the day because we left early morning, and as we were riding through the countryside/jungle/mountains, the sun was just coming up and everything was shrouded in fog. Wish I had a picture of it, but not really possible to take one from the back of a bike. Half-way to the park, we had to cross a river on a rather Huckleberry Finn looking raft/ferry thing that was a little sketchy (hence the reason we didn't take a vehicle) but we made it. Upon arriving at the park we were told that we had 'just missed' the monkeys, but we could go on a boat ride down the river to see the hippos.... the river was beautiful, but no hippos were seen. Then we went across the river and walked through the 'elephant park' and saw footprints, dried up elephant poop, scratched up trees, but no elephants. We did get to see lots of flies, centipedes, and a couple of rather large birds.

looks like something straight out of 'Narnia'

it's easy going down river

one of our drivers told me that you can walk across this river during dry season!!!

me, Patience (midwife from Nigeria), and Andrea (schoolteacher and friend from Kamakwie)

me and Emily =)

So the trip home was uneventful, except for an incident on the ferry. While we were waiting for the ferry to pick us up, we heard this really loud hissing sound as the air came out of one of the bike's back tires. The drivers had the brilliant idea to change the tire and try to blow it up while we were on the ferry. All was fine and dandy until they dropped the lug nut that held the tire on... it fell between the ferry boards into the water, never to be seen again. So we waited on the side of the river until they went to the village and found the part needed to fix the tire, and then we made our way back to Kamakwie.