The Kenya Experience

And so we’re in Africa. As I write this, it’s Sunday morning, two days after my birthday. I’m in the tent and Karen’s outside on the veranda, reading, about ten metres from the Mara River. This morning, there were hippos in the water just outside. I can hear them grunting, right now.

We had a full night’s sleep last night for the first time since before we left Christchurch. Since then, it’s been up early for flight or arrive late to check into hotels. Then here, at the Olonana Camp, we’ve been out on dawn game drives and yesterday it was up before dawn to take off in a balloon at first light.

We have our own “tent” which is a kind-of suite with proper showers and toilet, parquet floor, verandah. It’s in the bush about 30 metres from the main hall. A big mosquito net all around the bed, though I haven’t seen one mozzie – yet.

You can’t drink the water, though, or even clean your teeth with it. It’s taken straight out of the river, filtered and then the “used” water (not septic, though) is pumped back into the river. The water in the bathroom taps sometimes has little brown lumps in it!

So last night we said we’d had enough and we crashed. Woke up this morning, had breakfast and I decided to try to write these notes before the afternoon session.

Back to the beginning .... The trip to Africa was long, long, long. Three hours from Christchurch, then two hours in Sydney and then 14 hours to Johannesburg. That place was a surprise. I have no doubt there are parts of that city where you wouldn’t want to go, particularly late at night. But that’s true of Glasgow, Sydney, Los Angeles and even Christchurch. We found the place very sophisticated with the Nelson Mandela centre providing air-conditioned shopping. It was huge, with wall-sized TV sets and so on. Ten million people, mostly black of course.

After Jo’burg, we flew north three hours to Nairobi, Kenya and overnighted in the House of Waine, a wonderful old country mansion which has been converted into a hotel in the suburb of Karen. Guards on the gates, all that sort of thing. It’s Karen Blixen country – she of “Out of Africa” fame. Her house, now a museum, is only two minutes from the hotel. But it was one of those times when we checked in late and left early so couldn’t see it.

So, finally, to the Olonana camp in a little two-engined something. One interesting thing was all the wildebeest and zebras all around the dirt airstrip.

Our guide for the four days, a Masai called Nelson, drove us to the camp. He’s an incredible person, and I’ll be telling his story another time.

But on the first day, Karen was excited that we saw 14 animals ranging from meerkats all the way up to elephants. She’s shot a lot of very good pictures with the G11 and taken a stack of video stuff with the same camera.

The attached pictures tell their own story, I hope. I don’t know how to put captions on the pictures, but I hope they tell their own story.

Then it was my birthday. Chris did his “usual” – now a bit of a ritual – the expensive bottle of wine with dinner. Then the other three kids all chipped in for a statue of a Masai warrior. It is so perfect it looks like a metal thing from China, but it comes with a certificate of authenticity showing that it’s made here, of clay that’s been hand painted and burnished so it looks like metal.

That night, just as dinner was on, and there were twenty-odd people in the dining room, a conga line came out of the kitchen. Maybe twenty-odd staff, singing a song they’d written themselves – chefs, office staff, waiters – with my birthday cake up front. Needless to say, everyone was a bit taken aback. I had to make a speech and everyone in the room had some of the cake.

Next morning, yesterday, was the balloon ride and champagne breakfast out on the Mara. Truly memorable and as usual, many thanks must go to Karen for her organisational skills.

The bears are having a great time, too. Other people in the balloon wanted to know all abut them and when we left after the breakfast, Karen was holding the bears at the side of our 4WD Landcruiser – it had no sides and a canvas roof, so it was easy to see inside. Anyway, the people in the other vehicle all wanted to take pictures of the bears. So they’re famous.

Tomorrow, Monday, we go to the Okovango delta in Botswana.

For Peter’s benefit, the new long lens is unreal. I don’t know if the attached photos in their reduced size tell the story, but it’s the sharpest lens I’ve ever used. And the new 2x converter does it justice. I am delighted with the camera. And LR3 is just great. One funny story. We were driving down this track, having taken photos of elephants about thirty metres away, when I saw these massive lenses, three of them, protruding from the top of a closed-in vehicle. Japanese amateurs. The lenses were so long they were about a hundred metres from the elephants. Why the hell would you do that. Tell you more when I get back to Christchurch.