Off the Map: 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…

Från Off the Map - Africa

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…

Från Off the Map - Africa

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.

Från Off the Map - Africa

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. =)