drive to tsavo

monday morning is struggle street. i think our late nights out have just accumulated all of a sudden and many of us are feeling so seedily tired and sick.. waking up early, getting our bags ready to go and piling into the bus is a mission and once seated we just plug in our ipods, hope for sleep and pray our stomachs settle down over the kilometers of bumpy road ahead.. unfortunately for me, sleep won't come.. instead i watch the road fly past and the landscape gradually changing.. the earth darkens in colour, the green vegetation becomes duller in color and transforms mostly into sparse, dry shrubs and the skeletons of trees.. small village settlements appear then vanish again in the rear-view mirror.. it's all a bit foggy and every so often i succumb to the waves of nausea close my eyes, feeling my brain rattle inside my skull.

[in this heat the consequences of little sleep and alcohol aren't great so 3 nights in a row was overdoing it (; balance is the key.. i just am awful at staying home when others are out having fun so we shall see..]

the countryside around us looks more and more desolate until we turn off the main road and onto a dirt track that delves deeper and deeper into the wilderness.. i actually feel like i'm in africa now with the landscape this barren, the flat-topped trees and the earth so beautifully red (which wasn't so much the case at diani beach). then all of a sudden we pull up at a gate decorated in skulls, bones and branches with a big sign - "Karibu Sana Camp Tsavo" (welcome very much to camp tsavo). i've got a huge grin on my face - this place is amazing. there are little circular huts with red earthen walls and palm-thatched roofs dotted around camp, each bordered and linked by stone footpaths that are in turn bordered by desert succulents and shrubs. it's spacious and open with little thatched gazebos to relax in and a communal dining area and other than these buildings there is nothing man-made in sight for 80,000 acres. amazing.

even the inside of the huts are gorgeous - the bunk beds are more spacious than in muhaka with mosquito nets very elegantly draped over them, the netted windows going all the way around the buildings adorned with loose curtains that blow gently back and forth in the breeze.. the air here isn't as damp and humid which is much appreciated.

we have a brief orientation talk, run through our itinerary and are then left to settle in and chill out before dinner. [turns out we're not actually in tsavo national park but in a corridor of privately-owned protected land that bridges tsavo east and tsavo west.] a few of us head out to the fire-pit gazebo with jerry's guitar and i lie back on a bench, cushioned by pillows, watching a gecko play on the thatched roof and the shadows gradually creeping in all around us whilst his flamenco strumming floats on the breeze. i am so content and at peace out here, i absolutely love it already.

dinner is pretty standard and we then head back to make a fire (where i nearly get stabbed by acacia thorns and a scorpion simultaneously!).. and that's how we end the night.. flame-licked wood crackling and sending up sparks whilst in a big snuggle pile on pillows.. welcome very much to camp tsavo.