Monday 13 February
Never in all of the camps I have stayed at have I heard a more active night than I did last night. The noise of the night started as soon as I returned to my tent from dinner and continued all night long. The leopards huffing (confirmed that noise with the camp manager) went all night long and was definitely within feet of my tent a few times. Hyena were constantly laughing from their den nearby and twice I heard lions roaring, once in the wee hours, again just before I awoke and again as we had our coffee before the game drive started.
The area seemed busiest around 2-3 am, when I laid awake listening to the chorus of wild voices all around the tent. I heard my fellow travelers up and about and venturing to the open-air bathroom off their tent (no thanks, I’ll wait until closer to dawn!) and wondered how I would ever get back to sleep with all this going on. Next thing I knew the alarm was going off at 5:30 and I was throwing on clothes, sunblock and a hat and off I went. Amazingly, I got a very solid night’s sleep with no help from the Ambien that I usually need to beat jet lag, so that’s a first.
All of my overnight reconnaissance I shared with Simon when we met up at 6 am, figuring any of it may be a clue to where we’d find our girl Giza this morning. He said that the male leopard we saw last night has been harassing her and stealing her kills, which is why she is so lean and always needs to hunt. When he harasses her too much, she retreats to the other side of the river. That is apparently what she did last night, because our very persistent searching this morning did not uncover her. The other vehicles from camp came up empty as well. One vehicle came across the lion pride I must have heard overnight, feasting on a kill they’d made. We will try to find them on tonight’s drive before we start the search for Giza again.
I was shocked by how cold it was when we started out. I had a fleece on and wrapped myself in a Maasai blanket for the first 90 minutes or so but all was forgotten by 9 am when the sun had warmed enough to shed both for short sleeves. The wind started to kick up again midday, which makes it comfortable in the shade and takes the edge off the direct sun a bit.
The young women I’m sharing a vehicle with wanted to do walking safari, so we dropped them back at camp at 8 and headed out with the antenna to try to track the wild dogs. We needed to get to a high point over the valley in order to get a clear signal. We tried 3 times and came up empty, not a blip to be heard. The last viewpoint though was pretty spectacular, with an expansive view over the valley and surrounding mountains (including Mt Kenya). We had coffee, banana muffins and a hard boiled egg there to hold us over until brunch.
In lieu of the dogs and leopards, I had some great sightings of giraffes and elephants, particularly at the dam we visited late yesterday (when there was no one but a lone hippo there). Today was a vision of coexistence with nearly 40 elephants, 20+ zebra, dozens of impala and a dozen or so giraffes all drinking at the dam with the hippo floating about on his own. Pretty idyllic if you ask me.
All of the camp visitors and guides met at the dam where the camp team set up brunch. Today it was a wonderful pasta salad with peppers, carrots and onion, a beet salad that I loved and vegetarian (for me) version of scotch egg. More fruit salad and a Stoney Tangawizi to wash it down.
We were back at camp by noon so I took a nice hot shower and then took my siesta, which starts off as updating the blog, then reading a bit and finally dozing until the alarm goes off to alert me to tea time at 4:00.
I feel bad for Simon at times because I know he wants to deliver on the cats, and I keep telling him anything is good, any animal is a bonus and not to worry. The landscape here is such that it’s not at all very tall but it is dense at ground level, not flat and open like the plains of the Mara, so you could very well be driving right by a cat you just can’t see.
No comments:
Post a Comment