So i have finally gotten round to doing my journal online. Hopefully haven't forgotten much.
The Following takes place on the 6th November through to the 10th November and takes place in Kenya (Nairobi and the Masai Mara Game reserve). This is an accurate account of events as I remember them!!
6th November 2010
So Sophie and I arrive (finally) in Nairobi early in the morning and get to our hotel. The aim of the day - recover from sleepless flight and get ready for the start of our 31 day overland tour!! Bring it on. Slight mistake with booking - Sophie and I have 2 rooms and 4 beds between us so our backpacks had a very comfortable nights sleep!!
Didn't get to see much of Nairobi as we only walked around for a short while - a real hustle and bustle place. Road crossing was a case of find a local and follow closely enough to get over safely but not too closely that you look like a pickpocket!! Mission achieved!!
Only thing of note from today was that we had our pre-departure meeting with the tour leaders - Mark and Lindi - both seemed like cool people (later proved to be true) and got me really excited about the start of the trip. Only met 4 other people from the trip in the meeting tho; Amy,Jade,Jason and Vicky. They all seem cool (also later proved to be true). Had dinner with Amy, Jade and Sophie. Sampled my first Tusker (a very nice Kenyan beer in proper sized bottles!!)
7th November 2010
So the tour finally starts - early start to depart at 08:00 (but in retrospect this was a lie in!!) We got into our vehicles for 3 days in the Masai Mara game reserve and 2 nights Camping outside the reserve!! The 6 of us from the meeting the day before got in the same vehicle and were joined by a really lovely Aussie couple Rob + Bec (the brusier - more on that later!!!). Really great set of people on our truck - great few days.
We had a near 6 hour drive over a varying quality of roads to get to our campsite. 2 stops on the ways - one over a beautiful view of vast wilderness and small mountains (when does a big hill become a small mountain?) and one in Nurok. Got a suspected flat on our truck on the way - one of a few breakdowns over the trip. So pulled over whilst the crew fixed the Axel 9not a tyre after all). Had lunch at the campsite - met a few of the other people from the tour (23 in total - but 2 hadn't yet turned up). After lunch my very first game drive!!!
My first experiene of a gam drive was very enjoyable filled with the excitment of seeing each of the animals for the firt time!! So in first afternoon; Many giraffe, Zebra, wilderbeast, elephants, a few lions - including 2 just lying on the road in front of us, impala's and birds of varying description - including the very ugly maribou stork (sorry buddy but you are not a looker!!). One further truck drama(very amusing) before we finished the game drive. The weather had turned and a small collection of water collected in a ditch (i say small but it was big enough to trap a small truck). We managed to power through but one of our other vehicles was more cautious and therefore got well and truly stck in a raising water level. We attempted to tow it out but only succeeded in diggig a hole for us. Luckily we found a 4WD vehicle to come and help us. Drama/amusement over, then back to camp for dinner, beers and the chance to meet the rest of the people on the trip.
8th and 9th November
2 further game drives - one full day and one very early (pre-breakfast drive). Both drives were excellent as we continued to be very lucky with our wildlife spots. So sightings included; a massive herd of migrating buffalo - very impessive sight, a hyena rolling in mud, numerous Pumba's and baby Pumba's(warthog's) running around with their tails up like radio controlled car antennae. We saw a mother and child cheetah walking serenly past our vehicles. We also had a great close up sighting of a large pride of Lions resting I the shade of a tree, looking very fall. I noticed thay had a very high respiratory rate (definitely tacchypnoeic) - damn nurse in me!! I found it quite weird how completely unfazed the majority of animals were by large numbers of vehicle converging on them. We alo caught a brief glimpse of the ever elusive Leopard. We heard word through the grapevine (actually through the walkie talkie) that leopard was spotted in long grass, so our driver put his foot done and 'drove it like he stole it'. 3 vehicles were searching when one got too close - the leopard then jumped up, hissed and ran off into more long grass. We tried to search for it but it was like the hardest 'where's Wally ever'. P.s loving the bush peeing!!!
Our time in Kenya finished by driving back to a campsite outside of Nairobi where we first met our beautiful companion 'Shashe'. We also learnt how to put our tents up and settled down for our first tent night and ready for a very early start to drive into Tanzania.
