Lake Naivasha

Before we left for Africa, we had been told about this amazing place in Kenya where you can camp on the shores of a hippo-infested lake. Obviously, we had to check it out, so now, we're on our way to Camp Carnelley's, on the southern side of Lake Naivasha.

To get there, we need take a matatu from Nairobi, which first means getting to the bus station in the centre of the capital. And the traffic is like nothing we've ever seen before. There is basically an entire bus district devoted to matatus, with thousands upon thousands of the white minibusses, all emblazoned with different stickers and quotes. Some are obvious: "Made in Kenya"; some might refer to a football team- we saw an entire bus wrapped with the Tottenham team; some are a strange take on well known video games: "Call of Duty: Pillow Talk", whilst others are just inexplicable: "Laptop".

Our Uber driver pushes his way through the traffic and finds us the relevant bus. And then disaster strikes. Navigating our way through the intense traffic, Chris foolishly tries to take a video of the pandemonium outside. As he's putting his phone away, a hand reaches in through the window, across Katie, and the phone is gone. Chris tries to look for the culprit, but they're already part of the crowd. In truth, this could have happened anywhere, and Chris is the first to admit that he shouldn't have had his phone out in a crowded bus station. It's still a bummer though.

The rest of the journey proceeds without incident and we arrive to Naivasha. The camp is great- directly on the lake shore, with two hippos bobbing in the water. The bar area is particularly special- a big open plan area built out of huge wooden beams, bedecked with African prints.

In the evening, the electric fence is erected to protect us from the hippos, and we hear them grunt throughout the night, just metres away from us. It's pretty exciting/nervewrecking.

The next day we had planned to go to Hell's Gate, a nature reserve where it's possible to cycle around and see animals. Unfortunately for us, lions have been spotted, so it's no longer safe to cycle- instead you have to go in a vehicle. We pass, having just done the Maasai Mara. Instead, we head to a nearby crater lake. Inside an extinct volcano is a lake, and on that lake is a restaurant. We have a nice meal, made special by the fact that we're eating inside a volcano. And then the rains come. Big, African rains. It's our first big rain of the trip, and it's monumental. It feels that the entire sky is coming down, and we can't see across the lake, it's so thick. Once it stops, we walk up the rim to get good views of the lake, then head back.

The roads have become almost impassable by the rains, and our driver is forced to perform a manoeuvre whereby half the car is in the deep puddles, and the other side is up on the embankments bordering the road. We feel like we're tilted 45 degrees to the left, and it gets us through to the other side.

Heading back to camp, we see a giraffe casually walking down the road. It's amazing to see one just hanging about on the outskirts of a village rather than in a designated national park- it reminds you that these animals are part of the fabric of Africa rather than just residents of safari parks.

We're slightly worried about the effect that the intense rains will have had on our tent and belongings, but we needn't have worried. Despite being only a couple of kilometres away, the camp was untouched by the rains. Our world-ending storm was focussed just on the crater lake.

The following day, we're off to Uganda. We've booked a bus from the nearby city of Nakuru, and need to get another matatu to get there. One of the problems with minibus travel in Africa is that there are no timetables- the busses leave when they are full. On lesser-travelled routes, like this one, this trait can mean waits of hours, anxiously ticking down to our coach's departure time. Luckily, after a couple of hours, we are full and we hit the road. We make the coach with plenty of time to spare, and eat chips in the coach station until departure time.

It's an overnight bus, and we quickly fall asleep. We are, however, awakened at around 2.30am by a sudden stop. Chris looks out of the front window and sees warped metal and glass directly in front of the bus. Katie awakens from her slumber to enquire: "what's going on?" "I think there's a crash in front of us", replies Chris. Upon that news, Katie drops back to sleep. Chris is too nervous to sleep, and watches on as, about 45 minutes later, the first ambulances show up. Other road traffic starts to go off road to navigate the crash site, but our bus doesn't- we assume that since we are directly behind the crash, the driver needs to give a statement. After around 3 hours or so, the crash is cleared and we can proceed. We later see on the news that, tragically, 13 people lost their lives in the crash, as a coach, much like ours, performed an overtake and collided head-on with an oncoming tractor. It's incredibly sad.Read more