Lewa Conservancy, Sirikoi

Day Sixteen: December 31 [1st day Sirikoi]
Today we are switching areas, now we are going to Lewa Conservancy, in northern Kenya. It is a conservancy that was created almost entirely for black rhinos. We get up, eat breakfast and start our drive to the airstrip. On the way we go stone tool hunting, finding many obsidian tools, made by “cavemen” about 1.5 million years ago. When we are done we get to the airstrip and get into the next plane, another Cessna. When we got there we almost instantly saw a white rhino and her baby.

Then we proceeded to the hotel. It was really fancy, probably a 7-star hotel, the most fancy hotel I’d ever been in with over the top service and luxury rooms. We got our own house called ‘Sirikoi House.’ We hang around for a while, and then meet in the main room for tea.

Amaia, my sister, going over the smooth and slick painted floors to get coffee cake, slips and falls, making the plate she was holding bump into her head, leaving a large cut. We fix it up with steri-strips, and now she is going to have a scar above her eye, like the rest of the Ellis family.

Then we start to prepare for the new year’s celebration. We put back on our insane outfits, and go out to the party held on a big deck outside overlooking the reserve. After the party finishes we go straight to bed.

Day Seventeen: January 1st
Today was a lazy day, because we stayed up so late at the celebration. We basically hung around the lodge until lunch, and then went on a hike through the nearby mountains. I even got to sit in a wallow! After we finished our hike we went home for dinner, and went to bed.

Day Eighteen: January 2nd

Today we are touring a Masai village called Il Ngwesi. We get up early and get into the cars to go to the village. On the way to the village we pick up a hitchhiker who goes to the village with us. When we get to the village a warrior and elder give us a tour of the village starting with the way they hunt. They hide behind a donkey that is wearing an impala mask, so the animals can't see them, and then shoot the animal point blank with a bow. Next we saw how they made fire, collected honey, and made traps. Then we go to go inside the village, and see the huts, which are very small. Then we went to the bead market and I got a machete used by a warrior and a club, and mom got $200 worth of bracelets. After we were done we drank about 10 gallons of sprite, and went home.

After lunch we we visited three baby black rhinos that we got to snuggle up with as they went to sleep after each having 3 liter bottles of milk ! The eldest, Nicky, was born blind, and couldn’t keep up with his mom; the middle one, Hope became an orphan when her mother was killed by poachers at another conservancy, and the littlest one Kilifi, had to be taken from his mom, Mawingo, as she couldn’t protect him in the wild. The baby rhinos will be released when they can survive by themselves in the wild. After that we went on a 20-minute horse safari and then then to one of Ninian’s friend’s houses, a rich collector and filmmaker named Alan Root. When we go there I played with his two kids, and showed them my club and knife. Then we sat down for tea. After about twenty minutes, we went home for dinner, and went to sleep.