At the end of the tour we went to Mangrove Park which consisted of the 200 meters long walkway along the mangrove forest at the beach. The park is maintained by the local women organization Gazi Women Group. They collected plastic bottles that were recycled at the local titanium mine. The Park walkway and the railings were made from recycled plastic. This was the only evidence of the recycling I saw in Kenya. Although I did hear that plastic bags were outlawed here, the empty plastic bottles became a part of the natural landscape in Kenya, they were everywhere. The women’s organization focus was protection of mangroves. We’ve learned that there are six kinds in this area and that mangroves are good for climate and fish. Apparently even the last tsunami did not affect the Gazi area much thanks to the mangroves protection of the coastline. Because some of the mangroves have been chopped down, locals are currently trying to rebuild their population. However it proved to be quite difficult. Women organization sells tickets to walk on the bridge through the mangrove forest, they also make dinner for sale to benefit their cause.
We made a trip to the neighboring fishing village. Paul took us on a boat across to the mainland. I was wearing my new blouse from the resort shop, that was perhaps a little bit too short for the Muslim village Gazi, pop 7000.
After an exhausting day of non-stop safari with a variety of wild animals in the Maasai Mara Reserve we were scheduled for a special visit to the traditional village at the local town named Talek. This Kenyan tribe was the most “tourist savvy”. They obviously had a lot of visitors regularly, because of the proximity of the popular park with “five cats”. We were even offered two types of visit packages, “basic”, originally covered in the travel packet, and “deluxe” with traditional goat grilling and bull bleeding ceremony. Since we were with a larger group of 12 people we had to comply with the majority and went with the deluxe package. It was raining, but locals did not seem to be affected by the weather at all. We got split into two groups to make guiding more manageable.
