Our closest shot at an eland. A big, powerful gazelle.

From our game drive we climbed up from the plains to the main highway which ran along the escarpment near the base, in a generally North-South direction. This highway was in much worse condition than the main highway through the Serengeti in Tanzania had been. This road was along a hillside, and had some pretty severe erosion damage from run-off after the rains. The surface alternated between rocks and soil, and as the soil had eroded away the rocks had become bumpier and bumpier. We frequently had to slow to a crawl to ease over the bigger rocks and through the wash-outs. This is probably a good time to take you on a picture tour of Kichwa Tembo, a luxury tent camp. It was located at the foot of the escarpment amid dense foliage from trees, vines and brush. From the road you could see nothing except the sign, an electric fence, and a huge windmill that looked like it was used to pump water from a well. The rest looked like jungle. The picture of the sign below will give you an idea.

Home, sweet home for the next three nights.

Before unpacking and cleaning up for supper, we took a couple of flash pictures of the inside of the tent, to give an idea of the arrangement of things.

Carol (the photographer) is standing just inside the front entrance. I am emerging from the bathroom.

Check out the shower enclosure! No curtain, so water just splashed out onto the flagstone floor.

Each pair of guests at the camp was assigned one housekeeping employee (ours was a man named "Maina," pronounced "MY - nah") who took care of all of our camp needs. At the dining room, we were assigned the same table throughout our stay and the same waiter ("Sammy," pronounced like it looks!)

The daily routine consisted of a 6:00 AM wake up, with "biscuits" (what we would call cookies) and our choice of either coffee, tea or hot chocolate! Then a 6:30 AM game drive for about three hours, followed by a return to camp and a full breakfast. Then, under the assumption that, a) most guests want some time to just relax during the day, and, b) the game animals are most active in the early mornings and late afternoons/early evenings, no activities were scheduled until 3:30 PM when the afternoon game drive was to depart. Return to camp at about 6:30 for dinner at 7:00. Then I suppose you were expected to toast your day's adventures over drinks at the bar until you went to bed. We put up with that schedule for one day only, then made it clear to Willie that we were in Africa to see the animals and the countryside, not to lie around in hammocks "relaxing" for 6 hours a day! But I'm getting ahead of the story.

That first evening we went to dinner and met Sammy, our table server. When he learned we were from the United States, he commented about our recent presidential election and the problems in Florida!

It's indeed a small world. On the plane to the Mara, Les had spoken with a man who turned out to be the Kichwa Tembo Camp director. From him we learned that 70% of the employees at the camp were local Masai people. This was by design, and part of the government's way of ensuring that some of the economic benefits of tourism went directly to the people where the tourists went. This was designed to make tourism seem more desirable in the eyes of the locals. They in turn would help the government stop animal poaching, which hurts tourism. We heard more later about poaching from Willie, but that'll come in another installment.

At both lunch and dinner Sammy would usually bring us a bowl of the "soup of the day" first, then we were free to either browse a buffet or select from what the chefs were cooking on grills in the middle of the dining area near the entrance. There were typically several choices of entrees, at least 3-4 vegetable options, bread or rolls, several kinds of fresh fruits, sometimes a salad, and always dessert! Since we were now back in Kenya, we tried to order a Kenyan beer with supper (usually Tusker - very good).

At the evening meal we were asked what we wanted for our "wake up" the next morning, coffee, tea or chocolate? I chose coffee, Carol opted for chocolate. Immediately after dinner we retired to our tents and went to bed not long after. It had been another long day!

I'll describe the next days' activities in order later, but right now you're on a tour of Kichwa Tembo camp so here are some more pictures:

This was the view from in front of our tent. The escarpment is behind us, never-ending plains dotted with trees in front.

This is pretty much the same view from inside our tent.

 
Here I am, struggling to survive the rigors of safari life. At right: Dropping postcards into the "Mail Gourd" in the lobby.

This was the entrance to the dining area. You can see the yellow tented napkins on the tables left of the doorway.

The same doorway as above, lightened up a bit. See the chef and the buffet table?

A view of the grounds from inside the bar. We hadn't figured out about "fill flash" yet.

These aptly named Candelabra Trees grew in the grounds of the camp. There's just that tall
grass and an electric fence between us and the lions, buffalo and other animals on the plains!

Carol poses beside a resident of the grounds at Kichwa Tembo. Yes, that's a warthog!
She'll kill me, but I told her I would caption this, "Can you find the pig in this picture?"