Fake Plastic Trees

There is a strange tree in the middle of the Masai Mara. It looms on a hill top as you approach the Mara River, spiky, pine-like in its lonesomeness, its branches jutting like the fletching of an arrow fired at the heart of the earth. It is an alien thing, unlike every other tree on the plain and it draws the eye like a cynosure.

It's also clearly made of plastic.

I say clearly - it took me a few seconds to process the fakery, possibly because it's so unexpected. Moses helpfully pointed out that it was a disguised mobile phone mast, but we would have worked that out for ourselves as we passed close by, the branches giving off a plasticky sort of glow on the sporadic sunshine.

Fortunately this was the only part of the day that reminded me of my Windsor Safari Park delusion. This time the sun shone (most of the time), we got to walk about (under armed guard) and even crossed the border into Tanzania (very briefly).

Speaking of which, I always thought it was pronounced TAN-z'-NEE-a. Not according to the locals, who call it Tan-ZAN-ya. I checked this out when I got home. I visited my local news agent and told him I'd been to Kenya. "Really?" he said. "I grew up in TanZANya!".

You learn something new every year.

The day started positively with another sighting of the gorgeous cheetah family. They're definitely my favourites, and the gang were incredibly lucky to find them sunning themselves on a grassy knoll only a few feet from a track. Throughout the trip was I was amazed at the complete lack of reaction from the animals as a motor vehicle full of gawping monkeys pulls up only yards away. They must have worked out long ago that monkeys in a box pose neither a danger nor an opportunity for a three course meal. You can't eat them, they don't eat you, and hopefully you can't have sex with them. Presumably in savannah speak that means the monkeys in a box aren't really there at all.   

Quick! Monkeys in a box, hide our faces!

We gazed happily at the fluffy family of lightning death for a while before heading off through a green sea with bouncing Thomson's Gazelles replacing dolphins scattering around our ship's prow. So far we had been a bit disappointed with our rhinos (sadly never quite resolved) and lions, who had decided to impersonate ostriches (also missing so far) and stick their heads in the ground whenever we passed. Our first glimpse of that most sought after commodity - "Lion Face" (TM) - was found after our first detour from the previous day's track, as we trundled over the hills and far away, and spotted a pride lounging about under a tree.

Of course, none of these we helpful enough to to give us any Lion Face either, but a lone young male, perhaps banished further out from the shade of the tree for some sort of adolescent offence, was gracious enough to raise his head to the level of the grass tips as he sulkily watched his pride mates at rest.

As usual he wasn't at all interested in the monkeys in a box, but his precarious social position appeared to make him more restive and alert than the comfortable inactivity of his female pride mates. His mane - if it could be called that - appeared short and ruffled, as if he's been experimenting with Bed Head. Eventually we left him, hopeful that we would eventually get a closer look at the King of Beasts. Shortly afterwards we would pass a lone female, similarly concealed at grass tip level. It wasn't looking good.

After a trip through elephant country we had another budget safari moment. Moses dropped us off at a little airstrip. At first this was for a toilet break - the strip had one of the few toilet stops in the Mara. After the safari crew had taken advantage of the facilities, Moses showed absolutely no inclination to get the monkeys back in the box. After a while, when pressed, he admitted that we were actually awaiting another crew member arriving by plane, but of course that plane would be arriving in five minutes. We settled down for a long wait.

Six five-minutes later, Conor joined us. Conor was an African specialist with one of the biggest NGOs of all, and had tacked on a cheap safari during a visit to another part of the continent. Having flown into the Mara on a very nice looking plane he may have been slightly surprised to find himself bouncing about in the back of Moses' Monkey Box, and probably more than disappointed by the fact that the abundance of animals that had greeted us in the early hours had now melted away to be replaced by endless sightings of Warthogs. A few elephants did deign to flap in the distance, and Magnuss' Marvellous Magnifier did pick up some far away Ostrich action, but otherwise Conor had to pin his hopes on happy hippos at the waterside.

The border with TanZANya is marked with a small obelisk advertising TK Max. There is an utterly futile sign suggesting that it is a bad thing to climb on the stone, so obviously everyone climbs on it. I'm not even sure it really marks the border, since I had been told that the Sand River marks the border, and the stone is in a muddy patch in the middle of a field that whilst a touch damp shares very few attributes with your average river. So I don't know if I've taken a short walk into TanZANya or not. I'll try not to let it bother me.

The Mara River flows into Kenya from Tanzania before making its windy way to Lake Victoria. At drier times of the year it is a magnet for the thirsty wildlife of the Masai Mara and Serengeti, but for us in our rainy paradise it was just a chance to see hippopotamuses and crocodiles. Just to really annoy us, all the Monkey Boxes arrive and congregate on one side of the river. The hippos, being much smarter than us, have worked out they they will get better uninterrupted yawning time if they stay on the other bank. The crocs, possibly not needing to eat for several months after gorging on bits of Wildebeest several weeks before, sent a lone delegate to show they were interested, but she, too, sat on the far bank, pretending to be a twig.

With an air of hopefulness we agreed to claim the services of a Park Warden. The services of this Warden would eventually cost us 200KSH each. These value for money services were:

• trying to persuade Mario to become his Italian pen pal
• tell us he liked talking a lot
• talking a lot
• telling us he liked jokes
• telling jokes
• not funny ones
• taking us to places where there weren't any animals
• asking for $25 whilst holding a gun

We took a risk and paid him on 2,000KSH. He didn't shoot us. On the other hand, at one point were were only a few hundred yards from where we'd spotted some lions, so his gunly presence was reassuring, if slightly irritating, and it was a delight to get out of the Monkey Box for a while and get the backs of our necks properly sunburned at last. The highlight of the trek was probably a camera shy dung beetle who flew away as soon as we tried to film it. Needless to say we had to spot that for ourselves. 

After feeding the Carnivorous Sparrows (who were very keen on the left-over chicken) at the Wardens' hut, and chasing a red headed lizard into a bush, we were hoping to get a treat from Moses who'd promised us a close up of lions if - and this was the crucial bit - there were no other Monkey Boxes around. The park rules are quite stringent. The following day Moses would get fined for driving up a grass verge trying (in vain)  to get a good look at leopards - one of the other drivers took his number and reported him. So, 4WD or not, trundling over the grassy verges to get proximal peek at predators was full of risk for him. Sure enough, as we reached the lions they were being gawped at by a succession of minivans. We stopped, whisked out various forms of magnification, and then forlornly headed back past the Fake Plastic Tree. 

To cheer us up, Lauro whipped out his iPhone and flicked through the contents until he found what he was looking for. For the next 5 minutes we were all entertained with a sing-a-long version of Hakuna Matata from The Lion King. What the local animals thought of the Box of Singing Monkeys rocking down the track we will never know, nor if the warthogs were confused by the cries of "Pumba!!" that accompanied a sighting for the rest of the day. 

The adrenaline highlight of the day was probably Moses' Stig impersonation as he tried to drive us past a pod of Monkey Boxes that had got bogged down in the Masai mud. I'm hoping the footage appears on YouTube eventually, especially the moment where two unsuspecting minivan drivers who'd been having a sly fag emerged from behind a vehicle to see Moses hurtling towards them, spraying mud like sparks form his chariot's wheels. But we weren't quite done on the wildlife front. The mud was keeping the other minivans off our tail, so when Moses spotted another splash of beige against the baize, he fulfilled his promise and drove down a small hill to pull up a few metres away from a couple of recumbent lionesses. At first they were both intend on tussock nuzzling like every other lion in the Masai, but a rather naughty open-and-close trick on the driver's door soon caught their attention, and gave an uncomfortable reminder that while the animals might have worked out that they can't eat Monkey Boxes, they know they can eat the soft delicious centres if the shell is breached.

So Conor at last got to see something more exciting than a warthog, and we finally got over the frustration of slightly lions.

Less convincing, it must be said, were the Masai Villagers that the tourist trail inevitably led us to that night.The village lies within striking distance of one of the park's main gates, and offers short tours to Safari-goers in return for $15. The very fact that it works on such a commercial basis makes it slightly questionable value for money. They all start off very friendly, though Mario felt the traditional jumping dance, or adumu,  was done a little half-heartedly. They also warned off a village drunk who was trying to promote his new invention, The Random Bulbous Wooden Thing, from harrassing us, so we felt pretty safe from hawking. We got a chance to see the many creative uses of car tyres (a cross-Kenyan feature), including a cattle trough and many pairs of sandals,  and got to see various stages of the building of a traditional home. All the while though, the activity of the village seemed to have stopped, and large groups of masai women and children would hang around staring calmly at us.

Once you had progressed through the various stages of housing until you got to sit in a finished one (stick your head in a bag for a few minutes to recreate the general experience), the whole thing changed. The reason that, despite the fact that they get countless tourists every week, the women had been staring is that they were about to play their role in the whole affair. Whereas the Science Museum might usher you to Exit Through The Gift Shop, here the Gift Shop gets up and chases you all over its village. Several members of the group left clutching unconvincing jewellery that they confessed they had no use for. Previously friendly masai men tried to turn on the guilt trip. Given they'd just made $75 from us all for a 20 minute tour, forcing us to buy a plastic crocodile tooth seemed a little much.

They wear tartan, but don't expect any shortbread.

To give them some credit, however, the reason for that is that the $15 dollars per head fee goes to a very specific home: nomads they may be, but this village had decided to invest in something very important - a school.

This, weirdly, was the highlight. Not the traditional dress or the mud-walled houses or the tyre shoes. A little primary school full of wooden benches and hope. Multi-lingual writing covered the walls, along with the usual children's paintings of sheep, though these ones were less fluffy and more muddy. We met one of the teachers, a hugely enthusiastic woman who was clearly glowing with pride as she talked. It was the evening, so obviously the kids were back at the village plotting to sell brightly coloured string to tourists, but it was clearly an endeavour that was worth every $15 they get. So go, have a look, give them your money. The tour may not be worth it, but the outcome certainly is.

Oh, and wear boots. That's a lot of sheep shit.

The upside to our camp was mostly the red wine. The beds were damp and I'm told that at three in the morning some other tourists turned up and started talking loudly in the tent next door for about an hour. I didn't hear a thing.