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Published: September 9th 2008
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Tent at Governors Camp
Will this keep out the elephants and hippos? Arriving and Safari all in one day
With a prompt wake-up call, we dashed to get ready and breakfasted for our pick-up to transfer us to Wilson airport. As with the best laid plans, the driver turned up early and put us into a slight panic but we piled aboard and headed into the mechanical melee that is the Nairobi road traffic system. Joseph (our driver) navigated his way past broken down Lorries and inept traffic police (whilst giving succinct political and social commentary), and successfully delivered us to the airport. We boarded the Kenyan Airways RubberBand 500 and flew for 45 minutes to the Mara, and then transferred to a RubberBand 200 for a 5 minutes flight (is that short or what, it took as long to take off and land as the actual flight took) to Governor’s Camp airfield. There was no terminal here, just a bumpy Land Rover drive to the camp itself. The weather was hot - a nice surprise -and the camp nice and green, nestling on the banks of the Mara river.
We were already somewhat prepared for the wildlife in store at the camp by what we saw on the transfer alone.
View of the river from our tent
Luckily no crocs in sight today From the aeroplane we could see Giraffes, Zebra and Antelope on the ground, but at the Mara landing strip we saw warthogs, and the runway had to be cleared of baboons (by the revving of plane engines) for us to take off! The Land Rover trip into camp showed us Warthog, Topi (a large antelope species), hippos, reedbuck (a smaller antelope species) and a lilac-breasted roller. This bird looks a bit like a large kingfisher in shape, with a lilac breast, turquoise belly, green head (at the back) and beautiful blue wings that only really show their brightest colour in flight. We arrived wondering what else was left!
We were shown to our tent that would be our protection from the resident wildlife for the next three nights. It stood next to the river and looked solid enough to withstand all but a charging rhino. We took note of the advice to ignore the hippos and elephants when they stand outside the tent at night! The tent itself was a simple two-layer canvas affair with a green top sheet, the rest being khaki, and comprising two compartments. The first, at the entry, was the sleeping compartment that fitted four
Banded Mongoose
no doubt they'd steal your breakfast if you weren't watching beds (just) and had mosquito-netted awnings as windows. The toilet and shower room was the rear compartment, very quaint with permanent wooden fixtures. The only electricity was fed to LED lights above the toilet roll, sink, and two beds. Any other nocturnal activity would need either the torch or the lighting of the two Primus gas lamps provided. Interestingly, we had also been told that whenever we took a walk at night within the camp (such as from the tent to dinner), we needed to be accompanied by a Ranger with a torch. This wasn’t just out of courtesy, but because night time is a good time for the more threatening animals to visit the camp... Nice gun, by the way.
Shortly after arrival it was lunchtime and we went back to the bar to sit by the bank of the river, having a long refreshing drink whilst watching two hippos swim upstream and settle in some mud at the edge of the river bank. On our way to our table for lunch (laid out on the grass by the river) we experienced the sight of a band of mongoose scurrying through the camp, which delighted the kids. We
Mum and two cubs
keeping cool by the water in the Masai Mara were assigned our own personal drinks waiter (Geoffrey) and food waiter (Fred) who made sure our hunger and thirst were both quenched, whilst dinner was distantly overseen by a three giraffes and a buffalo. One three course meal later we waddled back to our tent and settled into our unconventional domicile a little more. Mark and Jack went for an unsuccessful bug hunt, whilst Annabel and Ellie deviously plotted a Mara balloon ride. This sadly will not take place as Jack is a year too young to go we found out later.
At last, the time came round; we all dressed in subdued colours and went to the game vehicle area, where Mandila, our allocated Ranger, introduced himself and helped us into the game viewing vehicle. This was a modified Land Rover Defender (seats covered, large viewing space cut out of the roof and diff lock blocked) and was to be our home for a significant amount of time whilst out in the Mara. Mandila proved to be a very affable fellow and gave us some interesting insights into not only the animals (of which he was extremely knowledgeable), but also African life in general. We soon found that
Cheetah
on sentry duty the Kenyan safari experience was to be a very different one to that in South Africa: views across the plain were spectacular, with only patches of bush (or greenery where marsh or river prevailed), game was more abundant and varied, and the Land Rover drives a fair deal bouncier.
One of our first encounters was a female lion and two, fairly newborn, cubs, lying at the edge of a small water hole, whilst a little further on lay another female lion asleep in the grass. Later after viewing, Grant’s gazelle, Thomson’s gazelle, warthog, herd of buffalo, zebra, ostrich, a troop of baboons, a hartebeest, topi and eland we noticed some other trucks collected in the distance. Mandila recognised a couple of the vehicles as being the ones driven by Jonathan Scott and his wife Angela. Jonathan is famous for being wee’d and poo’d upon by a cheetah in the BBC Big Cat Diary series and he and his fellow presenter Simon King are here to film the big cats for the again. As it was this very programme that made Ellie so adamant that she wanted to visit the Mara we were all very excited. We drove over and realised that they were watching three cheetah (two were the sons of the aforementioned cheetah and had appeared in the previous series too.
We watched the cheetah laze about for a while and then they all suddenly got up and wandered off, we all followed in our trucks and were later delighted to experience the sight of one of them hunting a juvenile warthog, although it failed to catch it. Mandila moved away from the cheetahs in the hope that they would try hunting again and cross our paths but his efforts proved fruitless. It wasn’t long before we were back at the camp and preparing for dinner.
Dinner was under cover in the main tent (breakfast and lunch had been taken at tables outside). Geoffrey took us over to our table where flawless service facilitated our mining through three more scrumptious courses. This finished with the spectacular scene of cooks and staff, dressed up, singing and dancing, shuffling around the room with a pair of celebratory cakes for a birthday and anniversary somewhere amongst the congregation. The whole performance was harmonic, lilting and tuneful. We were sorry when it finished and we had to retire to our tent, accompanied by a quiet torch-bearing Ranger. We proceeded to bed fairly rapidly, or at least at such a pace as we could manage.
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