7/3 Into the Great Rift Valley and Lake Natron…

7/3 Into the Great Rift Valley and Lake Natron…

The Land Rover left Eneshiva and made the four hour trek (on a crazy dirt road) to Lake  Natron, the heart and soul of Massai culture, and about as remote a place that exists on our planet.  First we descended the 2,000ft escarpment, a wall of rock the marks the eastern edge of the African tectonic plate as it diverges away from the Indian plate, creating the Great Rift Valley below.  At the bottom lay Lake Natron, a Magadi lake, which means it’s salty and very alkaline… not a place to go swimming.

Soon we begin seeing the Massai people, dressed in their colorful robes and wearing sandals made out of old truck tires.  We pass through their village and see their bomas (homes), which consist of a few circular huts made from sticks and cow dung surround by circular fences made of acacia brambles.  Also in their bomas they keep their goats and cows.   

We arrive in our camp and are greeted by Ken’s two Massai friends, Marius and Samwel!  They give us affectionate hugs and welcome us, as we sit in camp and hear their stories a couple hours. 

Later they accompany us the lake, but on our way we stop to see a crucial archaeological dig 

featured in Nat Geo four issues ago- 100,000 year old human footprints!  They are preserved in hard volcanic rock, so we didn’t endanger them by putting our feet right in the places humans walked 100,000 years ago.   

At the lake we see the one animal that thrives in the alkaline environment- flamingos!  They feed on the algae that thrive in the water, and the pink pigment from these algae turn the birds pink!  Part of the lake had dried up, so we walked out on salt, crusted ground, 

full of minerals from nearby Ol Doingyo Lengai, which means Mountain of God in Massai, and is a 16,000 foot active volcano that dominates the landscape.  Another awesome day…