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| Our 5.30 wake up call ensured we were ready for another safari as
the sun rose. I packed quickly, before setting out on another torchlight hippo hunt. There
was still no sign of it, however. |
| The morning’s safari was much better.
We swapped drivers and this time we got the commentary. The driver explained that we
didn’t have time to travel to Rhino Ridge or the Hippo Pools. They looked very close
on the map, but were, in fact, miles away. |
| We didn’t actually see a kill, but we did see vultures
feeding. We also saw lions feeding, this time without the matatu entourage. One group of
lions had cubs and another came within feet of the matatu. We also saw hyenas hunting in
packs. Wildebeest, zebras, elephants, giraffe, gazelles, … It didn’t really
matter that we hadn’t seen a leopard, cheetah or rhino. Few people do see them on
their first safari. |
| Garsen’s breakfast of boiled egg and bread seemed so basic
compared to the feast of cereal, fruit juice, fruit, bacon, sausage, doughnut, beans,
… There was even a chef offering to cook your eggs to order. Fried eggs sunny side
up? Or maybe an omelette with cheese, onion, mushroom, …? |
| I found the hippo again after breakfast. It had moved about 40
yards during the night. I cleared the tent, and put some Starburst (used to be called Opal
Fruits) on a table outside the tent. I was just two feet away, sorting out my bag, when a
monkey came and grabbed the sweets. It was back up the tree before I knew it. In fact, it
had unwrapped the sweets and handed them out to its friends, and they had unwrapped the
individual sweets and thrown the wrappers away, popping the sweets into their mouths,
before I could call others to watch. |
| Some of us slept on the journey back. After a late lunch, we
visited SCREAM, one last time. We sang alternate Swahili and
English songs, swapped addresses, signed the visitor’s book and left with our newly
printed SCREAM T-shirts. |
| We had a quick tidy up at Sheepfold, before leaving for Carnivore,
a restaurant specialising in big game meat. We had seen the animals. We were now going to
eat the animals, though Nicola insisted she couldn’t eat giraffe. Fortunately for
her, it wasn’t on the menu. After farmers soup (vegetable), we were served
"many, many" different kinds of meat. The plate was so hot that the first meat
put on it sizzled. There was a selection of sauces in the middle of the table and a token
display of vegetables. Meanwhile, waiters came round with skewers, serving different types
of meat, slicing it off the skewer, directly on to your plate while you were eating. The
selection included zebra, crocodile and ostrich, as well as the more usual lamb, pork,
beef, chicken wings, chicken drumsticks, chicken liver, spare ribs, beef sausages, …
The waiters only stopped serving when the flag in the middle of the table went down. When
the last person had given up, you dropped the flag. |
First, we saw the animals, then...
 
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| We dropped Becky off at her home on the way back, having gone
through two security gates, guarded by men wearing balaclavas to try to keep warm. |
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