Sunset at Gibraltar, Lake Baringo. PHOTO | COURTESY
Two lakes on the northern stretch of the Great Rift Valley — the freshwater Baringo and caustic Bogoria — were feared to be rising to a point where they would merge. It seems like the matter has been laid to rest.
“Baringo is down by around five feet and so both lakes are well separated,” said Bonnie Dunbar, the director of Island Camp Resort Baringo. “The rivers have not been flowing from upcountry this year like in the past four years.”
Until four years ago, Baringo and Bogoria’s levels were so low that it seemed they would dry up. But now Island Camp Resort, on Baringo’s Ol Kokwe island, can boast of being on its “own” island as the rising water has covered the lower parts.
The island is home to the Il Chamus, lake Nilotes who fish like their ancestors did in hand-crafted rafts made from light wood from the poles of the ambatch tree (Aeschynomena elaphroxylon.) Locally called the Ilkadich, the raft is so light I could carry it with one hand.
Eagle’s eye view
Flying over the valley is exciting, seeing the lakes as the eagles do; the Verreaux eagle is an icon of Baringo’s high cliff walls. Bogoria’s overflowing waters almost touch the walls of the Laikipia escarpment, and its boiling geysers are bubbling.
Baringo was first reported to the outside world by the explorer Joseph Thomson, who in 1883 became the first white man to see the lake. Aged 25, he cut across the feared Maasailand via Lake Baringo to Lake Nyanza (Victoria).
He described his first sighting of Baringo as “a dazzling expanse of water, glittering like a mirror in the fierce rays of the tropical sun. Almost at its centre rises a picturesque island, surrounded by four smaller islets — a group of nature’s emeralds in a dazzling setting of burnished silver.”
The island in the centre of the lake is Ol Kokwa.
Thomson was standing on top of the Laikipia plateau when he saw the lake — from some 8,000 feet. Down at the lake, he and his party of over 100 porters spent a week relishing the abundant fish, millet and melons — which he described as “glorious fare after the old shoe leather-like beef of the buffalo.”
At the resort, Rudi Honegger, an accredited Gault Millau chef, prepares meals for the guests. They enjoy the designer dishes while surrounded by the spectacular lake.
“The food has to be reflective of the island paradise,” says Rudi.
Between meals, there’s much to do, like sailing and counting the hippos and crocodiles, kingfishers (especially the majestic African fisheagle), herons and bee-eaters of many species, the island’s Rothschild giraffe, which is an endangered species, and others.
The gourmet food includes Baringo’s tilapia, which has high levels of Omega-3 considered good fat.
