Crescent Island

On one side of Naivasha Lake there's a wildlife sanctuary called Crescent Island, which isn't an island any more - the water level has fallen over the years and now it's a wide land bridge with parts of the lake on either side. A guide will take you on a long walk which is quite magical - there are lots of ruminants and they're pretty used to human pedestrians, so you can be surrounded by zebra, giraffes, galloping wildebeest (who seem to spend a lot of time running around to no particular purpose), gazelles, waterbucks, umpteen bird species etc.

There are also pythons - I didn't see a full grown one, which can grow to several metres, but the guide showed me a nest of newly-hatched babies - a mere foot or so long. The English woman who lives on the island in a beautiful cottage and collects the visitors' fees (she's been in Kenya since 1970 and has "seen a few changes") said that her daughter's dog had been eaten by a python- they don't hunt, exactly, but they lurk in the undergrowth and whack any passing small mammal with their powerful tails, stunning or injuring it, then they twine around and crush the victim, breaking all the bones - then they cleverly dislocate their jaws so they can swallow it whole; then they'll lay dormant for a couple of months, digesting. I asked the guide if the mother of the baby pythons would still be around. Yes, he said, she'd be nearby somewhere. Was he sure, I asked, that they never attacked humans? Not usually, he said, but if I tripped and, say, broke my ankle, a large python might become interested and make a stab at swallowing me, after salivating copiously all over me to make me slip down more easily. I really must stop asking guides questions.

Above: Maribu storks; baby python; demonstration of the circumference of an adult python using a shed skin; live trees; a dead tree riddled with woodpecker holes; wildebeest playing their favourite game of running in a circle for no particular reason.