Bush walk, acting like a Masai Warrior

On our afternoon bush walk

Tara sporting Murray State Blue & Gold!

Giraffe at sunset + 2 flying birds

Night safari, spotting the lion cubs

KENYA! Fun with the headlamp

Kenya sky at night

Food: Roasted Pork and Ugali + Veggies

Table for 3 right by property line.

February 10, 2012: Day 2 of the safari! Saw a lot of great animals and herds, still no lions or big cats though… TOMORROW! Why?  We went on a night safari and located 3 cubs playing near a river bank (while momma lion was out hunting), so we’re going there first thing in the morning. It’s amazing to see the knowledge of our guides, Nelson and Daniel. No GPS, no maps, they just *know* the land because they’ve lived here their whole lives. It’s amazing.

A bit about where we’re staying: The camp is called Encounter Mara, and it’s an “eco-luxury” camp.  There are only 12 tents, and we’re actually inside of the conservancy. There’s no fence, so it’s common to hear animals outside of our tents at night. Hyenas, zebras, roaring lions, all sorts of stuff. Pretty neat.  We are allocated 40 liters of water a day for our showers, and they heat it on charcoal then bring it to us for a bucket shower. The food has been quite amazing as well. We have a snack at 6:00am before heading out on our first game drive + sunrise.  Then we come back around 11am for brunch.  We have the mid-day to ourselves, but there’s no electricity in the tents.  The entire place is run off of solar panels! So there are some chargers in the common area to use for batteries, laptops, phones, etc.  But they discourage it. :)  Then we reconvene at 3:30pm for high tea, back out for a game drive and at sunset we get out for a sundown drink + snacks.  Night safari, then back to the campfire and supper around 8:30-9pm. In bed around 11-midnight, back up at 5:30am to start it all over. Very, very busy days… but I love that :)

The food has been quite nice as well. The camp is moving towards a bio-garden to start producing veggies + herbs. The water is brought in from a spring, and then we have bottled water for drinking.

What a neat place! And as you can see from the pics, the clearest night sky you can imagine.  Serene.

(Funny note: We hadn’t seen giraffes for most of the day, so we asked Nelson to line up one for a sunset silhouette shot. He said he’d text a few giraffes and see what he could do :)  Sure enough, we found one just as the sun was setting!)