On getting up we made our acquaintance with the camp's resident marabou stork (), before taking coffee with our hosts. Shortly before coming out I had been watching a documentary series on British TV about a new safari camp that was being constructed in Lewa, entirely under the auspices of the local people. I expressed my interest in visiting this, but, to my surprise, nobody knew anything about it at all.

For a while we didn't see very much on our morning game drive, until we came across a splendid cheetah (), below, who seemed very relaxed with our presence (), below.

     

Just a short distance away we had a hillside pointed out to us that contained a small private camp (The Hideaway) (). We then came across an eland (), rather closer than you usually get to this elusive species of antelope, together with a couple of grevy's zebra, who obviously had other matters on their minds, so we left them to it.

Two new bird sightings followed, a Verraux's Eagle Owl (), below, and a lesser blue eared starling (), below. Add to this a couple of martial eagles (), opposite and an ostrich (), and our 'twitching' is complete.

     

Then came the real treat of the entire trip. Just driving along we spotted a cheetah in the nearby bush, accompanied by a ranger (). She turned out to be 7 month old orphaned cub, who they had named Sheeba. I asked if we could stop and go across to her, and I then spent about half an hour stroking her and interacting with her (), below.

She then decided to climb up into our vehicle, and settled down there for a while (), below. The idea was to return her to the wild when she was mature, although in fact she had achieved her first kill only one day previously. For later news of Sheeba click here.

     

To then get a great close-up view of a black rhino () actually seemed somewhat of an anticlimax. At our lunch stop, up on a hill, we were shown a stone, situated on what had been an ancient drover route, that had painstakingly been hollowed out to provide a very old version of the game board that you come across in most camps, involving small stones and a set of rules that is beyond me ().

The end objective of the day's outing was to visit another camp (Wildlife Camp) which offered camel rides. Getting on wasn't all that difficult (), below, but coping with the beast then getting to its feet proved to be the hard part. You just instinctively leaned the wrong way! The actual ride lasted just over an hour, simply meandering through the bush, led by a guide (), below, whilst wondering what we would do if we encountered a pride of lions.

     

In fact, on the drive back, and not all that far away, we did actually come across a lion (), together with a few elephant ().

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