Today was to be a strange kind of day. The kind of day that stays inside your head forever. Worming its way through your subconscious. Nudging you awake in the middle of the night.
A bit like prostate problems really...
Yes.
Indeed.
That strange.
It started off fairly normally. Well, normal for an utterly crazy safari. The morning went as you might expect, with just the normal splattering of totally insane stuff.
And then we had lunch. And oh dear. What a lunch.
What.
A.
Lunch.
OK, let me start at the beginning.
We had arrived at the camp last night to see a fire approaching VERY close to the tent we were to sleep in. Close enough to warm the cockles of our hearts.
Generally speaking I'm all in favour of central heating, but not when it involves setting fire to my central bits.
This fire, along with many others, had almost certainly been set by the rangers. The rangers claim the fires are started by the camps, although why the camps would want to burn themselves to death remains unclear to me.
I have yet to get to grips with any rationale behind this. At this time of year, in this ultra-dry season, it is totally banned. However, the organisation that investigates this breaking of inflammatory laws is... the rangers.
We woke up alive. The fire close to the tent had not cooked us all during the night. Saying that, the fire was still there, and we had to get through it to get to the Mara.
It was a somewhat hairy drive through burning savannah and choking smoke. But we came through it still alive, though smelling strongly of burnt toast.
We arrived at the Mara in time for another dawn photo.
There were some zebra thinking of crossing, but either the crocs or the smoke put them off.
Even the balloons were out early today.
It wasn't long before we saw yet another herd of wildebeest waiting to cross.
They were up and down the banking, up and down the river.
We were just about to give up and down on them when they went for it.
They leapt
They leapt further.
They crowded.
They thinned.
They achieved their goal.
Eventually, there was only one calf left, struggling to heave its small body across the river in one piece.
I expect you thought that he was doomed yes? Fear not, even he survived.
We were overjoyed at their success, yet, at the same time, disappointed at not seeing bits of wildebeest thrown hither and thither. We would probably be classified by forensic psychologists as slightly dodgy...
Then we came across yet another herd.
Oh yeah, no more crossings they said...
...well, maybe they were right. These guys had a good reason to stay put.
We tried to track this herd as it oscillated between potential crossing points. For them, it meant walking/running/stampeding to another part of the river banking. For us it meant navigating around all manner of obstructions. Gullies, gorges, sand rivers, heinous monsters. It took a long time and a serious amount of spinal manipulation.
One positive aspect of this mass movement of trucks over a short period was that you had the opportunity to meet the local inhabitants.
One disadvantage was that it only took one truck to miss-time a crossing of a gorge to get stuck completely. This increased the distance necessary to travel very significantly (40 minutes in this case).
That truck was stuck there for several hours. This counts as part of the joy of safaris.
We did go back and forth several times, taking a very significant amount of time and increasing our need for the basic necessities of life.
Photographing birds such as this Bataleur Eagle did not help calm my bodily needs.
We finally had to give up on this herd because of variable calls of our various physiological bits.
We searched out a safe place to stop.
And, hopefully, to relieve ourselves.
It was of course obligatory to oversee some hippos whilst eating (as well as the other bodily necessities previously mentioned).
However, having those hippos hidden in bushes behind us was not a guarantee of our safety.
Suffice to say that we did find the ideal place to luncheon. What we hadn't bargained for was that this meal was to be the most memorable of our lives.
If we ever have a crazier one it might well provoke a cardiac arrest (a last supper?)...
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