1. The Search
2. The Sounds
3. Walk at Sunrise
4. Chamilandu Camp
5. Stalking
6. Chindeni Camp - The Senses
7. Snorting
8. Tastes
9. The Sighting and a Bush Breakfast

Tastes

The hyena stole the butter dish. The next night we saw the butter wrapping. The hyena slunk through the bush behind the kitchen, like a dog going to bury its bone.

Butter or no, the pastries that Carie the cook at Chindeni makes are worthy of a New York restaurant. Crimped-edges pies, filled with herbed tomatoes and onions for afternoon tea, melt-in-the-mouth crust -- and this from someone who professes not to know how to cook?

Treacly sweet butterscotch cake that's too good to leave on the plate. One brunch she creates a puff pastry taco shell stuffed with fried egg and fresh chives.

Another evening, popadoms with curry and a mix of hot pepper relishes. Carie takes the staples of bushcamp cooking - pizza, pasta and stew - and creates a whole new level of camp cuisine. Sometimes the meals served beneath the tent awning among the trees, and one night a long dinner table on the deck overlooking the lagoon, another around the campfire on the sandy beach by the water's edge.

Her sundowners also break the mold. At first, sundowner sounded corny and colonial to me. But the pause in the afternoon walk to watch the sunset from a beautiful spot was a ritual I began to look forward to. Debs took us walking along the edge of the lagoon from camp, past the hippopotamus taking a mud bath; among the baboon carousing and shouting and chasing; over there warthogs with little spindly legs speeding their chunky little bodies into the grasses, tails held erect; herds of impala staring and startled; a family of four elephants crossing at the head of the lagoon; and on the far side two giraffes.

The sun sinks fast in these latitudes, painting the sky fuchsia and the lichens in the marsh blood red.

Carie brought the jeep around to the far side of the lagoon and mixed a concoction of vodka, honey and lemon. It tasted like cough medicine. "Kenyan specialty," she said.

I drank half of it. But I drink in whole the being here -- the pinch yourself in the moment; the shock of 'Yes, that is a lion;' the blue, blue sky through the baobab tree that is squat and upside down looking; the long, long grass parting for a lion; and the dust in the pores dry; and the orange sun hard on the face; and the cidery, vinegary, pungent crinkle-the-nose smell; and the jolt of adrenaline that tells me - "Yes, I really am here."


[continued...The Sighting and a Bush Breakfast]