Sleepless in the bush

Tents 28 & 29 

Tamboti, the KNP's tented bush-camp, is a cicadian's pearl of poison. This trip was no different.

In the early evening, lightening streaked across the ink-pot, a flare; later a watermark behind closed-eyes.

Close-by, swaddled in dusty blankets, I grumbled under the tent's porous waterproof; no more useful than old underwear in a breeze.

No animal scurried down below; no bird cried out & yet it's precisely for this post-sunset cacophony that we frequent this spot.

[Post mid 30 Cs] - an afternoon airing

Earlier that afternoon blue skies and baking temperatures called for ice-cream & the other goodies we'd need for the evening's open-fire; the same fire over which we'd prepare our dinner & around which we'd sit, as a family, chewing the fat, as these things usually pan out.

The storm had other ideas...

Tamboti's accommodation is Victorian - either a luxurious self-contained canvas tent ie: with WC (a water closet..) or a canvas tent, sans the WC. We like to avoid the 'sans WC' whenever possible ..

Nuptial readiness 

Occupying a toilet seat, pinking from the bum-before, at the shared ablution block, built for three - intended for 30, is ..unpleasant.

Securing a last-minute booking, as we did, usually pre-empts a canvas tent sans WC... This then our joy & a feature of this particular trip.

Plan B's dinner-affair was a soggy cheese & ham which I shared with the drip off the roof. Add a dram of loneliness - a consequence of the uncaring bunch indoors & life becomes a rainbow....

Lesser Spotted Eagle - feasting on ants.. An incongruous culinary delight

Enjoying the same soggy cheese & ham, belatedly, with the afternoon squirrel, a thief during ice-cream, isn't a memory worth savouring either.

If the hares of that night were conspicuously absent then the dust bunnies in tents 28 & 29, were abundantly fruitful. Into this grey, unserviced world crawled the creepies over our late-night beds. Mosquitoes winged & whined via the front door.

Much later I stalked inside soaked to the seat-warmer, ravenous & starved of night-life... Given that the nagging racket was loudest inside the tent, rather than out, I returned to my puddle, outside - a Tamboti insomniac.