Waiting, waiting...

I find that I spend a large amount of my time here waiting around for people. Why is it guests book horse rides at 7am then don’t bother to turn up until 7.45am? Don’t ask for horses at 7am if you can’t get out of bed and organise yourselves sufficiently to be there on time. They are horses, not cars. They too find it intensely irritating to be stood around for an hour with their tack on. Fortunately, African horses have a larger degree of patience than most but, even so, they have their limits. Another gripe I have is the other lodges on Lewa booking horses for 4pm, then ringing me at 4.15pm to say that their guests changed their mind and no longer want to go riding. No really, we enjoyed getting the horses ready for you, only to untack them again and put them back in their stable!!

I had the most amazing cheetah sighting the other day – my best ever. To paint the picture, I am driving along the track almost at the exit gate of Lewa. I am not in a very good mood because our lorry driver decided the lorry was loaded and ready and left without telling me. Suffice to say, it was not completely loaded (organising everything the polo ponies need for two weeks away in Nairobi is quite a task but that’s another story), so I ended up having to drive up to the local polo club for the second time that day to take all the items that had been forgotten. We finish packing the lorry there before loading the ponies early next morning for the long drive to Nairobi. Anyway, back to the cheetah story. So I am driving along completely not expecting to see anything exciting as I am on a mission and not really looking. As I come round the corner, a cheetah is walking across the track right in front of me. I stop the car and turn the engine off. The cheetah completely ignores the vehicle and just wanders around up and down the track, then sits down next to the car and starts calling to her mate. Her mate did not appear but she was obviously quite upset about losing her as she kept calling and scanning the area. I watched her for about ten minutes before she walked off into the long grass. Naturally, I did not have a camera with me which was a great shame because she was so close and I would have got some brilliant photos.

Went for a lovely sundowner the other evening at the Lewa dam. Such a beautiful evening and sunset. There was some drama when we noticed a crocodile making its way quite quickly across the water. It must have heard the dogs splashing around and was thinking one would make for a good supper! I don’t think the dogs really understood why they were no longer allowed in the water.

Dare I say it, no horse dramas to report this week…….