Getting lost

It’s late and we’re lost. Not that I’m overly concerned about it. It just means we’re going to have to find Sarara Camp in the dark.

We bumped our way along the Great North Road from Archer’s Post for an hour or so and then headed west on a single-track dirt road into the hills towards Womba. Calvin had been told there would be a small wooden sign pointing towards Sarara, but there wasn’t. Probably because of the floods that washed through here in March. It’s hard to believe looking at this dry, dusty topography that, at times, it can get destructive amounts of rain. In fact, several camps along the nearby Ewaso Ngiro River, including Elephant Watch Camp, where Pete is friends with Oria Iain Douglas-Hamilton (he of Save the Elephants fame), were completely swept away by the flood waters.

Anyway, we’re lost. Calvin and Keith have been chattering on the 2-way radio for half an hour trying to determine whether they missed the turnoff to Sarara and should turn around or just keep going. Finally, Calvin makes an executive decision: Let’s turn around.

It’s beautiful out here: acacia trees, leleshwa (that blue-leafed bush with fragrant leaves smelling of camphor), thickets of commiphora. Already the sun has set behind the irregular peaks of the Mathews Range that stand in purple silhouette up against a cloudy skyline. Driving slowly down this rutted road we’ve come across huge troops of baboons, crossing from one side of the road to the other while vigilant elders wait on either side, like school crossing-guards, hurrying everyone along. And bright powdered-blue flocks of guinea fowl, dik-dik (always in pairs), and the lovely, dancer-like gerenuks with their most-elegant long necks, standing up on their hind legs to delicately nibble on a branch or two. I would be happy to concede that we’re not going to make Sarara tonight and just camp in this wilderness, but Calvin seems anxious. This is his expedition, after all, and he probably doesn’t feel good about the fact that he has gotten us lost.

When we stop to get our bearings, I climb out of the Land Cruiser and take a photo of an acacia tree with tidy weaver nests hanging like Christmas ornaments on its branches.

“Do you see how all the nests are built on one side of the tree?” Calvin says. “They’re facing west. Away from the wind, which always blows from the east. So no matter how lost you are out here, all you have to do is look at the weaver’s nests to figure out what direction you should go.”

And with that, we climb back into the vehicles and head due north—if the weaver nests are to be believed.