Into the Wild

8th - 10th October 2013

The safari guide collected us from the Wildebeest camp at 8.30am on Tuesday 8th. Following this we changed vans twice, stopped about 5 times for the various drivers to do various errands, got petrol twice and picked up more and more people along the way.  It became clear to us that the company we booked with had sold us to another company and we were basically tagging along with their group. This sucked for two reasons - firstly the group was weird and second there were 8 people in the mini-van thing.  Any notions I had about a cool jeep and hoping that there would be a group of 4 at most was gone! The safari companies guarantee that everyone gets a window seat but this was not the case as there are only 6 window  seats and 8 people.

We were a funny bunch - a Spanish/Argentinian couple on honeymoon, an American man who has lived in South Africa for the last 4 years and doesn't intend to return to the States again, two strange French women and a Mexican priest! Communicating was difficult as the French ones only had schoolgirl English and the priest only spoke Spanish. So the honeymoon couple were the only ones who could communicate with the priest and Ronan spoke pigeon French and pigeon English to the frenchies. 

We stopped for lunch along the way also and as per usual at this stage, the bloke working in the shop asked us where we are from and when we said Ireland, he said 'John O'Shea - I like him'. So random but he's a Sunderland fan and apparently John O'Shea is captain of Sunderland as well as second choice Ireland captain.  You learn something new every day.

We arrived to the camp around 3.30pm.  The accommodation was pretty grim and I totally forgot to get any photos unfortunately. It was a permanent tent structure which looked a little like the tent from the Wildebeest on the outside but inside had no such level of luxury.  It did have a bathroom area at the back of the tent and electricity for a couple of hours a day so I guess it was ok. 

On the first day we were expecting a half day game drive but our first view of the Masai Mara was at 4.30! However it ended up being worth it as we had a very productive two hours with giraffes, a cheetah, elephants, a pride of lions with a wildebeest they had just killed  and all the game animals like zebra, antelope, impala, gazelle etc. We also got amazing shots of the lions with the kill and elephants in the background.  This is apparently extremely rare to get elephants and lions so close so we were very lucky. There was also a beautiful sunset over the Masai Mara so it was all in all very successful. It was then back to the camp for dinner and bed by 10pm as that's when the electricity was turned off.

Wednesday was an annoying, dusty, tiring affair where everyone was just a little fed up.  We had a full day game drive where we saw some cool things like vultures with a kill (a gazelle) and watching that was like something from a David Attenborough show.  The others weren't too interested and just told the driver to go.  We saw a leopard which is a rare enough sighting but the gloss was taken off this by the fact the poor thing was terrified by being chased and then surrounded by about 30 tourist vans.  In the afternoon we went deeper into the park which was good as there were less tourists but also didn't yield many results so everyone was just tired and fed up by about 3 so we just went back to camp.  

It's tiresome constantly competing with people for the best seats and elbow space.  We found the Frenchies unbearable, constantly taking the best seats, refusing to go into the back ones and consistently popping their heads into our photos.  Ronan wasn't happy at all with the fact that he would have a perfect shot only for someone's hair and shoulder to pop in!  And you can imagine how subtle he was about it!

All day everyone was just shouting, calling the animals, the cb radio was going constantly and the fecking Nokia ring from the driver's mobile never stopped.  I just felt like roaring at everyone to shut up for 5 minutes!! 8 hours is a long time to be packed into a small space with 8 others!  There was quite a lot of tension anyways as everybody felt hard done by and had problems with what they thought they were getting and what the tour actually offered so lots of complaining to the guide also.  Lunch was cool though, they had packed lunches for us so we had a picnic blanket under a tree and all sat out eating in the wilderness of the Savannah!  Just as we sat down a hyena dashed out of a nearby bush and a baboon started circling. The guide had a slingshot in hand to ward off any unwelcome visitors!  It was so surreal!  

Today was funny also as we went to the airstrip to use the toilet (toilets are in short supply on the Savannah and unlike the salt flats a quick pee around the back of the bus isn't an option!).  Anyways the airstrip was full of rich people in the lovely fancy safari jeeps that I had imagined we would be in. Oh the innocence!  These people were flying in and out of the Mara as they had too much money to justify their time in a dusty, bouncy bus for 6 hours! Lucky them I say!  They were all sporting the latest safari camouflaged fashions which I thought was hilarious considering they are following the animals from the safety of massive noisy jeeps - not exactly sneaking around and ducking in the undergrowth so camouflage isn't really necessary!  This was our mode of transport, the jeeps were better but not exact fading into the landscape territory!  

We later visited one of the luxury lodges for a toilet break and they are incredible!  They are 5 star resorts with Internet access, private waterholes for the animals with a tunnel viewing point and if you are lucky (or paying enough) a pool! How the other half live, eh?!

We did an early morning game drive on Thursday morning (6am-8am) with the full group before 4 of the group went back to Nairobi.  At breakfast Ronan made a joke which was in bad taste involving starving children in Africa and the Mexican priest snorted and burst out laughing.  Ok so the fact he thought it was funny considering he's a priest was one thing but the small matter that he maintained for 3 days that he couldn't speak English was another! Then as he was going said 'nice to meet you' to me! Moral of the story - trust no one even members of the cloth.  Actually thinking about maybe he wasn't even a priest!

Anyways with the group halved, this left myself, Ronan and the frenchies.  The frenchies decided they did not want to do a game drive this day as per the itinerary so they stayed at camp while myself and Ronan went off on Thursday afternoon. We had the whole van to ourselves so it was like being on a luxury tour with our own private driver. Totally awesome!  We went completely off the beaten track and saw some really cool things like hippos, migrating wildebeest, elephants very close up and the piece de resistance was getting really close to 4 adult male lions!  

At about 5pm Simon got a call that his friend was driving a van of tourists and was stuck somewhere in the park an hour away so he had to transfer me and Ronan to a different van which was going back to our camp about 6.30.  The van we were transferring to was near a gathering of elephants so we drove up to the new van and had to get out of one and into another. Ronan was faffing about looking around him while between the vans and the driver was shouting at us to hurry up and get in the van as it was dangerous!  In the new van we met a Belgian couple who I think are the most interesting people we have met on all our travels - they have spent the past three years cycling around the world on a tandem bike! We had a great evening chatting and trading stories back at camp.  By the last night the camp felt like home despite my initial disappointment at the grimness of it and we had been pretty well fed most of the time which is always a bonus.  Little did I know how I would be craving the food from here as I spent the next 4 days hungry!

For the 3 days in the Masai Mara the local tribe here, the Maasi, are wandering in and out of the campsite all day, every day and have been constantly trying to get us to visit their village since we arrived.  We discovered this is because they charge 1,000ksh/€9 for the pleasure!  It looked like a hoax for tourists so we didn't bother and we heard bad reports from other travellers.  The Maasi are very distinctive in that they wear red blankets, wear heaps of beaded jewellery and have massive holes in their earlobes because of huge pieces of jewellery.  Funny on our last day when one of the blokes thought all the tourists were gone and landed in wearing trackies, hoodie and wellies! Go figure!

Aside from that Hakuna Matata is everywhere here. It means no worries and you might know it from the Lion King but it is basically what the Kenyans say when you have a problem or a complaint about anything!  Nothing gets solved but everyone remains friends!!

Also I'm loving my first holidays with no glasses! 

DISCLAIMER: All photos from these blog entries are from my iPhone.  There isn't an Internet connection in Kenya that would be able to upload the photos from Ronan's camera.  I will do a full photo blog post when we get home with the best of the rest!