Wednesday July 20th

We left the cottage for our Star Bed experience.  Somehow Jen snuck in a "camping" experience without anyone knowing.  On our drive in the morning we stopped off at a farm to watch the cows being dipped.  They do this every two weeks to keep the tics off the cows.

Everyone except grandma rode a camel to the star beds and she rode along in the car with Lawrence our guide who was fabulous.  He and Tim were quite a duo.

We arrived at the Star Beds after about an hour camel ride.  We were greeted by the Samburu in their traditional attire.  The dining room overlooks the watering hole that happened to have some elephants in it.One of the animals on the checklist that Di gave us that is very hard to spot is the Greater Kudu.  Tim told the gang working that if anyone spotted one to let us know and within 5 minutes a very excited Moses announced the great news.  It took a long time for them to get all of us to see the Kudo, but eventually there was success.

Tim went back to the Loisaba lodge because there was no room at the inn and after the thunderstorm ended Lawrence took us to a village called Kimjo.  The roads were not exactly maintained.  It took us about an hour and a half to get there and Lawrence said it takes the same amount of time to walk.  We were greeted at the village by a group of women singing.  Jen danced with them and we recorded it and when we got back to the Star Beds and showed the men the video they all laughed and told us it was very funny.

The chief, David, gave us a tour of their homes which are made of mud and dung and obviously do not have any electricity.  When we came out of the hut the villagers had all put their wares out and the shopping began.  Most items were between 5 and 10 dollars.  David takes care of all the finances and Jen was sad to see that he had a calculator.

We got back in the dark and there was a fire waiting for us.  They served us some appetizers and then Moses (a different Moses) entertained us with a couple of songs he had composed on an instrument he had made from the steel from steel belted tires.  I have no idea how he was tuning this instrument but he did.

We then had a candlelight dinner and were escorted to our starbeds which are outdoors but very high up so that the animals can't get to you.  Luckily we got in bed just in time.  We had about 15 minutes of stargazing before the clouds rolled in.

Favorite bird of the day:
This little guy built a nest on the chandelier that was hanging over our dining table.