Today was the day we set off on our walking safari - 0630 breakfast and a 7.15 departure- an early departure was a necessity to ensure we arrived by lunchtime and were not walking for too long in the heat of the day.
John led with his great long strides and we fairly galloped along behind ....but it was a good pace and we kept up. He was supported by two young men from the Hadzape bushmen tribe and our Masai spotter Lenkoyi - Mdebe was still recovering from our two previous walks and was taking our luggage and supplies in the jeep to the fly camp!
Initially we walked through undulating acacia woodland and crossed a river via natural stepping stones. As we continued through the woodland the Hadzape bushmen found a tree in which bees were nesting - we then had a lesson in harvesting wild honey - first they made fire - knocking a nest out of a tree to get dry fine sticks and grass which would catch fire quickly - they then rubbed a fire stick on a wood base to get a spark, once on the dried grass they slowly blew until they had a fire going ( today's picture). The fire soon took hold - some was transferred to the bees nest to smoke the bees out to allow the retrieval of the honey......bees buzzed around his head - some no doubt stinging him but he stood firm and retrieved several combs of honey - we tried some - it was sweet, tasty and very liquid ( I later found some had dripped onto my binocular lens which I realised when the next image I was looking at was strangely blurred). The honeycomb itself was waxy and chewy. Replenished and wiser we continued through the woodland as we went higher we passed some very old (200 years old ) and large acacia trees - the biggest I have seen. We spotted zebra and one of the Hadzape - complete with bows and arrows showed us what a mock hunt would look like if they had been stalking wildlife for food. The next 20 minutes were spent trying to fire their long bows .... Pulling the tightly strung bows back was hard - my arrow went a reasonable distance - Johns first went two feet but second made up for it with a good distance - we then watched the experts. John, our guide, had honed his hunting skills with bow and arrow so there was a competitive edge to the firing we watched!
Arrows away we continued walking and emerged onto open gently undulating plains, as it was now 10 ish and we stopped for water and a sandwich and just sat under a tree taking in the beautiful scenery. On the plains a few animals were dotted around - a small herd of hartebeest, Roberts gazelles (like Grants but with an extra twirl on their horns) giraffes, zebra and 3-4 wildebeest. The Masai have brought their cattle to these heights to get away from the wildebeest so the groups of young masai warriors we passed and greeted were focussed on driving any wildebeest they saw back to the plains below......and seemingly doing a good job. We were now at 6000feet - it didn't seem it - albeit the views were magnificent. We finally arrived at camp at 1215 ......an estimated 12miles walked.
Fly camp was situated on the edge of a river - our home for the next two nights was a bell tent pitched on the bank.
We were met by Dania, who had come up in the jeep, and she organised refreshing drinks....a must ....even though we regularly drank water while walking.
Prior to lunch we sat under a tree and refreshed ourselves with a fruit juice and took in the scenery including a malachite kingfisher who was fishing, cheeky vervet monkeys and baboons.....lunch was followed by a siesta - before we all met again for another walk in the proximity of the camp. We were walking for about 2 hours - at the same pace which was set by Johns long stride - so by the time we got back to camp we had another 6 miles were under our belt!
Refreshed by a hot bucket shower and clean clothes we sat around the camp fire eating freshly roasted cashews until rain spots caused an early retreat to the mess tent. Dinner was an all vegetarian affair and very nice.
About 9.30 sleep took over from conversation and we went to our tents having made plans for tomorrow starting with a 6 am wake up call. Thunderstorms were all around during the night but we stayed snug and dry in our tent.