Vibeke Stærkebye Nørstebø: Africa Part 3

The airstrip

After Ngumbulu I had one weekend in Kenya before my flight to South Africa. After some considerations, I decided to use this weekend to experience some more “real Africa”, and go on Safari (Another option was the beautiful Indian Ocean city Mombasa). So from Nairobi, I took a small plane Friday morning to Masai Mara national park. The airport in Masai Mara consisted of a gravel airsrip, and that’s iit. Never seen anything like that. Not even a building, quite funny.

A 4WD car and 2 Masai people picked me and 4 other people up and we drove to the camp. On the way we already saw zebras, different antilopes/gazelles, elephants, giraffs, and a lot of lot of wildebeest. I had never seen them before, so first I didn’t even know that word, so Wikipedia had to help me so that I found the Norwegian word (gnu), so now I know what it is. (That was the case with many of the animals and the English names by the way) And I had no idea that it existed so many of them. There are like millions of them. And each year at this time the travel to Serengeti in Tanzania for Christmas vacation, and actually stay there until june/july. Then they come back to Masai Mara national park again. They were all over the place, but still, the guide told us, it was actually rather few, because a lot of them had already crossed the Mara river on the way to Serengeti.

The camp we were going to live in was a small camp, place for about 20 people. And it was a tent camp. But it is the most luxurious tents I have ever seen. Really amazing. Everyone had their own tent, with a big bed, table and chairs, bathroom with water toilet, and shower. Really nice!! Then there was a restaurant tent, a library tent, a bar, and outside it was a fire place, and a couple of relaxing places with chairs, couch and hammocks. Really nice! And good food in the restaurant! Since we were in the middle of the park, surrounded by wil animals, we were not allowed to walk away from the camp. But if we wanted to go down to the river (some hundred meters away), a couple of the masai people, that also guarded the camp, would follow us, so we could see crocodiles and hippos.

My tent

In the camp I could finally have coffee again too. The funny thing however, I would never had believed that about myself, was that I still preferred the tea-milk-mix…. And I who loves coffee, and don’t like black tea… Very funny….

The two next days we were out on game drive with our 4WD. In addition to the animals I already mentioned we saw baboons, wart pig (Pumba), mongoose (Thimon), buffalo, impala, eland, Thomsens gazelles, black rhino, cheetahs (Gepard), hyenas, lions, a lepard hidning, ostrich, vultures, storks, jakals, foxes, serval, termit mounds (They are huge), and a lot of birds. Amazing, and funny and incredible! Like being in the middle of the movie Lions King… We also had picnic breakfast on a small hill, overlooking the savannah and the river. So beautiful!

In the evenings we were sitting by the fire place, drinking, talking, and listen to the African night, and the animals… During the nights we could also hear the hyenas and the hippos making noices around our camp. (But it was not scary as we were well guarded by the masai people.)

Me and my Masai guard :-)

It is also fascinating how all these wild animals live together, and are lying on the savannah pretty close to each other, although the lions, for instance, would eat the zebras, wildebeasts and antilopes if they were hungry…. But as long as they were not hungry they didn’t bother the other animals, and the other were not afraid either. (The zebras would know if they were in danger, the wildebeasts are simply too stupid to be really afraid) Quite amazing…..

Wildebeasts crossing the river

Some minutes before we left the camp on Sunday, we could also witness an amazing sight, that we actually had searched for the last days. A thousand of wildebeasts crossing the river, just in front of our camp. Trying to survive, escape the stream, the crocodiles and the hippos and come over to the other side. That was probably my most exciting happenings of them all from my stay in Masai Mara.

Sunday evening a left Kenya, going to Cape Town and South Africa…. So next episode will follow from the point where the cold Atlantic meats the warmer Indian Ocean….. and were the black and white people live side by side, with all the opportunities and challenges that gives….