The first job of the day was
to train the Youth for Conservation guys up on the Garmin GPS systems. We
helped out with the teaching and them went along to check on their first
location plots using our own GPS units. The first fence wound through 18km
of mountainside and forest, and we plotted points every 100m ... quite a
few GPS waypoints!
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Initially the fence followed a track to, and then alongside, the Sagana Settlement area. After a time though the track dwindled to a path for animals, and villagers came out to watch our progress. No vehicles had been along the route before, and it was not hard to see why; down and then out of steep-sided u-shape valleys, alarming sideslopes with vertiginous drops, thick bush... the two Land Rovers worked hard. Strangely the Born Free Landies are supplied with road tyres and scrabble for grip where Maggie, on mud-terrain tyres, strolls along easily. The Kenyan guys loved 15-year old African veteran Maggie, insisting she was a mzee, Swahili for wise old man.
The Sagana fence is 18km long and we followed it all in the Land Rovers, apart from the last 1400 metres where we'd have needed to cut down old-growth hardwood vegetation to get the wagons through. Since the name of the game was conservation, this was not an option, so the guys went ahead on foot. Hardwood in Kenya has been decimated over the last 10 years and this is causing huge problems, which will get far worse in the near future, causing water shortages and desertification.
) The start of the fence was easy to follow, by vehicle track |
) But all too soon the track vanished. Keeping three tons of loaded Landy away from an electric fence takes some doing here. Road tyres made this 60-degree slope 'interesting'. The Landys were the first vehicles to drive through here. |
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) Up with the roof tent at the end of a long day, at a KWS camp in the bush. I'd sneaked a bottle of Dalwhinnie single malt on board ... essential medication. |
) Elephants and hyena moved around the Land Rover that night and at 2am we were woken by a foraging family of hyraxes making a terrific din. |
