A cheetah that plays football...?

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Peponi Beach, Tanga, Tanzania
We left Nairobi almost a week ago, last Saturday. Since we first ran a couple of errands, including picking up Simon’s car from the workshop, we didn’t get out of the city until lunchtime. But luck was on our side this time, since the traffic wasn’t at all as bad as the previous time we were driving down to Athi River where Simon lives.
It was really good seeing Laila and Simon again, and it was especially fun to see Simon walking around without the crutches. We had a nice evening filled with laughs, serious talks, card games and wine. Needless to say, we weren’t quite fit to make the 6-hour drive to Mombasa the next morning… So we postponed our take off until the next day, and instead spent Sunday together with Simon, Laila, Gray and Suzy, two of Simon’s neighbors.
We started with a short game drive, or should I say bird drive. We had earlier spotted a lot of vultures landing a bit further down from Simons house, so we got in the cars and drove down to see what was the big attraction for them. It turned out to be the carcasses of two dead cows and beside the huge group of vultures feasting there, there were also a couple of eagles. It turned out that one of the eagles were a rare sighting in Africa, a lesser spotted eagle. Simon, who sees thousands of birds each year, said that this particular species he only sees once every three or four year, if he’s lucky… So i guess we brought them some good luck again! :-)

Vulture going in for dinner...

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After the bird watching we went over to Gray and Suzy’s place and had a wonderful lunch. Also, to Gustav’s great pleasure, he and Gray went off in Grays seriously modified Land Rover Defender 90. There is an off road competition in Kenya called Rhino Charge. In short; the one who goes between a number of checkpoints the shortest route wins. So the key to success is therefore to have a car that can go pretty much straight through or over anything. Grays has that…
When the guys returned from their little adventure in the nearby quarry, they literally walked on air! Boys and their toys, huh…?

Simon, Gustav & Gray with a seriously pimped Land Rover.

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We then decided to take a drive up to another neighbors house, where they have a tame (somewhat at least) cheetah. Her name is Toli, and she was previously a luxury pet in downtown Nairobi. Of course that is not a proper place for such a cat, so now she has been relocated to her new owners out on the countryside instead.

On the way over there, it was a couple of kilometers drive, we spot something rare these days in this particular area. A wild cheetah crosses to road in front of us, and we silently watch her for the following 15 minutes as she stalks a pray, an impala, and makes a go at a kill. However, this wasn’t her lucky day, the impala got away with a few inches to spare. We were nevertheless happy, since we got some amazing wild life viewing without expecting it.

Wild cheetah stalking a pray...

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Later on when we pull up to the farm where Toli lives, we get our next encounter with a beautiful cheetah. Toli is resting on the side of the pool when we get there. Gray and Suzy had bought a football for Toli to play with, and that was probably a really good thing… Because when we’re walking up to her she suddenly rises and get a really dangerous look in her eyes. She lowers her head and set focus on Gray, and then she begins to stalk… Gray sounds a bit panicked when he urges Suzy to throw the football, and I for one can understand him!
Luckily, Toli finds the football a more tempting pray than Gray so she sets off after it right away. :-)
We spend another half an hour or so playing with her, and it is just mind-blowing being this close to such a magnificent creature.

Toli is taking a brake from the football game.

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Frankly, we are really lucky.
On this trip we have gotten to do so many things that one normally doesn’t come close to, and we owe it all to our friends in Africa. Thanks to them and their generosity, we have experienced things that the every day tourist can only dream of. So thank you to all of you out there!!!

Now we have left Kenya for Tanzania, and we are setting course for Malawi within the next week. The drive from Athi to Mombasa was easier then expected, and on Tuesday we arrived were we are now; Peponi beach just south of Tanga. We are leaving this place today though and instead we are on our way to the beaches south of Dar es Salaam. This place was supposed to be somewhat of a paradise, but unfortunately it hasn’t lived up to our expectations. This could have something to do with the fact that there’s been two school classes the entire time we’ve been here, and they’ve made A LOT of noise. Teenagers and slack teachers = bad combination.
Anyway, we spent the day out at sea yesterday, taking a dhow to a nearby coral reef and we did some snorkeling. It was good fun, although it can’t really compare to the snorkeling in Asia. We have to look forward to the scuba diving in Lake Malawi instead! :-)

Toli seems to think that Gray looks tasty...

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Take cover...

Från Off the Map - Africa

Thanks to East African Canvas we now have really good seat covers in our car!

Log in to their website to check their amazing tents and other products.
Everything is custom made to fit each clients need.

www.eastafricancanvas.com

Falcons, hyenas and good friends

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Nairobi

Back in Nairobi again. We spent the weekend at Simon & Laila’s place about 35km out of town. Those 35km took us approximately 3 hours to drive when we left town on Saturday afternoon. Driving in Nairobi is actually the worst traffic experience so far. Everyone claims that Cairo is a driver’s nightmare, but then you haven’t been stuck in Nairobbery at rush hour…
We did however succeed in our effort to get out of town eventually, and drove up to Simon’s place at about 5 pm on Saturday.
Simon seems to manage his injury quite well; he is already walking although he needs his crutches most of the time. But considering the fact that he fractured his hip and dislocated a few of his joints just two weeks ago, we were highly impressed with seeing him up and about.
After a quick hello we all got in to their Range Rover and took off for a short Game Drive before sunset. The area were Simon lives is teeming with wildlife; wildebeest, zebras, giraffes, antelopes, gazelles, hyenas, bat eared foxes amongst some of the mammals. And then we have the birds… Raptors left and right, and Simon must be some sort of bird hybrid since he can spot just about anything when the rest of us are just seeing yellow grass and blue skies.

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Later that evening we went on a nightly Game Drive as well, using a hand held spotlight to find the animals. Their eyes reflects the light amazingly well and Simon can tell right away what kind of animal it is just by looking at that reflection… Impressive!
After a bunch of springhares that jumps around astoundingly similar to small kangaroos, we also spotted bat eared foxes and a pair of hyenas. When the spotlight then died on us, and the temperature dropped enough to at least make me chatter my teeth we decided to turn around and head for home again.
Suddenly, a pair of red eyes glimmered right in front of us. And next to it another pair, and beyond those the whole savannah seemed to glimmer red. We had without any warning entered right into a pack of hyenas. Unexpectedly we were surrounded by at least twenty individuals, Simon tried to get the camera up, I threw myself onto the spotlight to make it work again, Laila did a great job in steering the car between rocks, holes and hyenas, and Wes & Gustav were holding on for dear life up on the roof of the Range Rover. Since the animals were no more than a couple of meters away from the vehicle, falling down on the ground would be a seriously bad thing to do…
It was almost surreal being surrounded by all these predators in the middle of a dark African night, a memory for life indeed.

Back at the house Gustav and I set camp just outside the fence to Simon’s yard since our car wouldn’t fit through the gate. Just when we’d climbed up into our beloved roof tent we heard animal sounds over the savannah. We identified them as more hyenas and they were closing in by the minute. Pretty soon they were practically just below us and we fell asleep to their calling in the night. Awesome…

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The next morning brought not only sunshine but also a visitor from above… Tim, a year-and-a-half old lanner falcon flew in to greet us. Simon has had him for quite some time, although Tim lives in total freedom and comes and goes as he pleases. He is however a very social guy and this morning he wanted in on breakfast. Since muesli isn’t a falcon’s idea of a good way to start the day, Laila fetched a couple of chickens from the fridge and then the show began.
Simon, broken hip and all, stood in the big field swinging a dead chicken by a rope whilst Tim circled above and attacked from every angle. He is really fast and some of his maneuvers are simply inexplicable, he is able to turn in acrobatic ways in full speed all the time with his eyes on the target. Gustav filmed parts of it and as soon as possible we’ll post a video here along with the photos.
We also had the opportunity to hold this wild raptor ourselves and I can only say that it was really a powerful experience to look a falcon straight into his eyes, only a few inches away…

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The enormous work that Simon & Laila put into conserving raptors in Africa is really inspiring. Unfortunately the accident with the water tank has set their plans back a bit, but hopefully Simon will recover quickly so that they can proceed again.
Simon and Laila are truly good people, the kind that you just enjoy being around. Sometimes one can talk about energy thieves when meaning someone who really gets on your nerves and drags you down. Well, these people are the absolute opposite of that!
Their energy and good nature literately lifts you up and it is all very inspiring.
I’m really glad that we got to spend some more time with them, and I hope that we can repay them in any way possible.
Please check out their website and support the work they are doing. And also, they have some truly amazing pictures of birds of prey, which eventually will be published in a book.
Do get a copy of that one!

http://simonthomsett.wildlifedirect.org/

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We spent two nights at their place, and now we are back in the big city.
We are planning on leaving town quite soon though, it’s getting a bit to familiar around here now. The itchy feet is back again…
We do however need to stay a couple of more days since we are waiting for some equipment to be made for us. Thanks to East African Canvas we’ll soon travel in luxury inside our Bumblebee. They will kindly enough supply us with custom made seat covers for the car and that is highly appreciated! Beyond the fact that they will take care of some of the dirt and the dust that the roads of Africa have to offer, they also look great! Handmade in durable canvas and leather they will last for many years to come, and we are really grateful to Gary at East African Canvas. Beside the smaller products that they manufacture their main export is their incredible tented camps. Have a look at their website and prepare to be amazed…
http://www.eastafricancanvas.com/

Everything is custom made to fit the need of each client, and we can only say; WOW!
Tent is really not the proper word to describe these constructions…
If we ever move to a warmer climate, this is the company that’s going to build our house!
They are also making a new cover for Wes’ kayak, and he’s totally stoked about it. He is planning to use it as a small one-man tent as well, so he’s made the design himself. We’ll see in a couple of hours how it all turns out. :-)

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By the end of the week we’ll probably hit the coast and it will definitely be nice with some warmth and sun again. Kenya’s highland is not exactly warm even if it is on the equator. The altitude brings the temperature down and since the rainy period is beginning now it’s surprisingly cold considering the fact that we are in Africa.
The coast is a lot warmer though, so we’ll definitely get the chance to thaw there!

Raptors and Carnivores

Carnivore… I never thought I’d say ”I’m going to have vegetarian food for the rest of the week” but that’s exactly what I said after our dinner at Carnivore. A brief explanation might be in place: Carnivore is an all-you-can-eat meat restaurant in Nairobi. When you enter you get a small flag on your table and as long as the flag is up the waiters will keep bringing you meat. We had beef, chicken, pork, turkey, ostrich and crocodile… a veritable meat-orgy.

 

The service was impeccable and so was the food. After about an hour and a half we decided to surrender while we could still move. We are not sure exactly how much we had eaten, but two pounds per person is a low guess. For me, there was a price to pay since I had to spend the night sweating and trying to calm my rather shocked stomach. “Meat? What is this?” We are rather happy that we spent a few weeks at Ann’s, preparing our stomachs with real food…

 

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As previously stated we have moved from Jungle Junction to Wildebeest Camp and we are enjoying every minute of it. Until yesterday, that is, when the skies opened and we were hit by the worst rain we have seen since Bwindi Impenetrable forest in Uganda. Kina and I were pretty well off in our rooftent, but poor Wes was not that lucky. When we arrived here he and I walked around the entire compound until we found the “perfect” spot. It was high, secluded and all in all really nice. What we failed to notice were the three drainpipes exiting the wall three meters behind his tent. Wes had managed to fall asleep before the rain really took off, but was awakened by a sound quite similar to the Bujagali Falls in Jinja. Water was flooding from the pipes and what once was a nice spot for a tent had been transformed into a river. He quickly abandoned ship (ironically his kayak was right beside the tent) and went to sleep in one of the sofas by the TV. That’s were we found him fast asleep at 9.30, so it was probably really comfortable.

 

Today Ann is coming back to town, she has been away for a week guiding a safari, and we are going to hang out with her until we all leave. We are either going to Ann’s place for a few nights or to her friend Simon’s. Simon is a raptor expert Ann has known for several years and he and his colleague Laila are about to take off on a road trip to South Africa themselves, with the purpose of them taking pictures of all of Africa’s raptor species. Their plans have however been a bit postponed since Simon had a pretty nasty accident last week. He was climbing around on his water cistern when the whole thing (1,000 liters of water) just collapsed, landing on top of poor Simon… who already had landed on top of a barbed wire fence. The result was a broken hip, dislocated knee and hipbone and a gridiron piercing his thigh… We met him three days after the accident and he was not happy with the doctor who wouldn’t let him leave the hospital. While we were there the doctor came around, promising Simon that he could leave the next day, but that he wouldn’t be able to walk for four weeks. Three days later Simon could walk using crutches. Impressive!

 

For more info on their project: http://simonthomsett.wildlifedirect.org/

 

Right now we are trying to clean and dry Wes’s stuff and we have over the last two days managed to play around 20 rounds of Scrabble and Wes and I have been rather busy planning to build a Tomcat. It’s a hard life here in Africa… 

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I must also mention the dogs here at WC… they are called Barney and Fatty, but should be called Smelly and Fatty. Though Fatty isn’t that fat anymore. Barney loves rolling in smelly stuff and can hear someone making a sandwich from 200 meters away. Fatty loves chasing birds… or rather bird shadows, so he sits around, stupidly looking at the ground in front of him and then takes off when a shadow swoops by. So far he hasn’t managed to catch one… It was rather sad the other night though, when he sat under a façade light, waiting for a bird to fly by. It must have been a long night for him.

 

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But, our stay in Nairobi hasn’t only been rain and Scrabble, we have also had some work done on the car. Richard and Milan recommended us a 4x4 workshop near their campsite, so we went there to have our dear Bumblebee serviced. Apart from the normal oil and filter changing, we had the brakes changed and also the springs. The result was quite simply amazing, it’s a brand new car. Speedbumps are now a breeze. =)

 

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Enjoyin' Nairobbery

We've now spent almost a week in Nairobi, and it's actually been quite quiet...
So far we've enjoyed the luxuries like free WiFi, huge Lattes and excellent food.

Up until today we've stayed at a campsite called Jungle Junction, but today we changed venues and moved to Wildebeest Camp and we really can't understand why we didn't go here sooner.
This place is quite wonderful, and the management is hilariously entertaining!
Right now we are sitting with the owner, her 6month year-old son, Wesley (our American friend from Uganda), Patrick & Sarah (who are two other overlanders also heading south), round a table exchanging horrible stories and laughing a lot.

Soon we're heading of to Carnivore for a big dinner; All the grilled meat you can eat for about $25!
So, we'll definitely won't go to sleep hungry tonight...
:-)