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Really this first first entry is the 3rd of October but it seems to belong here as the
first two days seemed to blend into one very long one.
I live on the outskirts of Nottingham and I took a taxi into Nottingham where I caught
the train down to Luton. Here I changed trains, though only after some confusion amongst
the station announcers as to which platform the train was going to depart from, and went
straight across the heart of London to the airport at Gatwick. I hadn't been on this route
before and it was great not to have to struggle through the underground with my big and
small rucksacks and camera bag. I arrived with plenty of time to spare and went straight
to the checkin where everywhere seemed so strangely quiet compared to the times I had
flown from Heathrow. The lady at checkin said that as the flight was scheduled to leave at
22:25 most of the other flights had left and the rush for the day was over.
I proceeded through security and passport controls and had a good look around the
terminal area where I managed to buy a copy of 'Out of Africa' by Karen Blixen which I had
been seeking for quite a while. It turns out that I was quite lucky as this last copy had
been nearly purchased by Bill (one of the other people in our group) earlier in the day. I
also tried to buy a 1.4x or 2x converter for my new camera but it was a bit too specialist
for the shops there. I always get to the departure hall early and so had plenty of time to
kill but as I travel by plane so much this was nothing new and I indulged in that
traditional airport pastime of people spotting. This time the main theme of course was
trying to decide if I could spot the other four people on the safari who should also be
flying out on this plane. Cameras and safari attire would have been the big give-away but
although quite a few people fitted the bill I knew that many of the people left in the
hall would be on my flight and of those a good proportion would be going on safari.
Eventually the flight was called and I went and sat in the departure lounge. It was at
this point that a fear entered my mind. Not about planes crashing or being eaten by lions,
but as to whether any of the people on our safari could be American. There were a few of
these entering the lounge and the sights and sounds were horrific. Could I stand Bermuda
shorts and those American drawls for two weeks?
On time we joined the flight and of that I can remember very little. I took a
Mefloquine pill. I had started the antimalarial course two weeks before and fortunately
had suffered no ill effects. Some people can have quite serious reactions to these
stronger alternatives to Chloroquine. The flight went fine and we arrived on time around
09:00 at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta airport. I had filled in my landing card on the plane and
went easily through immigration and onto reclaim my baggage. I hadn't used a plastic bag
as a liner in my big rucksack as I would have done if walking in the UK, but I hadn't
banked on the Gatwick baggage handlers leaving it in the driving rain before it was
loaded. Consequently it seemed to be soaked through when I got it. I went straight through
customs and there was Chris Trent from African Adventures and Safaris waiting for us.
After introductions I went out to where our two vehicles were waiting not far from the
terminal building in the warm pleasant sunshine. Chris was a local Kenyan who was standing
in for the usual guide, Brian Freeman, who had broken a leg a few weeks previously in
jumping down from the back of a lorry.
I was the second to show up. A well built guy called John was already waiting and we
had a chat whilst waiting for the others. I also had a rummage through my big rucksack and
found that although most of my clothes were unaffected, a couple of guide books (Mammals of Africa Including
Madagascar and Birds of East Africa)
were damaged. Not long after, the other three members of the party came along and we
started to get to know each other. There was Bill and Val, a couple from Scotland along
with Kenneth who was a good friend of theirs. It soon became clear that photography was a
very strong theme amongst us and in fact we all had Canon EOS system cameras, even Chris!
When we began to discuss which lenses we had brought, what types of film and so on, I
became very glad that I had traded in my nearly 20 year old SLR and lenses for a new
system, as otherwise I would have felt very much the odd one out.
Our baggage was divided up between a LWB Land-Rover and a Discovery. The Land-Rover had
a full length roof rack with sheeting to protect it from the elements and this consumed a
lot of it, though sensibly we all had brought fairly little luggage, with the balance
going in the back of the Discovery. The Land-Rover also contains quite a few spares, I
presume these can be difficult to obtain where we headed for. I joined John in the back
seats of the Discovery with a Kenyan guy called Barissa as our driver. Chris drove the
Land-Rover. On a later day I asked Chris why they always drove the same vehicles but there
didn't seem to be any real reason.
Our first port of call was a Bureau de Change. This was our first introduction to
Kenyan bureaucracy cum wheeling and dealing. Chris said that he had arranged a particular
rate of exchange and it took a long time for the only lady serving to confirm that she
could use this rate. Chris stood his ground and said that if we didn't all get this rate
we would go elsewhere. Sterling had been sent out from the UK and a sizeable bundle of
notes exchanged for a monstrous pile of Kenyan shillings that was stashed away in a big
green cloth bag.
Everyone except John took this opportunity to exchange their English currency into
Kenyan shillings. John didn't need to do this because he had been able to order his money
in the UK through Thomas Cook. They couldn't supply it immediately but he had been able to
pick it up at the airport. How he was able to do this is unknown because most guides claim
that Kenyan currency cannot be exported from the country and I have never seen a rate
advertised at an airport. Somehow though John managed it!
I was the last to exchange my money and wasn't able to change it all as we had all but
cleaned them out of Kenyan shillings. As it was I got the low denomination notes so I
ended up with a wallet about 3 inches thick that sadly only represented about £75, though
we all didn't expect (or manage) to spend that much.
Whilst all this wheeling and dealing was going on we took the opportunity to have a
drink at an adjacent cafe. It was very pleasant to sit outside under sunshades and have a
coke even though we had to avoid the droppings from the birds circling high overhead,
Chris said that we had a long drive ahead of us. In fact he didn't mince his words and
said it would be a pretty rough ride and that we should make a start before it got too
late. So we mounted up and headed off on the Uhuru
highway towards Nairobi.
It didn't take long for me to realise that the bad reputation of Kenyan driving I had
read about was only too richly deserved. Basically, anything goes. We learnt that most
Kenyans do not have the ability to link cause and effect and this is reflected in some of
the stunts that drivers carry out. These range from the minor, such as not indicating when
overtaking, through pulling slowly out in front of fast traffic on a main route, to
extremes such as being undertaken by a monstrously overloaded bus on the the dirt strip at
the side of the road. Accidents are very common. Barissa though drove very well. He was
cautious and took great care with the Discovery, accelerating slowly and smoothly so as to
give a good ride to his passengers and to not needlessly overstress the diesel engine.
The roads from the airport to Nairobi were smooth dual carriageways. Chris went faster
than Barissa and so we become separated, but as the traffic built up towards the centre of
the city we could see the Land-Rover ahead. Men and boys walked amongst the stationary
cars selling newspapers and magazines. There were a lot of Nissan minibuses around which
have a lifting roof and are used by many of the safari company's to ferry people from the
capital to the parks. We spotted a derelict steam engine quietly rusting away in a siding.
One reason for the traffic hold-ups was the way that the biggest vehicles had right of way
at roundabouts. I don't think it's the law but it's certainly the way things happen. We
passed on the Southern part of the city centre and on our right we could see the tall
office blocks much the same as any other big city. We wouldn't see any more till we were
back in Nairobi.
We travelled towards Nakuru on the A104 and then branched West on the B3 towards Narok.
Quite suddenly we arrived at the Rift Valley. Here the good tarmac road briefly follows
the edge of this great depression and there are souvenir shops with wooden platforms built
out over the edge of the rift, some looking decidedly precarious. We regrouped here and
took some photos. It was very difficult to get any scale from here of how far across the
valley was, as there was little familiar to our eyes here. The ubiquitous trinket sellers
arrived but trade was not encouraging. I think it was here that Val popped the question
about what we did about loos, to which Chris replied "It's called the bush". We
had noticed that in the pockets on the back of the car seats were rolls of green coloured
toilet paper! The road dropped down to the valley floor in easy sweeping bends and the
difference in height became very apparent in two ways. Firstly the temperature rose
markedly and secondly the vegetation which had been quite thick forest at the top changed
to become much more scrubby. To our right we saw Mount Longonot.
Quite soon we came across one object that we had been able to spot from the edge of the
Rift Valley and seemed very out of place in this simple landscape, a satellite ground
station with its big dish antennae. By this time the road was down to a dusty dirt track.
In some places the road had been metalled at one time but the rains had broken it up and
caused big pot holes. Driving must have been hard work, constantly deciding how fast to go
to keep up progress and yet not go so fast as to damage the vehicles. Even so it was a
jolting ride and often we resorted to driving at quite an angle with one wheel in the
depression at the side of the road. The depression was generally quite smooth and with
more weight on this side it meant that the wheels on the opposite side were not so badly
affected by the big potholes in the tarmac surface. We were constantly speeding up and
slowing down as we came to better or worse stretches and switching from side to side of
the track.
We encountered little other traffic. There were a few ramshackle settlements along the
way often with a Hotel (really a bar), a general store and a butchers built mainly from
wood or mud walls and corrugated iron roofs. We would see a few locals here, some in
western dress, others in the bright red garb of the Masai. In a few places these villages
had a police check point, sometimes manned, others not. To slow the traffic there would be
a set of white painted spikes across the road in the form of a chicane. The first time we
came across these I hadn't spotted them and was amazed at the brutal jagged devices as we
slowed and weaved between them. They were tricky to see by day, though Chris and Barissa
had an excellent eye for these and also for the road humps used to slow traffic near
villages. Only once did I think we hit a hump at any speed. At night they would be so very
difficult to spot with no warning signs or lighting.
As we progressed we began to spot the odd animal such as Thomson's gazelle (almost
always referred to as Tommies), Grant's gazelle, zebra, giraffe, elephant, wildebeest and
impala and would ask Barissa what it was if we were unsure. Barissa was very knowledgeable
about all the animals and birds but seldom volunteered a comment unless he spotted
something out of the ordinary though he was always very polite. We thought that we could
see pale clouds of smoke rising into the still air at various spots around us and assumed
them to be from fires, but we later came to learn that these were actually dust devils,
miniature tornadoes driven by the heat of the sun and swirling skyward the dust of the
plains.
We stopped at a Total petrol station in Narok to
refuel the vehicles. In my Kenya The Rough
Guide it says that this is the place to get cheap fuel and it also avoids the first
petrol stations in town which have a cluster of souvenir shops. In retrospect this turned
out to be about the only petrol station where we didn't get surrounded by souvenir
sellers. There were weaver birds. The diesel pump ran out after we had filled up the
Land-Rover and so Barissa had to go off to another petrol station in town. This took quite
a long time and in the meantime we sat in the petrol station cafe and had a cold soft
drink (Val had passion fruit juice) and some snacks. I think most people were a bit wary
of the hot meal of the day so we settled for some biscuits and crisps. The 'Nairobi
produced' ready salted crisps, the only flavour we came across, were in a huge dilapidated
looking bag but turned out to be quite tasty. By the end of the safari when we had
consumed vast quantities of these crisps I think we had all got quite a taste for them.
With another 100km to the Mara and the worst 100km at that, we resumed our journey.
We soon learned that it wasn't too practical to
keep the windows open all the time as even though the vehicles weren't air conditioned the
cooling breeze was accompanied by clouds of dust from other vehicles. For this reason we
followed the leading Land-Rover at a discrete distance so we didn't eat their dust.
Looking back I'm glad they didn't have air conditioning as this could all too easily have
led to us feeling isolated from the surroundings. As it was if it was hot, we felt it, if
there were a lot of flies about, we soon knew about it! The closer we got to the Mara the
more traffic came from the opposite direction: day trippers heading back to Nairobi.
In places the road became very wide where people had driven off to one side perhaps
during the long rains when the track would be reduced to a quagmire. Chris pointed out
that this was the main road to the country's premiere game reserve, not exactly the best
advertisement you could seek. The last group on our safari had obviously not responded
well to this taste of the real Africa and moaned about it a lot. One woman had even asked
on the return journey if they could go by plane, which is the way many of the wealthy
groups travel, but surely they would have missed much to not have experienced the journey
by road, even if it would be more comfortable to travel perhaps one way by air.
Val made the comment that at some point there
should have been a road sign saying "Potholes Merge". In some places there
appeared to be a completely new track heading away from the fragmented tarmac and it was
on one of these excursions that John pointed out a different animal away to our right.
Barissa said leopard (which would have been entirely in character as the light was just
starting to fade) but I correctly guessed at cheetah. Instantly we swung off the track and
headed swiftly across the bush towards it. The lone cheetah was pacing slowly along but
soon broke into a run when we headed after him. Well it could have been a her for all I
know, but in general I'll say 'him' when I don't know the sex of an animal in this diary.
We had good lighting and views from the side windows and we got some nice photos. The
drivers always managed to position the vehicles perfectly and it was never any trouble to
ask them to move forward a few inches or switch to a different viewpoint. Whenever we came
to a halt they would instantly cut the engine to prevent vibrations as we were often using
long lenses. The cheetah was a real bonus as we hadn't really expected to see too much the
very first day. The Land-Rover was far ahead and didn't spot the cheetah (sorry, no pun
intended). The photos are very average as my intention was more to record the trip than to
exercise any great artistic abilities but I'm sure I wouldn't have had photos anywhere
near as good as I did on this or subsequent occasions without autofocus. I've always felt
that even the most simple camera can give excellent results with good film and lenses, but
the features on modern cameras certainly give that edge in allowing you to concentrate on
composing the picture whilst the electronics handles most everything else.
We turned off the road to the Sekenani Gate of the Masai Mara onto an almost
indiscernible track. It led to a more defined track that led through a small settlement
where a building was being constructed from a wooden frame and large stones, and then
across some plains and down to our first camp whose tents we could see laid out below us.
When we arrived we were welcomed by the staff, the most memorable of whom was the cook who
was a very old Kikuyu man with a beaming face who shook us warmly by the hand.
Our first camp was a short distance outside the
park on land rented from the Masai in a quite beautiful location. The camps were in a
clearing in the bush with some large trees scattered about. Behind the tents was a large
wooded area and in-between was a lugga. There were
five large tents for Chris, John, Myself, Kenneth and the last for Val and Bill. To one
side of the clearing was the mess tent and behind that the tents of the camp staff and
kitchen. The green tents were simply huge with a comfortable wooden bed, bedside cabinet
and simple dressing table/storage area. Behind the main part of the tent was a smaller one
with a washstand, shower and portapotty. The two tents were linked together so you could
move between the two without going outside. I think we were all surprised at how
comfortable it all was. You can go on safaris where the camps are simply luxurious but I
certainly wanted for nothing. Both tent sections had electric lights which were powered
from car batteries which also ran the pump for the shower. Ready and waiting morning and
night, was a big flask of hot water for washing, and at night when we returned to camp we
looked forward to asking for hot water for the showers. At the Mara in particular they
managed to judge the temperature of the water to perfection. In other camps we might ask
for "more hot" or "more cold" to get the right balance, and a rumbling
sound indicated where the man outside was pushing jerrycans of hot and cold water between
the tents in a wheelbarrow. They didn't use generators which was great as it meant that
there was nothing to disturb the sounds of the night. Whenever you used the flannels or
towels you would find that without you ever knowing someone had been in, tidying up after
you. Clean towels were provided every day.
In the centre of the clearing was a fireplace made of flat stones cemented together,
which was linked to the tents by intermittent flagstones. After freshening up we gathered
here where tea and coffee was waiting on big stone tables and soon we were relaxing in the
wicker chairs by the crackling fire. The coffee was the regular Nescafe that came in a tin
and I think we all felt a surprise that in a country so renown for its coffee we only had
instant! Val saw a frog, I think in the taller grass between the camp and the slope up
towards the track, and we certainly all saw the resident Grey Headed Kingfisher with his
vivid blue wings.
When dinner was ready we went into the mess tent where the table was neatly laid out
with all the refinements you would expect in a restaurant, napkins, wine glasses and all.
I'm not one to remember what we had at each meal but typically there would be a soup as
starter, then a main course followed by dessert, but we certainly never had the same dish
two days running. I'm a fussy eater at the best of times but I really enjoyed the food. I
don't like a lot of fat and was expecting to have to work hard at pruning the meat whereas
in fact it was always very lean. Second helpings were always on offer and frequently taken
up, we all had very healthy appetites.
After dinner we went back out to the seats around the fire and were asked what we like
to drink. John, Bill, Chris and myself tended to settle for the local Tusker beer brewed
in Nairobi and which came in brown bottles, whilst Val and Kenneth had a taste for Pernod
and Sprite. They had brought along the Pernod themselves as it isn't quite the thing that
you stumble across in those parts. Otherwise though, the bar was at our disposal, and Bill
often had a night-cap of Whisky. As always the drinks were accompanied by a big bowl of
crisps. Whilst we sat and took our drinks, the staff had removed the roof rack from the
Land-Rover and were cleaning the vehicles (inside and out) so that they would be ready
when we went out the following morning. Nobody stayed up very long. The askari banked up the fire from time to time and it was a
sheer joy to be just sitting there in the middle of Africa where we could hear no cars, no
aeroplanes, no radios, no telephones, nothing from our usual busy world to spoil the
tranquillity of the moment. As soon as the sun had sunk the temperature began to drop, and
as the altitude was about 6000 feet the air became quite sharp and we were glad of the
warmth from the flames. It had been a very tiring day, more so for Chris who had been
driving and so fairly soon we said goodnight to each other and turned in for the night. It
was only a few yards to walk to where the tilley lanterns marked our tents but as we
approached them electric torches were pointed by the staff to light the way.
Soon after I settled down for the night the lantern was quietly whisked away and the
next thing I knew it was morning.
Today's driving totalled 157 miles.
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