camping

That vista never ceases to amaze me and to calm torn nerves.

Miles and miles of savannah, till as far as the eye can see.

A magical land this, the 'spotted land'and one of my favourite places in the world, no matter how many tourist kuoni overtake us in a cloud of dust, getting nowhere in a hurry.

Kids away with Grandparents, work can wait for 3 or 4 days and the migration is on and we have a working 4-wheel drive so lets go and away we went with out own firewood, tent, over 20 litres of water, coolbox and at my age,blow up therma rest AND my pillow. Laugh. I don't care. I like to be comfy in my tent. If there had been space in the car for my double duvet, ..... but there were already snide comments about water and why anyone needs to wash at all when they are on safari and something about packing the kitchen sink.

The ónly dry season'road via Lemek is truly and amazingly bad. By the time you reach the escarpment down towards the Mara river, it ceases to be a road and become a meandering of this rock or that. Who knows why people go to the rhino charge, they just need to drive to the mara. And Oloololo gate never looked so welcoming.

We have always camped outside the park and have always used the Sekenani gate so I was quite curious on what a campsite IN the park would be like. It is made very clear on all Mara Conservancy information that all campsites are NOT fenced but really, what does that matter ..... YOU ARE IN THE GLORIOUS MARA!! Its like going to the Coast and it rains, or you get stuck in traffic .... SO WHAT, YOU ARE AT THE COAST! Within 5 minutes we see our first lion and lioness and it is how it was meant to be. Now we came for the migration so forget setting up camp, like is my usual cautious way, lets go to the river. So we go to the river. Lots of hippo. crocks, massing wildebeest but not much happening and it is getting a bit late so we go towards camp 1, just next to Serena. Very nice, in a little copse of trees, not more than 500 metres from the Serena main gate. But, how does one put this delicately, the loo facilities are take your panga, do, bury and I prefer to do 'my business' without other people around and there were already 3 happy campers, one of which was a whole family there so we moved on.

Next campsite, hard to find, road hardly used but a breathtaking view of the savannah, on a slight 'mlima' and not a soul ... and not a tree in sight. Shade vs privacy and privacy won. Man made fire. Woman cooked, then looked out into the dark, after hearing the first lion, not roaring, making that funny aarf hrumf sound and ... there were many many glowing monster eyes out there. Woman in a high pitched voiced told man to look. He sees nothing. Don't patronise me, get a bloody torch man! And ..... they were a heard of impala. Phew. But now I am not feeling 'safe'at all. We are in a game park. There are wild animals here and we are a nuisance to them. This is their backyard and I have not re written my will yet. Needless to say, I did not sleep that night well, while Andreas, slept wonderfully. At about midnigt I hear something snoring and snorting and munching grass right outside my tent! I was sooo scared, and I don't admit this lightly, as I am a child of Africa, that I finally understood adrenalin and how it makes your senses sharper and makes your heart pump and how it is possible for, even I, to just get up and run ....After what seems like an hour, manage to move and breath less shallowly and get some blood back to the brain .... shake Andreas awake and he says, it must be bufallo and you are in the tent .....Now we all know how dangerous buffalo are and he is blithely telling me we are in a flimsy tent ....and TURNS HIS BACK ON ME and resumes sleeping! Woke him at 5 am (he thought I wanted to get an early start and pack up camp but really, I just had enough of not sleeping!) we had breakfast, I went 50 metres down the road to get the sunrise and .... yup ... buffalo. But they were 100 mts away so .... I calmly, if I say so myself, took my photos ... ready to run at any moment, which my dad told me does you no good, unless you can run zig zag and slow him down a bit. Get in car and drive but 200 metres and we see this big backside that looks like rhino .... NO, it is a hippo ... 3 kilometres away from the river! THAT was what was beside my tent, the most dangerous animal in Africa. I have seen one bit a kayak in half, grab the swimming woman through her stomach, shake her like a rag doll, and throw her on the bank. (She lived luckily!)We see game, yada yada blah blah. It rains. Black cotton soil and within minutes we are sliding along on our special mud tires and the stress increases.

At camp, amid drizzle, we eat in the light and I wash in my tent (yes, I still wash, if only to irritate Andreas) and forget about the rain has stopped and come see the stars and all that! Hear hyena laugh ... well snikker and Andreas kindly informs me that when he was reading for his Kenya Safari Guides exam, the laugh means they have found food. Well, at least it is not me. Sleep some as am tired. Wake him up at 4.30 and just as it starts to lighten, on the edge of the grass camp, I see a shape ... and another.... move closer to the frying pan that has my precious sausages on it .... hyena. One slinks past, not even 45 paces (I counted later!) from Andreas who has just finished his panga job. Did not bury that one I can tell you! And another .... in total 4. There goes further appetite. These things have jaws that can crush bones and the worse thing, they eat while their prey is alive and don't suffocate and kill their prey like the big cats do. Get into the car while Andreas, poor dear, packs up the rest of camp. I drive to the main road and there is the whole clan assembling. Mum and 5, strangely cute babies, and then from the left, right, across the road ... the rest of them and there are big spotted ones, 9 in total. My stomach does funny things. In 10 minutes, it is all forgotten as we spot a civet cat in the tall grass and only one more person passes to see it before it lies down, and you would never know there was anything there. And the lioness I found all on my own when I said, after 2 hours of seeing nothing at all but wonderful landscape, go through that lugger and as you come up the other side, on the left, under a bush will be a lioness. And it was so. Very very strange.

And as the day, night must follow. Been running on adrenalin for a while now eh. Get into camp and ... dik dik .... so cute and then, to the left of the car, no way, it is elephant ... a huge matriarch. And right after her a mother with a baby ..... shit, shit on toast. Had a friend who got attacked by elephant, in a mini van, tusk through the mini van and tossed it aside and luckily did not come back for me and the car was ok to drive, very fast, away. No warning, no ears flapping. We are well into the gloaming now and can just make her out ... lifts her trunk and sniffs the camp fire area, the tent ... grabs a plastic water bottle and jiggles it and then, carries on into the bush, just behind the tent! And then there are two others 'lurking'on the left but there is not light so I can't see ... so we are marooned on our island of car amid a sea of elephant. Not funny but they mosey along, in their own time and in about half an hour, we can get out and there is no sound at all! They are gone, alleluia ... not hungry, not even wanting to wash, just want to get into my tent ... and miraculously, fall asleep ... to be awakened by this quiet, cropping of grass ... to my left, behind, and next to me .... sit bolt upright and notice that for once, Andreas is awake and is swallowing a bit. Hold my breath but can't sustain it and the cropping and munching and the once in a while breath are very close, really, just above the tent ..... marooned in a tent, needing desperately to pee, amid a sea of elephant, much much bigger than I and I know I am in a tent but it is scant protection against something so mammoth like, that I suddenly remember, has very poor eyesight and could get spooked by the strangest things and could, technically, stamp on my head and squash it like a melon, all by mistake! If Arno had been with us, would he have suddenly woken as he does, cried and scared the elephant? Would Ilana have just wanted to get out of the tent to see better? Oh....my.....God. It feels like forever but the eating recedes, no one trips over the tent lanyard ... and I think I must have fainted in gratitude but got woken by my bladder as I STILL needed to pee! Next morning, at 4, I tell him we are leaving, I don't care about the migration, I need to sleep in a fence. We are bimbing through the park and getting out through Sekenani and you better pray we see a crossing .... and we did and it was spectacular, all those gnu leaping into the water, and the crocks coming out, and the wet ones climbing up the steep bank and again forming their snaking line as they head off in their centuries old search for greener pastures ... it was magical and awesome and humbling and I would probably have been on a higher high than I am normally on but I really needed to sleep... and NOW!