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Stage Four: Amboseli And A Missing Mountain
To enter Amboseli via the Kimana Gate is to drive into a dust bowl. Huge plumes follow each safari truck, every animal movement is followed by the same giveaway and by the time the first hour of our first game drive has passed, our mouths taste of nothing but dry dust. But the dustbowl is but one element, there is more to learn about unique Amboseli, a set of characteristics which set it apart from Kenya’s other safari regions. For a start there are four separate habitats: the dry dusty plain, a freshwater lake, a salt water lake and an extensive swamp. What really makes Amboseli unique though is the…
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Stage Three: Lake Nakuru to Amboseli
Early starts are par for the course when you’re on safari, so by the time we hit Saturday the alarm is going off at 5:15am for the fourth morning in a row and is going to carry on doing so for a few days yet. A dense mist lies over the lake, obscuring most of it from view, and a heavy dew hangs in liquid baubles from plants bent over by the weight. Birds sing and baboons talk: wildlife doesn’t need an alarm clock. When we chose the itinerary for our safari week, we opted for the one which would take us to five of Kenya’s great safari regions, an…
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Stage Two: Maasai Mara To Lake Nakuru
We’re not always one hundred per cent certain about visits to tribal villages, it’s sometimes a thin line between an authentic experience and something touristy and exploitative, and it’s hard to tell the difference beforehand. Whichever, the bottom line is that the time honoured customs of the local people will be being impacted one way or another by the influx of tourist money, there’s no getting away from that. But here, in a new country and deep into the Maasai Mara, our desire to learn more of their culture outweighs the doubts and we commit to an early morning sortie. As it turns out, it’s not touristy, it’s definitely not…
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Safari Stage One: Into The Maasai Mara
Our base for the first two nights of the safari adventure is Jambo Mara Lodge, where we are greeted by staff bearing those heartwarming smiles which are already becoming very familiar since our arrival in Kenya, and then by baboons swinging from the trees immediately outside our window. Every now and again a playful one leaps from the tree and pitter patters across our tin roof as if to warn us that this is the territory of the animals and not of mankind. The approach through the Maasai Mara to Jambo has brought us through tiny villages which bear ever more recognisable features of the Maasai people, until in the…
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Africa Underway – Trouble On The Streets Of Nairobi
Nairobi, Tuesday 7am. Darkness lifts as we progress slowly through passport control and baggage reclaim, then out into the melee of taxis, buses and safari jeeps clamouring for passengers or waiting for someone to spot their name on a board and head out under the big morning sky. The expressway from airport to city is a racetrack of vehicles constantly changing lanes and squeezing through gaps which are barely there. Alongside and parallel, huge numbers of people make their way on foot to their workplace, giving the industrial quarter the look of an African Lowry painting, stick figures jostling through crowds in every direction. We are met at our one-nighter…
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Next Stop Nairobi
After what has been for us a lengthy spell at home in England – it’s just over seven weeks since we flew back from California – we’re on the cusp of what is potentially our most adventurous trip so far. Our first stop will be Nairobi, though only for a single day before we’re off on an 8-day safari tour of other parts of Kenya. Somewhat unusually for us, this initial tour is not self guided but one in which we will be taken between destinations and out into the national parks by pre-booked guides and agents – the logistics and complications of individually booked destinations made the pre-planned option…
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Destination Cape Town, 80 Years Later
It’s always a strange feeling, filling the last few days before a long trip, a kind of void which gets filled with things that don’t really need to be done, and some that definitely do. A kind of hiatus where there’s a heap of tasks which wait to be done but can’t yet be tackled. We fly out on July 15th; friends and family are all but seen, places visited, jobs completed, boxes ticked. It will be on us like an avalanche soon, but for now, a timeless vacuum regularly taps our shoulder with a bony hand. There’s been a bit of a medical issue, not, as it turns out,…
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Sun, Sea & Safari: Notes From The English Seaside
A short walk from our home – in fact, a very short walk, less a mile – is a dead end ditch-lined track known as Braggs Lane, which winds its way through farm fields to the edge of the woods between Herne Bay and Canterbury. The dead end is at what is known as Bleangate, one of the main entrances for hikers and ramblers to enter Blean Woods. Blean Woods, a large area of ancient woodland dating back centuries, is a designated area of special scientific interest due to its unique ecology and flora and fauna. Crossing through the centre of the woodland is a droveway which has been traced…
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Our Next Adventure: Nairobi To Cape Town Through 7 Countries
Yep, that’s what we’re doing next. In the middle of July we’ll be flying out to Nairobi, so making Kenya the first of seven countries on our slow journey from there to the continent’s southern coast. We will be starting with only an outline plan of our route, a framework which contains a number of definites and several “must sees” but with a variable plan which is likely to evolve and change as we make our way southwards. All seven countries will be, for us, new African ground. Together we have previously visited Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Cape Verde and Tanzania including Zanzibar, and Michaela has also visited Gambia and Senegal,…
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Waiter, There’s A Praying Mantis In My Soup
Two out of the ordinary things happened this morning even before breakfast. Floating in my bedside glass of water was the lifeless carcass of a moth, having evidently drowned some time during the night. Outside on the terrace, equally lifeless, was a strawberry. I don’t grow strawberries, I have none in the house and haven’t had for some considerable time, so exactly how a big juicy red strawberry could end up just laying there on the paving slab a few feet from my door is something of a mystery. Whilst the story of the strawberry is one to ponder, it doesn’t evoke the same sense of injustice as the story…
