Day 2 - first full day in the Mara

Daniel (our room guard) came with tea, coffee and biscuits to wake us up at 5:45am - it was still pitch black out so when we were ready to get going we flashed the torch out of the tent and Daniel came running back to escort us to the truck where George was waiting with hot water bottles on our seats and a picnic breakfast packed in the front. Unfortunately within a few minutes of setting off, my hot water bottle had leaked all over my trousers and the cool morning air had frozen my leg! marvelous. Didn't see the sun rise either as thick cloud was still covering the area. However we spent some time watching a hyena, a jackal, an eagle and a vulture all tucking in to a Thomspon's gazelle kill during which Caroline managed to drop her bean bag over the side of the truck! By the time breakfast rolled around, the sun had come up, we were baking hot and parked up beside the Mara river watching hippos fight with Crocodiles, where we stumbled on this happy birthday message written in sticks on the ground presumably to catch the eye of a passing plane passenger. Unfortunately for Caroline she's not a particularly good liar and so failed to pass it off as her own work for me!

I know it's only been 24 hours, but I have fallen head over heels with my new Nikon D4. The clarity is incredible and the controls are not actually as hard as I thought they would be.

These two images though were taken with my little point and shoot because the only lenses I have for the Nikon are a hired fixed 500mm Sigma and an 80-400mm telephoto Nikon of much lower quality, neither of which can be used to shoot anything unless it's a fair distance away, but beginners can't be choosers.
Caroline's first battery ran out during the morning drive too which was a real surprise as they should all have been fully charged. So when we got back at lunchtime we tried to charge again and made the worrying discovery that either the battery was faulty or worse... the charger was not working. This could turn out to be a real problem as my Pentax K5 takes different batteries to her Pentax K10D and she only has 3 more charged batteries to last all trip. We worked out some small actions to take to minimise battery usage (reduce the chimping, leave it on instead of turning on and off each time which activates the auto-dust removal shaker etc.) will have to just keep an eye on it.
The sunset game drive was a bit of a wash out, no kills, no drama and no sunset again, but better luck tomorrow at dawn. Dinner was however quite comical as Caroline managed to get a little tipsy and a lot giggly - so much so that she fell off the back of her chair round the campfire and then fell up the steps to the tent where she was giggling so hard. Lord knows what Daniel makes of the pair of us - particularly as it was only 10pm! Took one of Carolines sleeping pills and stopped taking the Malarone - am determined to get at least 5 hours sleep if I can.

Day 1 - First sunset game drive

Most of the camp mates are David Plummer's students and so spend some of their free time having photography lessons with him before heading out in their truck ahead of us in ours. Such a luxury to have a customized truck, complete with beanbags, all to ourselves. George is an incredibly knowledgeable guide, as I'm sure they all are, but he's also a very easy going guy with a great sense of humour. We set off amidst a rainy thunderstorm and saw plenty of zebra, wildebeest and impala before stumbling upon a pride of lion with cubs having a standoff with a bunch of not-very-happy buffalo. George got us in so close we had an awesome view of everything as it unfolded. Caroline was simply stunned into excited silence.
As the light faded we ventured off to find a safe spot to drink our "sundowners" and take a pee which became known from the start as "checking the tyres". We had not long finished checking them when 3 black-backed jackal trotted out of the bushes behind the van and passed by right in front of us... the one time all day I had a beer in my hand instead of a camera! typical.
Just as George was done telling us about his family back home, he spotted a hyena chasing a baby wildebeest on the horizon - he grabbed my camera and managed to fire off a couple of blurry shots as we threw everything and ourselves back in the van and set off in hot pursuit. The baby had been separated from its mother and was wildly galloping towards a group of zebra (a "dazzle" in fact as we later came to learn)... thankfully for the foal he reached the safety of numbers before the hyena reached him.

With the sun well and truly down and dinner time fast approaching we headed back to camp for hot bucket showers and a gorgeous 3 course dinner followed by Amarula night caps and some campfire laughter. Unfortunately though, despite it being only 1030pm and after 2 nights with very little sleep, my luck was not about to change; a combination of Caroline's excited chatter, and subsequent exhausted snoring, sleep was tricky. When I finally did manage to nod off I was woken soon after by the sodding Hippo munching right outside the tent. Grrrrr.

Day 1 - Sunday - still travelling!

Gregory arrived on time to get us to Wilson airport where our luggage was scanned and weighed and deemed to be 11kgs over which meant 22kgs excess to pay for a return flight. The lady on the desk dropped it to 16kgs after a short discussion about the fact that she wasn't going to weigh both me and my sister, but added a few stern words about excess baggage only being possible today as the plane was not full. Utterly ridiculous. As we were sent upstairs to the office to pay, I was calculating the $5US per kilo charge and came up with quite a few more than the $35 they charged me so I kept quiet and dutifully trundled back through the scanning machines to wait for boarding.We bought maps of the Mara and freshened up a little whilst we waited....and waited...and waited. The plane was delayed somewhere in the Mara but each time the official wandered over, we were assured it would be "just 10 minutes now". Ten African minutes of course. By the time the plane arrived we were beside ourselves with excitement, only a 16-seater Safarilink plane with two pilots and no additional staff to accompany us, we were off. Sadly the weather wasn't great and so the view was pretty thick white cloud which is quite disconcerting when you are sat directly behind the pilots and looking straight past the Garmin sat nav (which had "no signal") and out the front window. We flew for 45 minutes with only the last ten giving that queasy funfair ride feeling which grew slightly worse as a zebra grazing on the side of the runway flashed past the window along with Topi antelope and the stunning Mara river. The airstrip we landed at (Mara North) was comical and Caroline was already in hysterics as she washed her hands in a bucket and we met our guide, George, who was waiting for us in his full Maasai robes.

We were welcomed to the Kicheche Mara camp by the relief managers, Tanyth and Sean (native white Kenyans), and given a drink and a quick rundown of the camp setup. 545am wakeups, picnic breakfast each morning out in the bush, back in time for lunch served al fresco under the Acacia trees each day at 1pm and then some rest time before heading back out 4pm for a game drive and sundowners. After sundown it's not permitted to wander the un-fenced camp un-escorted, so we were introduced to our Askari (camp guard) who would be looking after us for our stay. We were then taken to our tent, "Kanga" (meaning Guinea fowl) and left to unpack before a 3 course lunch with the rest of the camp mates.

the journey

So thankfully this time it wasn't me waking up late, but Caroline's driver! she still made it to ours on time though and the M25 was kind enough to allow us an easy journey to terminal 5.

Western omelette for breakfast in the Giraffe restaurant washed down with an Earl grey tea and not one, but two, glasses of Prosecco! a perfect start.

All was going well, the plane was fully boarded on time and ready to take off (complete with celebrity in World Traveller class in the form of big cat expert and BBC wildlife presenter, Jon Scott), but we still did not leave on time as a very tiny, timid looking female, in a hijab, carrying a baby decided it was a good time to start squawking her religious beliefs at everyone as she walked up and down the plane asking who was muslim and declaring that charity started at home - eventually her, her baby and her husband were removed from the plane and a good 30 minute wait followed whilst they removed their luggage from the hold for safety reasons. I have nothing against muslims, but I won't say I wasn't relieved when they were removed. 

The flight passed fairly uneventfully (two spilt wines, three movies and a fair few foul aromas) and I had not managed to engineer a situation to talk to Jon Scott in the next cabin up - so I was even more annoyed when Caroline told me I had dozed off right at the point when Jon was queueing alone to use our bucket and spade class loo right in front of me! bugger.
We eventually arrived at the Fairview hotel at half eleven by our kind driver, Alex, and attempted to get straight to sleep. Unfortunately sleep was not really on the agenda.... too much noise, heat and excitement. So this morning we got up at 630am and went for breakfast and a stroll round the gardens. Now waiting for our driver to take us to the Wilson airport for our titchy plane to the Mara - bring on the big cats!

now we are counting in hours!

It always feels real when the queasiness kicks in after your first Malarone. Gone are the days when anti-malarials were started a week before the trip and gave weird hallucinations - these new (and cheaper) tablets hardly affect me at all. (Or is that on account of already having had Malaria once?).
So the bag is packed - it's about 7kgs over - but what the hell, I will argue that point when I get there (or probably not actually - I will more likely make a pathetic attempt at fluttering my non-existent eye-lashes, go bright red, and then just pay the man as is the African way). Whatever happens, the lenses are coming with me, along with both cameras and the Chromebook - I simply know I will not cope being unable to look at my pictures each day before going out to shoot again. I know, I know, I hear you all spouting off about the days of film and how much more difficult it was then. I remember. ....I remember the weeks of saving the pennies just to be able to afford to get the images developed only to find out they were crap, but we don't live in that age anymore and I need to see them. On a larger screen than the back of my camera. I've paid too much for the trip to have regrets when I get home. The Chromebook may even allow me to blog whilst I am there, I know there is no wifi, but there is an intermittent phone signal, so with a Kenyan SIM card inside there is a chance I will still be able to update you all (negating the need for a heavy notebook of course).
Skyped Simon from the Kicheche camp yesterday who also informs me there is bug spray in every tent but no mossie nets- so that lowered the weight a little more. My net weighs nothing, but the bug spray was fairly heavy duty (on all fronts). So excited. We leave at 7am for the airport tomorrow morning. So fingers crossed for a good nights sleep and a perfectly behaved M25 tomorrow and we will be sipping champers in "Giraffe" for breakfast.
PS: I have finally added a "follow by email" box on the right for those of you who have been asking!