Karibu Africa

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Karibu Africa - welcome to Africa!

I arrived at Nairobi airport, Kenya, two hours late, worried that Scott would be pacing around Upperhill Campsite, our meeting spot, anxiously waiting for me. To my surprise, when I exited the customs area there was a man with a sign reading "Sharon c/o Scott". Wow, I have never been met with a sign like that at the airport, it is usually every man for himself! He held a note from Scott saying that he had taken his taxi, and now he was here to pick me up. I was glad as it saved me the hassle of negotiating taxi fares in a new country with a new currency, so happily jumped in.

As we slowly crawled through the Nairobi traffic, everything started to come back to me after two years away - the fake life-sized elephant statues outside the airport, the "Nakumatt" supermarket, the huge Maribu storks nesting in the trees... Thirty minutes later, we pulled into the security gate at Upper Hill Campsite, and I immediately saw Scott waiting for me on the couches outside. We spent a lazy afternoon catching up and listening to the stories of other travellers.

The next day was quite a lazy day, too. Our major chore was to book our safari, but once that was done we spent the day doing emails and hanging out in coffee shops drinking cappuccinos and eating carrot cake - we had to fend off home-sickness you see (at least that was our excuse!)

The next morning we were picked up at 8:30 for our three day safari at the Masai Mara. There were six of us on the trip; Scott and I, two friendly women from Belgium, one guy from Spain who was depressed about the recent breakup with his girlfriend of six years, and an Indian businessman who constantly complained about the Kenyan food. Luckily for him (and our sanity), he had brought an amazing variety of Indian food with him, which he brought out at every meal stop!

Most of the first day was spent driving to the park. At 4pm, we finally reached the gates and went in. We saw lots of zebras, wildebeest, and even and owl, but the big cats would have to wait until the next day it seemed.

Our camp was quite nice, with pre-set-up tents with beds and clean sheets - quite luxurious compared to two years ago. That night was quite an event. We were woken up at about 2am by the Indian businessman's cell phone going off in the next tent. Hmmm, didn't quite fit in with the rustic ambiance. We soon went back to sleep but were awoken again two hours later by the loud howling and barking of what sounded like a whole pack of dogs. We lay in bed, perfectly still and listening intently. We soon heard some new noises through the howling and barking. One sounded like a throaty roar, and the other sounded like a trumpeting. As we continued to listen, our imagination ran wild. Did we have a lion and an elephant on camp?! The next sounds we heard were the Masai warriors beating drums loudly and ringing cow-bells. That only served to fuel our imagination. Surely they were trying to scare the "ferocious beasts", whatever they were, away from the camp and the nearby village?! Eventually, the dogs calmed down, the drums stopped beating, and everything was quite again. We fell back to sleep.

The next morning, I asked one of the Masai warriors what had happened in the night. He wasn't keen to tell me, saying "nothing". We then asked our guide, and he confirmed that the dogs go wild when a big cat comes close, and the Masai warriors do indeed bang drums and ring bells to scare away animals that might attack their livestock. He suggested that maybe a cheetah or a leopard could have been close by, but he didn't know for sure. How exciting, we thought, but scary too!

That next day we had a full day game drive and saw lions, evil-looking vultures eating prey, cheetahs, zebras, wildebeest, giraffes, elephants, hippos, and all kinds of gazelles and monkeys. That night at camp, we were hoping for another "night safari", but all was quiet.

On our final day, we were supposed to have a three hour safari early in the morning. However, an hour into it, it began to drizzle. When the drizzle turned into rain, we decided to take down the vehicle's pop top and we started to head back. The rain, it seemed, had encouraged the animals to go into hiding, so we all decided to head back to camp early for breakfast.

We had the safari vehicle drop us off at Naivasha Town. There, we crammed onto a local matatu (minibus) with about 15 locals and got dropped off at Crayfish Camp to start the next part of the trip - walking and biking safaris!

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Photos

No thanks!
Rather precarious toilet break at the Great Rift Valley overlook, on the way to the Masai Mara.

Home Sweet Home!
Our tent in the Masai Mara

Comments

[Mum]

Nice tent!
Your tent looks as good (or as bad) as the hut we stayed in on Perhentian Islands but at least we didn't have big cats roaming around.