Entering Another World

We checked out of Kim’s Breeze Hotel in Narok, our home for the past 10 days, and headed over to Alice’s place to drop off some stuff in the storage shed there.  Then it was back through Narok on our way to the Maasai Mara.  These horrible roads are old hat by now.  What seemed so long on the first day we drove to Alice’s place now seems rather short.  The road to Olosheki is much longer.

Travel time from Narok was about 2.5 hours on the only road that goes in that direction.  It is a paved road, thanks to Chinese investments in Africa.  The Chinese have invested heavily in African infrastructure, and now the various African countries owe the Chinese billions.  With that kind of debt, they will be under China’s thumb for a very long time.  I’m told that this road was really bad before the Chinese came along

We arrived here at the Sarova Mara Game Camp at just past noon.  This is a resort-style camp with just about everything imaginable, and it was like stepping into another world.  We’ve been in the African bush for a couple weeks now, where water is scarce, clean water is far scarcer, and the most prized possession is a few cows or sheep, and entered a place where we were greeted at the entrance with a hot washcloth with a menthol scent, we were given a glass of fresh orange juice or pineapple juice at the registration desk, and our accommodations are a “tent” which is really a large cabin containing a king size bed and a luxury bathroom.

It’s enough to take your breath away.

The pineapple juice was amazing.

We had lunch in the on-site restaurant, enjoying the buffet-style foods from all over the world and then took it easy for a couple hours.  Not much happens in the animal kingdom in the heat of the day, so the game drive was set for 3:30, giving us some down time.

I spent a lot of the time walking around the grounds.  There are 75 tents here, with about a dozen of them undergoing some sort of renovation.  This place has a pool, a lounge with a large fireplace, several game areas (billiards, table tennis, darts), and an organic garden which supplies the restaurant.  I walked into the garden and one of the workers showed me around for a bit.  Very impressive.  Nearly every vegetable and herb imaginable.

The worker even pointed out a tree hyrax, which I have never heard of.  This animal apparently can be quite noisy at night, with its loud shrieks and screams.  There were several of them in this area.  We’ll see if we hear any tonight.

I’ve been enjoying the different bird calls today, and now this evening we can hear the frogs peeping.  This is a far different sound than the roar of trucks and motorbikes in Narok, the televisions played way too loud, and the weekend parties that raged until the wee hours of the morning.  I could fall asleep to this!

At 3:30 we loaded into the Land Cruiser for a game drive.  It was perfect weather to pop the top up and stand up in the car nearly the entire time.  We saw lots of animals.  One of the highlights was coming up to a couple of cheetahs working on a fresh kill.  We stayed and watched them eat for a while.  I’ll let the pictures tell some of the story...

We were a little bit late coming out of the Mara.  Michael kept telling us “Time is not on our side”, and our return trip to the resort was done at speeds that would probably not be attainable on pitted dirt roads such as these, but we were able to catch a couple of lions, the elephants, and some ostriches during this time.  There are apparently some hefty fines for being on these roads after 6:30pm so Michael was understandably urgent in his desire to meet that goal.  We were only about ten minutes late.

Dinner was again a sumptuous buffet of tastes from all over the world.  They even had Kenyan ugali, which I passed over.  Been there, done that.  I did try the boiled goat.  I wondered if it was still chewy if the meat was actually done.  It was.