We left for the Mara at o’dark thirty on Friday morning…actually it was just after 6 am but it was still very dark. Our driver, Jonathan picked us up in the Safari Van in which we would spend the majority of the next six days. We know that Jonathan is Kenyan but strongly believe that he was trained to drive by an ex-kamikaze pilot. We now refer to the Safari Van as the “bullet” van. I’m not sure it was more harrowing riding the bullet when it was still dark or after the sun had come up and we could see how close we really were to the steep drop-off edges on the narrow, curvy mountain roads. The ride was suppose to take 6 to 6 ½ hours…we arrived at our destination in just under 7 hours after we left the hotel in Eldoret…and believe me when I say, every bone and muscle in my body felt every minute of the ride. The bad news was that the ride was a bit longer than we had hoped. The good news is, much more of it was on paved roads than we had been told. Actually only the last 2 ½ hours were on the bone-jarring, deeply rutted roads of the Masai lands.
It’s really hard to describe what the ride felt like but the best analogy I can come up with will be familiar for those who like to ride roller coasters. Think of the first 4 ½ hours as riding a nice new state of the coaster non-stop…no cork screws but just about every other feature you might imagine. Then I would describe the last 2 ½ hours as being equivalent to riding one of the good old wooden roller coasters….the van creaked and moaned (and so did we) with every rock and rut and the dust came rolling in the whole time. Everyone else in the van except for me and the driver had taken the non-drowsy Dramamine to prevent motion sickness….the good news is, it did prevent anyone from getting motion sickness….however, they all slept a good bit as they couldn’t keep their eyes open…at least until we hit Masai land, only Bill could sleep through that. Again, I’m not sure if that was actually a blessing or a curse….they missed out on some awesome scenery along the way but they also missed out on a few very close calls with on-coming traffic and drop-off ledges. I’ve never been prone to motion sickness but brought some of the same Dramamine just in case I thought I might need it. I also purchased a set of Sea Bands….acupressure bands that you wear around both wrists…not drugs, no drowsy side-effects. I don’t know if they actually worked or if it was a placebo effect but after all the rattling around, lurching forward, and hard-braking, I never even felt slightly sick and certainly didn’t feel like closing my eyes….except for one really close call with an on-coming truck with an “oversized load” sign on it! I’ll be using them again on the ride to Nairobi which we’ve been told is 7 hours…now we know to expect at least 8.
Ok, ok, enough moaning about the ride. There really was some awesome scenery along the way. It’s fascinating how quickly the terrain and the flora can changes it such short distances. We started out at an elevation of about 7000 ft.. It was very dry and the local farmers were anxiously awaiting the start of the rainy season. Along the way, we actually climbed a little higher and it got even drier. Then we went down into the Rift valley through some very fertile areas where they had obviously received some rains and the vegetation was quite green. We saw lots of sugar cane growing in the valley. On the mountain sides going down into and then coming back up out of the valley there were lots of tea fields. The fields on the far side of the valley were very lush and green and there were people harvesting in them. Jonathan showed us the Lipton plantation and we learned that the majority of the plain label black tea in the world is harvested from this region of Kenya. After the Rift valley we climbed up another set of mountains and then as we came back down on the other side of them the land became much drier again. The Masai lands are the driest we’ve seen thus far. The people and the animals are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the rainy season which they consider to run from late March or April to late September.
Now don’t get me wrong, I would definitely take that ride again and be able to experience all I’ve seen thus far. However, I did learn that there are daily direct flights to an airstrip from Nairobi to an airstrip about an hours drive from here….might be something to seriously consider if you’re planning a visit any time soon!
We arrived at our camp in time to freshen up and grab a late lunch and then stretch out and relax in the fresh air for a couple hours until it cooled down enough to go out on the evening safari. Our “tents” were just as they looked on the camp’s website and when they took our bags back for us they kindly reminded us to keep the doors locked at all times as they have a bit of trouble with the monkeys. [Its Saturday afternoon right now as I’m typing this and I’m sitting out on the front porch of my tent. We have not seen any monkeys yet on the two safari outings we’ve been on (hang on, more on those in a bit). However, in the last 15 minutes, I’ve had at least 8 monkeys jump down out of the tree and land literally 10 feet from me. They each scoped me out pretty good before they jumped but didn’t hurry off when they landed, just meandered down the path toward the main cabin as if it were part of their usual afternoon stroll! ]
The only unpleasant surprise in the camps is we found out by trial and frustration that the one and only outlet that we have in each tent is only powered by the generator a few hours each day and they shut it off completely all night. Not a good thing for a bunch of photographers with re-chargeable batteries in their cameras. Also not a good thing to forget to tell said photographers when they check-in. Ah well, we talked them into turning the generator on in the morning so we could get full charges on our batteries and it only delayed our safari start by about half an hour….and just wait until I tell you (or rather show you!) what we saw….
I’m going to stop here and put all of the awesome safari stories and pictures into a separate blog entry….I will try and upload this one before we leave in a few minutes for our third and final safari adventure. Bear with me as I get the pictures for this one uploaded as well. In Kenya the roads suck but they have cell towers everywhere, even in the Mara! We have pretty good phone reception (as long as your phone’s battery is charged) and I’m trying to upload this over an ATT Communicator Card…we’ll see how successful I am!
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