Lake Victoria

On our way to Lake Victoria, we stopped at Chacaik Arboretum near Kericho. 

It wasn't the trees that were my focus, it was the tea estate that surrounds the arboretum. It has over 11,000 hectares of tea gardens and employs 18,000 full tie workers and 4,000 seasonal workers. Only the top three new leaves are picked from the bushes every two weeks. The leaves are fermented and dried for black tea or just dried for green tea before being packed into crates and auctioned in Mombasa.
Our guide showing us around the tea gardens.

Tea gardens stretching away to the horizon.

In both directions.

Our next stop was Kisumu which sits at the head of a bay on Lake Victoria and it was my first view of the lake. Our camp site was next to Hippo Bay and there is a clue in the name. There were hippos in the water and we were warned to stay away from the shore especially at night when the hippos came ashore to graze. 

That would not be a problem as England were playing that evening and we would all be at the bar. But of greater concern was the fact that at our last lake side camp site there was a fence between us and the lake but this site had no fence so we had to be careful. 

A view of the camp site next to Lake Victoria.

                                     

A view of the lake.

Monkeys running around the camp.

And some birds.

We crossed into Uganda and around Jinja we passed through huge sugar cane plantations. These are the fields belonging to Kakira Sugar Works based in nearby Kakira. They are the countries largest sugar producer with an annual output of 180,000 tons,  45% of the country's output.

Sugar cane for as far as the eye can see.