Impressions of Africa

One moment sticks out showing the contrast between Africa and home. When we went for a walk through the Ugandan village in Bwindi, a small boy of about 10 came up to us and struck up a conversation. He was simply curious to learn about us.

Had the situation been reversed, no child would approach adult strangers in the UK. And they'd either have been worried about being taken for paedophiles or else wondering what scam was about to be pulled.

Indeed we can only imagine what reception would be given to affluent, lone, black strangers wandering into a poor white area in the UK. Hostility and suspicion - maybe even outright violence. Instead we met only a warm welcome , friendliness, smiles and waves.

In Uganda particularly (we didn't really get to meet many local people in Kenya - the Masai came to talk to us at the Lodge about their culture and performed traditional dances - but it was all very stage-managed entertainment) we got the impression from the large numbers of people standing or sitting outside their houses that people had time for themselves and each other. While this lack of industry may hold them back economically, who is to say that we Europeans, with our stress and lack of leisure time, have got it right? We may pity them for their poverty and the lack of what we consider basic amenities but they may pity us for our hectic lifestyle and the lack of work-life balance that we suffer to pay for it.

Kenya 31 December 2006

Final day. Pissing down rain. Decide to skip the final morning game drive. Little chance of seeing anything. (Good call - those who go see nothing new and waste over n hour hanging around at a rainswept airstrip waiting for a plane that fails to turn up).



Owing to unseasonally high rainfall, not only can we be smug about being in a Land Rover and towing everybody else out, we can be smug about our pre-booked flight back to Nairobi. Rivers rising above the level of a crucial bridge have blocked the only road out making the land route impassable. Those hoping to drive back are stuck. One person spends hours on the phone negotiating the charter of a plane at enormous cost.

After some concern that we ma be bumped off our flight to make way for those less prescient than ourselves but who are on earlier flights out of Nairobi, we eentually drive out to the airstrip and take the intended plane on a two hop flight on a 20-seater back to Nairobi.

On arrival in Nairobi we are given a note from the local rep saying he has been unable to find an alternative to the exhorbitantly priced meal at "Carnivores" (serving up steaks cut from all the game we've just seen). Never mind - the food here has been much better than Uganda and at least it has been local fare.

Transfer to Kenyatta. Buy the papers. Saddam Hussein has been hanged. Welcome back to the real world.

Kenya 30 December 2006

Getting immune to Masai women pressing their wares on us at the park gates. Getting amused by the taciturn teenagers. Too old to wave like the children; too young to smile with the aduts. Cool is the same the world over.

Follow the herd (of white vans) and find not game but a bogged down truck. Tow out three or four white vans that are stuck and a Japanese 4x4. A great advert for the Land Rover. All we lacked was Zara Philips to add glamour. Rewarded for our good deed by the sight of a cheetah. Then off the beaten track we find a herd of 500+ buffalo (Jenny's audit skills at counting animals from a moving truck - honed on the Devon moors - come into their own).

Afternoon game drive. Different part of the park. Hilly. In among a large herd of elephant. Then, tipped off by radio, we race to join a herd of white vans surrounding two lions sleeping off a meal - looks like a buffalo and calf. Then we all surround another big, male lion with half a buffalo carcase. Less than 20 ft from the lion but he's not interested in us. Too interested in the buffalo. Wonder what happened to the rest of it. Looks a very clean cut. No scattering of bones or messy edges. Sense a set up.

Kenya 29 December 2006

Day 2 dawns. Better weather. All day safari. See lions stalking antelope. More elephant. Ostriches, incongruously by a football pitch at a village in the middle of the park.

A long drive near the Tanzanian border and Mara River. Hippos wallowing in the water as the mid-day sun bakes down. A crocodile and hippo face off on the opposite bank.

We cross the bridge over the Mara to enter the TransMara part of the reserve. More open plain. Gone are the trees and low scrub. Herds of giraffe, zebra and wildebeest.

Idyllic picnic lunch under Acacia tree. then head further uphill with views back across to the Serengeti Plains of Tanzania. Swing off the track and follow tyre marks through the grass. Circle round and make out a small rocky outcrop where a family of cheetah are resting. Mother and five half-grown cubs. They are unperturbed and we get within 10 metres to take photos. Magical moment.

Lions at the roadside...blase. More herds of elephant.

The saga of the balloon flight! The local rep's suposed to have booked it but apparently couldn't get through on the phone. Then the weather was so bad that the operator said he couldn't get his 4x4 to the launch site or get to oick s up. Not good. A champagne breakfast is less appealing when you are on the menu. Some (esp. Morgan) are very upset. We're more sanguine. If the operator is turning down the better part of US$3,000 for a day's work he must mean it when he says it is too difficult and dangerous. And anyway, we won't see much if the weather's bad. We do drive round to another operator but he's fully booked. Who wants to waste a day hanging around for a flight that may never happen?

Kenya 28 December 2006

Pissing down rain. Use the ruts to steer the 4x4 Land Rover equipped with grandstand style seating on the back - cocooned in plastic and canvas. Arrive at the lodge. Park in the mud and progress through a tunnel of bushes to emerge at the reception. We're allocated tent 12, which looks out onto a clearing, populated with monkeys, around which the other tents are discreetly hidden. The tent is twice the size of that in Bwindi and like that has a double superstructure, supported on wood. Inside it has twin beds, bedside cabinets giving way to the bathroom/dressing room with shower with a giant head like those in the Savoy Hotel, sink cum vanity unit and indoor loo hidden behind wooden batwing saloon doors.



Late afternoon game drive into the Masai Mara. It's criss-crossed with tracks and a seemingly endless supply of white minivans with their sunroofs up.

We see a couple of elephants then head up a side-track for a closer look at some giraffe. On our way back, Gerrard takes the wrong rut and we get stuck. All out. Who's on lion-watch? With a little help from Adam and Morgan we get out.

See two lionesses and their cubs. Side-tracked again for more close ups of giraffes but on the way back we get a flat. Gerrard makes it back to the main track and we stop to take stock. The spare is flat too. Dusk falling. Who's on lionwatch?(!) That pair are only half a mile down the road. But the minivans are still gathered there so it's ok, isn't it? Gerrard radios for assistance. The other Siana Springs Land Rover turns up and we borrow its spare, frtunately fully inflated.

Glimpse a buffalo in the gloom near the park exit. make a ptstop at the Masai village by the entrance and leave the tyre to be fixed. Not a bad afternoon - 3 of the big 5 bagged.

Kenya 27/28 December 2006

Kenyatta again. This time through immigration, collect luggage and find the man with the EXPLORE sign. There are supposed to be eight of us but after 3/4s of an hour wait we conclude that no. 8 is a no-show. Make our way to minibuses to take us to Wilson Airport for the onward flight: Jenny and me; Jackie, a middle-aged woman who's just joined Gordon Brown at the Treasury (he eats in the staff restaurant and sometimes brings his kid in); Sarah, a headhunter; Adam and Rebecca, who're Navy; and Morgan, Irish, fresh from hand-rearing cheetah cubs and failed to read the note about the US$300 local payment and hasn't changed any money. Sarah subs him.

The local rep takes our money, agrees to organise a city tour of Nairobi and a meal to fill in the hours between 4pm and 9pm when we will be at a lose end during our return journey, and runs.

Longish wait for a smallish plane. Check in is on a first names only basis. We have to change planes at the first stop then make sure we get off at the right stop after that. It's like buses.

45 minute flight to land on a mud strip by a herd of zebra. Our bags are offloaded and we carry them ourselves across the mud and load them onto our third plane of the day. Spot the thatch roofed, open-sided hut that passes for the departure lounge. Two short hops and we're at our destination - Siana Springs Lodge, complete with its own airstrip.