Laikepia
The day began with a natural start, waking up slowly to the sound of rain outside. Nim described the events of the night and I was seriously shocked and very apologetic. He explained that once more, I had stolen all of the covers during the night alongside forcefully kicking him out the bed. Apparently, I had joined him on his side of the bed and kept moving until Nim had to cave and move out the bed for fear of falling out. When he was getting back into the bed, I did disturb slightly but definitely had a more settled night than he did.
We enjoyed our last breakfast outside the main house with a gorgeous view of the ocean and then made our way back to the cottage to finish off our packing.
It was very sad to be leaving but they made it very special as we left to the sound of drums with the gift of a rather superior packed lunch. This was made up of chicken salad, a fruit parcel, bread rolls and crossoints.
We drove to Diani airport where we arrived just in time to board the plane. The propellers were already warming up on the runway. We flew to Wilson airport, Nairobi, and were transferred via the apron to our waiting Cessna caravan, which had 5 of us on it. It was my first diddy plane and Nim had a good view of the pilots flying the plane. He did attempt to describe this all to me, but I fell asleep pretty quickly. We dropped off the other three passengers and then continued on our flight to Nanyuki.
Once we landed, we were shown to a car where we met one of the safari guides Ollie who, on route, gave us some background details and information on where we would be staying. Ollie pointed out different wildlife along the way and we even went off roading so we could get a better view of some elephants!! We arrived at the Laikepia Wilderness Camp about 2.5 hours after leaving the airport where we settled into our tent, which was lovely and even had an ensuite bathroom outside. It was definitely not what my version of camping is and can only be described as glamping.
It was then time for tea and cake where we met a few of the other people visiting the camp and who worked in the camp. The homemade banana cake was delicious and what was even better is that they made Nim a whole mini gluten free cake, just for him! Steve, who runs the camp, asked us what we wanted to do for the rest of the day and suggested to Ollie that we went out, up the river towards ‘Baboon rock’ for sundown. On the drive we saw some giraffes, dicdics, a gerbil, elephants, a zorilla, impalas, hares, birds, zebra, a range of birds including guineafowl and weavers and lots of hippos. Ollie told us that the giraffes they have on the ranch are meticulated giraffes, which are the common ones that zoos keep, and the differences is in the type of pattern on their skin. The grevy zebra are also the most common zebra who, similarly to the giraffes, have a different stripe pattern; the stripes are closer together and are thinner. They also have bigger ears, not too different to bunny ears. We also spotted the bee hives, which hang from the trees so that the honey badger can’t eat the honey. This was alongside seeing some of the black weaver’s nests, which aren’t necessarily neat, Ollie described them as “the Nokia of bird as nests”.
On the drive back to the camp, after sundown, Nim sat on top of the car spotlighting so we could look for leopards. Unfortunately we were unsuccessful but we did manage to spot some great rocks, a buffalo and a firefly or two. We also saw a hippo on the other side of the river bank but once we had turned the car around to be able to fully see it, the hippo got cross and went into the water to hide, as well as making its way towards us. We decided to get out of it’s way rather rapidly, just in case.
Back at camp, we freshened up and wandered up to the mess tent for dinner. We then discovered that a romantic dinner had been set up for us, next to a fire, on top of the rocks and straight under the the stars. It was a great end to the beginning of a great adventure.
