I think I gloss over exactly how much driving we do on a daily basis. A 6 hour drive here, an 8 hour drive there. It has all become second nature to us. Ross joked that if someone actually calculated how much time he spent behind the wheel at the conclusion of this trip, it would be an unfathomable amount of time. So many hours that it wouldn’t even make sense. But excessive driving needs to be done sometimes to get to the next location by a reasonable time and we casually spent the the four hours driving to our next location, Baringo Lake.
Kenya currently has a COVID curfew in place from 2200-0400 where no one is allowed on the roads or else I can only imagine the kinds of drives Ross would want to do. At 2200, we hadn’t made it anywhere to sleep so we pulled off into a Shell gas station, tipped the guard, and passed the night with our truck parked in the service bay. We were waking up at 0400 anyway, so paying any amount of money to sleep in our own rooftop tent seemed silly.
Baringo Lake is a picturesque rift lake and as a result has become a popular stop for tourists. As we were standing out on the road searching for Hemprich’s Hornbill on the nearby cliffs, two birders stopped and talked to us. We agreed to join them later for a boat ride. While we had several targets to see, none proved difficult and we managed almost all of them in quick succession. But the best bird of the morning was a single roosting White-backed Night Heron that we saw with Louise and Francis while out on their boat. We had searched for this bird in Malawi last year, but missed it and we certainly weren’t expecting to get it this year as they are only sporadically seen. It’s always nice to end a successful day with an unexpected bonus!
Here’s a few photos from Baringo:
Three-banded Courser 
Northern White-faced Owl 
Gambaga Flycatcher 
White-bellied Go-away-bird 
Shining Sunbird 
Little Weaver 
Northern Masked Weaver 
White-backed Night-heron 
White-backed Night-heron