19th February
by Dr Adam Todd
Our second day at the Wildlife Research and Training Institute started early with a morning of introductory lectures giving us background knowledge on East Africa and Kenya. This quick run-down gave us a brief overview of what we were going to expect from our coming few weeks in Naivasha.
The remainder of the morning focused on giving us an introduction to population ecology and monitoring – something that will no doubt be very useful in the days to come, where we will put this knowledge into practice.
Lunch was followed by the entire group hopping into land cruisers, along with our guides, for our first introductory trip into the Hell’s Gate National Park. We were all very fortunate to see so many species in our first outing – including giraffe, zebra, buffalo, baboon (and babies), rock hyrax, brown mongoose, hawk eagle and Ruppon’s griffin vulture. The park has many unique geographic and geological features which we were able to tour before turning back towards base. The park is known for its towering vertical cliffs and gorges. Geothermal streams are also present in the park.
After a full day we arrived back to dinner out by the pool area – with an open fire and BBQ waiting for us!
