A little bit about Life Now

So, four months ago Kyle and I packed up our belongings, in to his car and moved to the Mara. With our puppy kiko, a few boxes of books, bags of clothes and a trunk of stuff to make our new home/ tent comfy for living in the bush.  

We arrived for the start of a new season at Offbeat Mara on my birthday and moved in to our new home. The camp staff were highly amused at the amount of stuff we had with us. Thankfully though, most of it was kyles! He must have about 50 pairs of shoes and a pair of shorts for every day of the month with him.

Its funny how life works in cycles. Just over 20 years ago my mum and dad were living in a tent with me and my brother, who was just a baby. We lived up in northern Kenya while my dad was doing thesis on camel’s milk. Now I have moved back to living in a tent. But happily no babies yet, just my little dog.  

My mum always used to keep a dairy of what we were up to and the funny things that happen when living n the bush away from any civilization. So it inspired me to keep a diary too, but to be able to share everything going on in my life with family and friends through a blog.

So…  we work for Offbeat safaris. http://offbeatsafaris.com Offbeat is a great little company which started off as riding safaris around laikipia, Nakuru and the Mara. 

They are still very wild riding safaris– you can have a look at the video here… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9aH3DO-fck

Then the Offbeat camps were set up by Piers Winkworth. One in the Mara and one in Meru. We manage the camp in The Mara. It is such a gem, between a valley and the Olaro Orok River, that runs in to The Mara river. There are 6 luxurious tents, so its very small and personal and very comfortable ‘glamping’.

We have a team of about 25 staff to and as we are in one of the busiest game park in Africa lots of guests to look after.  So camp is always busy and filled with stories and things to deal with. We can have 22 people to stay at a go. It’s a complete echo camp that can be taken down completely with no signs of it left or impact on the environment. So we bring in al our water, food, gass fuel etc twice a month.

We constantly have animals around, usually a lion or two on the ridge inf ront of camp who call all night. Hyena’s giggling when they find a feast, Elephants and giraffe grazing in the bushes behind, crocodiles that splash around in the river below our room, buffalo grazing by the tents at night and a hippo who sneakes into camp at night for the fresh grass. During the migration we have the wildeerbeest , topi and the zebra grazing in camp all day. Occasionally a lion gets one!

The smaller creatures we share our home with are the menaces of dwarf mongoose who raid the bins after lunch, and squeak at you when you get too close, they also make their way into the room and find our chocolate supply!!

Vervit monkeys that torment out little dog kiko because she cant get up the trees to chase them.  The reedbuck that chills in the cool of the river beside our tent after lunch. There is an amazing amount of birds here, you learn to understand their calls and alarms, ive learnt to prepare for a rain storm, listening to them go crazy after lunch means rain is on its way. The Bush babies come down for bread rolls at dinner and then use our tent as a trampoline to get from one tree to the other. The safari ants, after a rain storm they always seem to make a line in the same place across the path going to our tent which we all have to leap across. There are all sorts of other creatures but I would be listing Jonathon Kindom field guide if I carried on.

So, were planning to be here for at least 2 years. I hope you enjoy the stories I share and that lots of my friends and family get a chance to come and stay in this magical place!!