Kenya: Kicheche Fly Camp
Saying goodbye to the staff at Kicheche Valley Camp
Walking safaRi: Valley Camp to Fly Camp
When our agent asked if we were interested in a walking safari and staying in a fly camp, I don’t think any of us paused before saying, yes, please!
Safari vehicles are great, and you can cover a lot of ground and see a lot of things that way, but you can miss some of the small things. Things like insects, frogs, and toads. And there is just something magical about trekking across the open plains of the Maasai Mara and viewing the animals from on the ground.
We started out from Valley Camp around 3pm with clouds building in the distance. Before taking off on our 12 km trek, we had an important safety briefing with Mika giving us some important tips==like if we encounter a cat, DON'T RUN. Hmmmm, easier said than done! But we were ready to go and felt comfortable that Peter the Ranger with his gun and Mika with his very pointy spear would protect us!
The terrain was easy to navigate with plenty of hippo trails and other game trails to follow and the heat of the day was tempered with afternoon clouds and gusts of wind. We were sure the storms would catch up to us, soaking us the the bone. If you know Jim's luck with weather, you'll be surprised that it didn’t rain a drop on us even though we could see rain coming down in the distance.
It wasn't long before we came across cute toads hopping away and hoping to camouflage in the bush. We would have passed them by unnoticed if they hadn’t made the leap away from us.
This was followed by a surprised hippo grazing in some thick brush. I'm not sure who was surprised more, us or him. Fun fact: many Africans consider hippos the most dangerous terrestrial animal in Africa; believed to be responsible for 3,000 deaths per year!
So yeah, being on foot and surprising a hippo got our heart pumping! Although mom was most nervous about the buffalo in the distance after hearing stories of their aggression. There is no shortage of things that can easily kill you here in Africa. Somehow mom survived.
We saw plenty of the less dangerous animals like giraffe, zebra, and wildebeest grazing in the distance as well.
Camping in the Bush-Kicheche Fly Camp
We were welcomed to camp with a beautiful camp fire as the sun was just setting, happy to have avoided the rains.
The fly camp was definitely a glamping experience! Spacious tents with cots and memory foam matreesses, flannel blankets and down comforters in case it got chilly (it didn’t), a drop toilet and bucket shower set up not far from our tents, and of course, amazingly delicious food cooked over the camp fire for us.
That evening by the fire our camp host Jackson entertained us with stories about the camp.
This is my kind of camping. The sounds of frogs, hippos, hyenas, and lions could be heard as we fell asleep, but didn't keep us awake.
The next morning Jackson made us coffee and put out our breakfast spread while we looked for the frogs we could hear so clearly the night before. We didn’t wait too long before setting out on our 10 km trek to Bush Camp.
Walking safari to Kicheche Bush Camp
It was another beautiful day. A bit windy, but not cold. Perfect for our trek. Not far from the end of our trek we had what might be the most memorable moment of the trip.
As we were coming down a rocky slope, I stopped to take this picture.
Not five seconds after this picture was taken, we heard a very loud, very threatening ROAR from the small ravine you can see on our left. Mika called for us to gather close to him, to “come quickly.” But wait! Remember rule number one if you see a cat? DON'T RUN! I looked at him like, um, I don’t want to be eaten by a lion!
Normally when a lion sees people on foot, they will avoid confrontation. Unless they have young cubs that are too young to move with her on their own. Sure enough, this mamma lion had three young clubs with her, less than six weeks old. When the cubs are that young the mama lion will stand her ground and defend them. We were well protected by Peter with his gun at the ready if the lioness decided we were a real threat and did more than vocally warn us away. If I thought my heart was racing after the hippo encounter, I was wrong. A lioness roaring at you is crazy scary. We backtracked and came down a different path down the slope. We were probably a 500 feet away and could still see her staring at us making sure we were no longer a threat to her young cubs.
We survived and made it to Kicheche Bush Camp!
INTERESTED IN DOING THIS?
We’ve had several people already asking us about our itinerary or how they can do something like this. For this trip, and all our prior African safari trips, we worked with our travel agent Casey at Mango African Safaris. She has always listened to what we want and put together an itinerary that suited us perfectly, so we highly recommend Mango.