Tuesday 16 Aug
Today was a monstrous 11 hour transfer from Meru NP to Tsavo East NP, and judging by how relentless and fast Shem drove, they’d miscalculated the timings a bit when creating our itinerary! It didn’t help that the rough dirt-and-rock village road from Rhino River Camp probably took an extra 30 minutes compared with the main road to Meru that passes by the other (more basic) Ikweta Safari Camp that they usually use for stays in Meru NP! But yes, we really did drive for 11 hours solid with just two short breaks of 10 minutes each. So in honour of a day that could have just been considered a relentless game of I Spy, here’s an alphabet of our transfer day…
- Adieu, Rhino River Camp
- Bird strike!
- Churches of every denomination
- Duiker, donkeys, dikdik, seen in that order
- Eleven and a half hours driving
- Fatigue
- Godly business names
- Hotel and butchery
- If you like it, Crown it
- Jauntily dressed locals
- Khat
- Lemon, bitter lemon
- Motorbike taxi ranks
- Naked mole rat
- Ochre soil = ochre dust
- Picnic lunch visited by donkey girls
- Quick naps
- Rubbish everywhere
- Sweden Special Star (one of hundreds of lorries)
- Tea terraces
- Unhappy bum
- Village huts, colourful striped
- Watermelons for sale roadside
- Excellent driving by Shem
- Yellow water barrels
- Zebras in Tsavo
Now I need to explain some of these entries!
So, if you noticed the Naked Molerat at ‘N’ then you’ve noticed that we still managed to add one new mammal to our list, even on a transfer day. We’d just left the camp and were heading along the dirt road through the nearby village when Shem stopped, said a bad word, and reversed. He had just driven right over a tiny hole surrounded by a small pile of dirt from which, crucially, a little geyser of extra dirt kept erupting. We got out and crept to the hole, and astonishingly the wrinkly pink little mole-rat kept digging away down there while we peered in. The naked mole-rat, one of the weirdest mammals you’ll ever see… https://youtu.be/3Y9aDuu1gNk
If you’re also wondering what “Hotel and butchery” is all about, one of the more fun things on the relentless drive are the charming and puzzling names of some of the businesses in the towns and villages. We saw lots of “Hotel & Butchery” places, which seems an intriguing concept. There was also a “Pork Palace” and the Godly names come in with places like “God’s Blessing Taxi Company”. Prize for the most brilliant slogan must go to a WiFi installation company: “Truth WiFi – The Promised Lan” : )
We hit a bird along the way, or rather it flew into our wing mirror. And on our short lunch break two girls came past leading their donkeys home from the water well, with a couple of big yellow plastic barrels of water strapped to each.
We eventually arrived at Tsavo’s Voi Gate about 30 minutes after it closed, which meant the gate staff gave Shem lots of forms to fill out and phonecalls to make, presumably as punishment for being late arrival. But because we had accommodation booked at Voi Lodge within the park, apparently they had to let us in. Up at the lodge it was buffet dinner and then bed.
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