'bush adventure'

today was our 'bush adventure' day.. the drive out was quite slow and dull as the camp kenya dudes kept stopping the truck to identify birds and animals (and i must say that a rogue antelope is so much less impressive after the game drive yesterday) and after a while we pulled up at a dried-up waterhole. there we were asked to identify two sets of tracks which was pretty cool (giraffe and zebra) and then had a look as some elephant tracks also. from there i think we spent at least an hour standing around listening and although our guide is lovely and meant well, many of us got quite bored after hearing about the tracks and faeces of every animal to ever wander through this waterhole haha (ok slight exaggeration but honestly, 20mins talking about a dead termite mound is a lot).

i wasn't particularly looking forward to the rest of the day after that and just tried to drink in as much of the landscape as possible during the remainder of our drive. we finally pulled up at this rocky hill in the middle of nowhere and were told to climb to the top. the view all around was breathtaking - just flat savannah and a few mountains in the distance. there we split into two group - my group was to make fire, the other to build shelters. now the day was designed to teach us 'survival skills' in case we get lost in the bush, however we were given pre-selected sticks to rub together and the others were handed a pile of thatched roof 'tiles', long polished sticks and a whole spool of rope.. which i felt was a little counter-productive.. but anyway..

fire-making began and i think it took an hour and a half to get a spark. it was quite tedious work.. you put some gravel and dried grass between two pieces of wood and rub one of them to create friction. even our guides who tried to help out found it took a long time and some of the boys got blisters on their palms from spinning the friction stick haha

after lunch we had a brief talk about two beneficial plants in the area - aloe vera and this weird twig the kenyans chew on instead of brushing their teeth. then it was swap-over time and our turn to build a shelter.. we had to pull down the first group's and come up with a design of our own. i love building cubby houses and, ignoring the fact that so much of our building material had been supplied, i had a blast. we made a basic eeyore house using rocks to hold up our frame and long grass to fill in the gaps in the walls. 5 of us could squash into it and it was surprisingly cool inside! (:

and that pretty much summarizes the day. i wouldn't say it was very informative but building a cubby on a random rock hill in the heart of kenya was brilliant :D back at camp we experienced our new showers - the builder was either really short or just didn't think girls would mind seeing each other nude because the walls separating the cubicles only reach as high as my chest. we're all taking it with good humor, it's quite funny..

given it's the 1-monther's last night, we asked the guards to help us make a fire and a bunch of us relaxed outside. once it died down a little and the generator was turned off, a blanket of stars appeared overhead.. it was so peaceful and such good vibes all over again, i really am quite happy out here in the wild (: i'm looking forward to the rest of our time here at camp tsavo