Kakamega Forest Reserve
KENYA
How to Kakamega (and no - it's not a dance...)
By LYNDI
Thursday, March 10, 2011
One of the allures of traveling independently is that you have the ability to visit those out-of-the-way cities and parks that not many people get around to. Tours visit the tourist hotspots, and those travelers with limited time usually make the same route, so Aaron and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to get off the beaten track and visit one of Kenya’s lesser-known (and cheaper) parks – Kakamega Forest Reserve. However, Aaron and I were soon to learn why people don’t visit it…
Sorry to do this to all of you reading from home (or at the office pretending to work), but our biggest problem with Kakamega was that we literally had no information on it – how to get there, what to do once there, how much it cost, etc., and our time there could have been better spent had we had accommodation and travel information for Kakamega – so we’re going to do that right now for any other intrepid travelers out there.
(Armchair readers, please feel free to skip ahead to the *** symbol to save yourself from intense confusion and near certain boredom.)
Getting to Kakamega town is easy enough – any number of matatus or buses from Kisumu, Kitale or Eldoret will drop you in the middle of town. From there you need to find your way to the Total gas station where there is a bus depot with matatus going all directions. Ask anybody for a matatu heading to Shinyalu (KSh70pp) and then be prepared to wait. Since it has to fill up before it leaves the station (and by fill-up, I mean 11 passengers in a 7 passenger van), we probably killed about an hour just sitting in the vehicle.
The road to Shinyalu is about 10km from Kakamega and is a dirt road with hills and potholes – it may be impassable in the rainy season, not sure.
Even though it’s only 10km, it probably took about 20 minutes because you drive so slow and continuously drop people off and pick them up on the side of the road.
Once in Shinyalu you can grab a motorcycle taxi on to Isecheno (KSh70), but with our big bags and laziness, Aaron and I just paid our matatu driver KSh400 to take us the extra 5km to the little town. You can easily follow signs pointing to the left of the main road to the “Forest Reserve” and just walk down the little dirt road until it ends (maybe your motorcycle taxi or matatu driver will take you all the way in if they’re feeling generous).
The Forest Reserve’s Headquarters are in a little wooden cabin around the bend where you need to check-in. According to most guidebooks, there is no entry fee but that’s wrong. The entry fee to the Kakamega Forest Reserve is now KSh600 per person per day (24 hour period, which is approximately US$8) which is still a bargain if you’re used to paying $80pp/day in the bigger parks. The rangers will then ask you how many nights you’re staying and will automatically put you up in their Forest Reserve Guesthouse for KSh500 per person per night.
We actually enjoyed the guesthouse quite a bit, but there are some cool KEEP bandas just behind them for the same price. The nice thing about KEEP (Kenya Environmental Education Program, I think…) is that it is community based and all the proceeds go right back into the community, whereas the Forest Guesthouse goes back to the government – so we would have preferred our money to benefit the locals. If you want to stay in the KEEP bandas just tell the rangers that you’ll be staying at KEEP (there doesn’t seem to be any rivalry, so it will be fine) and they can show you where they are (you will then pay the KEEP workers for the banda in a separate green building). They’re pretty cool looking, can sleep up to 3 people, and have separate hot showers (the Forest Resthouse sleeps up to 2, no electricity, and bucket showers that are self-contained, but we still really liked it). We were the only ones there at the time, but if for some reason all accommodation is full, you can put your sleeping bags out on the veranda and sleep there with a mosquito net for a discounted price.
OK! Once you’re in the park they will ask if you want to do a guided walk, prices ranging from KSh500pp to KSh1,200pp – and I believe the guides are the same whether you’re in KEEP or the Forest Resthouse. As for eating, along the main entry road into the Forest Reserve there is a little, tiny restaurant run by a little lady and her chickens where we got a delicious feast for KSh240 for two people! Any guide or worker can show you where her restaurant is (just be sure to pre-order a couple hours ahead of time so that she will have time to prepare it).
Your other (bad) option is to eat at KEEP. Even though they do such a good job with guides and accommodation, they really fail on the food side. Their meals are served family-style and cost KSh300pp – an enormous rip-off considering the food is average, the portions are small and it costs 4x as much as the other place 200m away. But if you want your money to go to the community, consider it like making a donation.
And then leaving. Again you walk to Isecheno and grab motorcycle taxis (KSh70pp) and then wait for a matatu to fill up in Shinyalu to head to Kakamega (Ksh70pp) and from there catch connections to Kisumu, Eldoret or even Nairobi. To be difficult, we were heading to the Malaba border crossing so we could continue on to Sipi Falls in Uganda, so to do that, catch a matatu for KSh150 to Bungoma, then KSh100 to Malaba – then good luck on the other side where it gets much more confusing!
***I know you probably read all that anyways and have no clue what I’m talking about, so I’ll now start an easy-to-follow narrative.
Once Aaron and I arrived in the Kakamega Forest Reserve, we were initially a little disappointed because we had thought it wouldn’t have an entry fee (the Kakamega National Forest just a little bit to the north is run by the Kenyan Wildlife Service and charges about $25 per day, so we thought we were getting away with murder!), but the $8 entry fee is fairly reasonable so we didn’t mind too much.
A nice, enthusiastic man named Smith showed us around the property and dropped us off at our room which had a beautiful view of the forest right behind it – in fact there were several colobus monkeys playing in the branches upon our arrival.
The rooms don’t have electricity, so they give you a gas lantern that I think they stopped producing in the 1940s along with two matches – so don’t mess up. Smith was not on duty that day, so he went to get a KEEP guide for us that would be our guide the following day for our walk through the forest.
And in came Eunice. She was very peculiar – I can’t quite place my finger on it. Partly she never looked at us when she talked, and was somewhat robotic, so I think I didn’t warm to her immediately. She ran us through several options for guided walks from sunrise walks for KSh1,200 to introduction 2.5 hour walks for KSh500. Initially Aaron and I considered the full-day 8-hour walk since we were pretty excited about the forest, the monkeys and all the birdlife, but then thought we’d better watch our shillings since prices were a lot higher than we initially anticipated and opted for the intro walk. Roboguide said “OK” and walked away.
We walked around the forest a bit that day – not venturing too far since we had no clue where we were – saw lots of monkeys and had an amazing dinner at the little local restaurant. That night we lit the lantern and played a rousing game of canasta before retiring. At 8:30pm. But hey – when there’s no light, your options are limited.
At 8am the next morning we were ready for our walk. Roboguide walked us around the forest, to a tea plantation and a lookout tower, but really only stopped us about 6 times in the 2.5 hours to tell us information about the forest. It was a shame, because she was really knowledgeable – any questions we had she could rattle off the answers – but she just didn’t volunteer that much info.
At any rate, Aaron and I were really glad we didn’t do the 8 hour walk. It would have been great – but only with a different guide. At the end she took us to a butterfly farm that’s right on the property and a man inside showed us around – there were only about 2 butterflies at the moment, so he then took us to his “snake research center” which consisted of 4 dead snakes in glass jars and then asked for a donation. He showed us this registry book where people write down how much they donated to his butterfly farm – there were some people that forked over US$25!!! – so Aaron and I felt kinda dumb when we sheepishly gave him KSh50 (about 80 cents…) but we were saving the rest of our money for a tip for Eunice. And we didn’t want to see his butterflies in the first place, so there.
That night played out similarly with the night before, except the lantern went out so Aaron had to break into another room to get their matches, and he beat me so soundly in canasta that I’m now on strike until he lets me win.
We made the unfortunate decision to eat at the KEEP cafeteria that night and basically wasted KSh600 for a below average meal. It was enough of a rip-off where we spoke to the manager to let him know that if he wants to be competitive and continue to make money for his community, he needs to drastically lower the prices. Probably fell on deaf ears, but that’s okay.
And the next morning we were off. We both really enjoyed our time in Kakamega, though we definitely went into it blind and would have made some different decisions if we’d had a good reference beforehand. Like, ahem, this.
