Welcome, I hope you enjoy sharing my experiences through the images and short stories on my time in Kenya.



Monday, May 23, 2011

Tree Top House


I'd like to tell you about one of the places we stayed on our recent trip. We spent two nights in a small nature reserve called Saiwa Swamp, which as the name suggests is a swamp which is surrounded by woods. This is the only place in Kenya that the very shy Sitatunga antelope can be found.

We arrived at the reserve late afternoon and drove to a clearing in the woods to find a lovely well kept camping area with space for tents, a brick shower unit and a tiolet. In the centre of the camp was a rather large round open building with a camp fire in the middle that acted as a kitchen. We were not camping however, we took our rucksacks out of the jeep and were led to a small winding path that disappeared into the woods. At the entrance to the path was a signpost saying 'Tree Top House' Now in Kenya they tend to be quite literal, especially with their signs so we were left in no doubt as to what type of accommodation we were staying in. Sure enough about 50m in was a large tree with a house at the top of it. We climed the steps that led to a platform and entered. It was quite nice, it had a small entrance with the bedroom on one side and the toilet/shower room on the other side with a small balcony at the back overlooking the swamp. The balcony had a small sink just outside the shower room, to be fair there wasn't enough space inside to put the sink. The bedroom had two single beds and had just enough space at the bottom to put the rucksacks. The beds had mosquito nets even if they were torn in places with holes big enough to let mosquito's in but I wasn't going to let a minor detail like that bother me. after settling in we went back to the kitchen for our dinner and didn't return until after dark.

The first problem manifested itself when I entered the toilet to find really big bluebottle flies lying dead on the floor and a whole heap of wasps, very much alive, in one of the top corners. Needless to say I didn't hang around, I got out of there as quickly as I could. I shut the door on the whole thing and went into the bedroom. Ken decided that the tree outside might be a better option. We had electricity in our tree house so I put the light on while we got ready for bed, that turned out to be a big mistake. I had only just got under the mosquito net when I heard a loud buzzing sound, one of the bluebottles had got in, probably attracted by the light, then another one appeared, then another, they were coming in through a big gap at the bottom of the door! We jumped out of the beds, grabbed a towel each and tried to either get the flies out or kill them. I immediately switched off the light while Ken stuffed one of the towels along the bottom of the door to keep them out. It was like something out of a horror movie, we were completely on our own, in a swamp, with a swarm of flies and wasps outside our bedroom door and with the wind getting up our little house had started to sway a little. We did the only thing we could do in the circumstances, we went to sleep. I hoped that firstly we wouldn't end up in the swamp and secondly that I didn't need to go to the toilet in the night as I had drank a couple of beers.

Morning arrived to my great relief which was only marred by the thought that I would have to go through the whole thing again tonight. On a positive note the days were lovely, it was very relaxing and we did get to see and photograph the elusive sitatunga.

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