the forest

We live fairly close to Arabuko-Sokoke Forest. Our house is on a hill high enough that we can actually see the hills of the forest from our windows. We drive through the forest on our way to Malindi and have been to the coast side, at Mida Creek and Gede Ruins. However, we had never been to the Kenya Forest Service park, which covers most of the inland side of the forest.

There were several things that we wanted to do, but we had a limited time, so we only got to do the nature walk. We will have to go back for the rest!

We started off walking around the reception building and the neighborhood of people living there. We saw the famous, but rare, golden rumped elephant shrew. We saw yellow baboons and Sykes/blue monkeys, both of which we have seen before on our other trips to and through the forest.

taking pictures of the elephant shrew

monkeys - always exciting for Nate and Ben

The nature walk was about 2 km, but Nate and Ben did way better than I anticipated! They both took little breaks, riding on backs or shoulders when they got too tired, and Ben was super grumpy for the last bit. We stopped frequently to experience interesting things.

Our guide showed us useful trees and plants. Some have practical uses, like storing water, and some are just fun!

drumming on mushrooms that grow on a tree

swinging from a vine

Rodgers had to help me get my feet up...

I scraped my leg coming down from there. I hardly noticed it until flies started trying to eat me. I had a big bandaid in the backpack, which covered the scrape well enough, but the flies still kept trying to get to it. How ridiculous and disgusting!

Little B, hanging in there

There are "tree houses," which let you see over the tops of the trees. That is one thing I'd like to go back and do. They also have an elephant preserve and other large game, which we always love to see!