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I spent Christmas in Mombassa and the Christmas break travelling through southern Kenya and Tanzania. I had an amazing couple of weeks, mainly due to the excellent group of friends I toured with, and of course, the wild  animals that tended to camp with us….

Massai people

In Kenya I stayed in a Massai village, which was a real eye-opener. We stayed some time in a Manyatta, the traditional low-slung, cow-dung and wooden houses (built by the Massai women without a hand lifted by the men). Actually, for all the wonders of the Massai people, their history, religion, culture and traditions, I had to keep my FIDA mouth firmly shut against the discrimination faced by Massai women. They suffer polygamy, childhood marriage, circumcision, numerous child-births, hard toil, house-building, child-rearing and domestic servitude. The men spend their days under trees playing cards. It’s a generalisation, but from what I saw, it has some real truth to it!

Anyway, I managed to shut up for once and enjoyed the rest of the experience. I bought a shuka and looked ridiculous. We were entertained by the Massai women’s dancing and song and then the boys had to jump-dance with the Massai warriors. These are seriously brave guys! They wore the iconic red shukas, carried daggers, spears and clubs and were painted in red plants. One warrior – incongruously called Jonathan (all have really English names) – showed me his scars from having pursued and killed a lion. He wore the lion’s mane as proof of his status. They showed me how to spear throw. I was OK, I think. The laughter from behind me told a different story…..

The night in the Massai village we all camped in the bush after a campfire with the Massai and a lecture about their culture. We camped safe in the knowledge that 2 warriors were guarding the camp from the buffalo and elephants that apparently liked to come through on their way to the nearby stream. Nice!

Lake Nakuru

I travelled to Lake Nakuru. There’s a small national park there with a whole array of animals, pretty much everything bar the black rhino. The lake is also home to the millions of flamingos you tend to see in all the BBC David Attenburgh documentaries: they were there and they are SOOOO pink! Well, the lesser flamingos are. I guess I should share my rather dirty secret at this juncture…..My safari adventures have turned me into a happy-clapping twitcher (a bird spotter, that is). Some ornithological ember I would never have contemplated oxygenating in the UK has turned into a raging fire! I bought myself a proper Field Guide book, some excellent second-hand binoculars in Nairobi, and I had an absolute ball on safari. Lovebirds, vultures, eagles, parrots, cranes, goshawks…..In just under 2 weeks I recorded over a hundred different species….and I was also keeping my eyes on all the animals. So there, dirty secret out. One more fact: Lake Nakuru has more bird species than the entire UK. See, it is quite interesting after all……!

Lake Naivasha

I had too many vodkas and left my camera in the bar….of course, I never saw it again. Thankfully, this was day 3 so I hadn’t lost too much…..nothing more to add, Your Honour.

Hell’s Gate National Park

This is an incredible, almost unearthly place. I took a cycling safari through massive volcanic, towering ramparts with zebra, antelopes, warthogs and giraffe enjoying lush grassland, down to the gorge, famous for being the inspiration behind the scene in the Lion King. I haven’t seen the film, so can’t help any more. Apparently, it was also used as the backdrop for Lara Croft’s tomb-raiding escapades. Again, I plead ignorance beyond that. Anyway, no photos to offer you given the camera issues. Suffice to say that it took my breath away. And it was HOT!, which made it feel more like the Hell’s Gate in its given name.

Towns

We visited a number of towns: Kisii (famous for its soapstone carvings and pretty much NOTHING else) and Narok (which was seriously flooded the day after I left). It was quite funny to see everyone else on the trip – green and new to Kenya – suffering the terrors of being hawked at and hassled pretty much anywhere they stopped…..trailing groups of children…..just like being in Kisumu!

Massai Mara and the Serengeti

It’s difficult to describe the beauty, vastness, richness, diversity of life and the daily struggles for life and death that you witness in these incredible national parks. Best to think of what you’ve seen on the BBC and then imagine it in full and glorious wide-vision with all the sounds, smells, weather and danger you can’t experience through the TV. I saw pretty much everything I could have hoped for: baby leaoprds sleeping in trees; lions hunting waterbuck in the early morning; herds of elephants; thousands of wilderbeest; lions resting after devouring most of a zebra; lions guarding their kill of an ADULT GIRAFFE against a howling and marauding pack of hyenas……it really is a remarkable place.

The rains meant that I also got to see a huge number of hippos on the Mara river and went for a bush walk along the section of the river famous for those shots of wildebeest making their treacherous crocodile-crossing en route to the relative safety of the Serengeti. I was SCARED!

Oh, and another thing, I have developed a real hatred for Baboons….the rotten, evil-planning, picnic-spoiling b***ard chancers. Sorry Mum. But it’s true.

I bush-camped in the Serengeti. It’s quite an experience. I spent quite a lot of time checking for eyes in the bush with my pathetic Maglite, wondering just exactly what I’d do if I was confronted by a hacked-off hyena (which apparently has the strongest jaws of any wild safari animal). I didn’t really have a plan but if we met a lion on the way to the toilet we were told to look it in the eye and walk slowly backwards facing the beast. Ye right! Hyenas came to camp in the night and dragged one of the jerry cans away (there were teeth marks in it in the morning) and lions make really disconcerting noises at night! Pretty amazing stuff, all in all. I’m still in one piece.

Ngorogoro crater

I’ve never seen a wildlife documentary from this place in Tanzania but they should do one.  In fact, I want to do one. We camped on the rim of the crater, the largest unbroken caldera in the world. It’s a huge depression in the earth’s surface, flat as a pancake and 600 metres down from the edge to the floor. It’s absolutely brimming with wildlife.  And I mean Wild Life! It has one of the largest concentrations of black rhino (the really shy, massively endangered but incredibly jumpy and dangerous kind) and it’s also the place where elephants come to spend their last days: in old age their molar teeth drop out and it’s only the crater’s swamps that provide them with the soft grasses they can happily munch on in gummy decrepit bliss! Highlight of the day’s 4WD speed-safari was coming upon a recent lion kill on the side on the road. A zebra with its guts eaten out but the rest of it lying prostrate and untouched. In the grass right next to the jeep was the male lion, covered in tsetse flies, breathing heavily on a clearly swollen stomach of zebra goodiness….it was so close you could hear it struggling to breathe. Sends goosebumps up my arm thinking about it now. I’ve got a ridiculous photo of me with the lion in the immediate background. I may put it on this blog….

We were also privileged enough to see cheetahs out on a hunt, 10 – count them – 10 black rhino, loads of old bull elephants doing their thing as peacefully and gracefully as they always do and flocks of various bird-life…..I won’t go there again.

Adventures

Mixed into all this wildlife action came the adventures we had with our truck and our driver. In the middle of the Serengeti the fan on our humongous Mercedes truck simply dropped out of the engine and tore through the radiator during its escape. We all had to keep watch while our brave driver had to fix it. The truck became ill after this and became so unreliable in wild country that we ended up swapping it in Tanzania. It was just after we crossed the border and left the sickly truck (which I named Priscilla, Queen of the Safari) that our driver was arrested by Tanzanian immigration officers. Apparently, they don’t abide Kenyans working in their country and it was arbitrary and unwarranted. Anyway, what needed to be done was done to secure his release. Poor old Walter had a bit of a rough deal what with breakdowns and momentary incarcerations….

I finished my holiday with a slap-up meal in Carnivores restaurant in Nairobi. Zebra’s off the menu….

So, that’s the summary of my holiday. It was really sad to say goodbye to everyone: we were dead lucky to have a really fun, sociable and up-for-it group of people and that really made the trip. The return to work at the start of this year was a shock but I have masses to do. That’ll be for another day……

I hope you all had an excellent Christmas and New Year….happy 2010!!