The Kenya 17s epic Safari adventure is over (we added two kids from victory to our party to bring us temporarily to the Kenya 17, it was nice to count to a different number for a change). The buses turned up with Chris, Karen and the two Kenyan students, Isaac and Joseph, who had been chosen by the teachers to join us for the weekend for their hard work all year. We piled into the safari vans and before we even left the Nyali area most of us were asleep. For Me, Straw, Cheesmur, Page and Mrs Farmer it was the first time in the two weeks that we have sat down for that length of time without anything to do or anyone to look after and we crashed out for most of the journey.

Once we reached the safari park we all moved to the back of the buses and opened the roof so we could stand up and look out the top. It meant that one person in each bus didn't have a seat but we could all see the lovely animals. At the start of the safari we didn't see much as the animals cleavily stay away from the main road from the gate, I took this opportunity to have another unintentionl nap whilst sitting of the floor of the bus.

The rest of the day we spotted lots of creatures (See Mr Straw's blog for the whole list), we also rescued another safari van who had gone off the main road and got stuck. After lunch at the lodge we looked at the elephant hide and the hyrax and lizard visitors to the hotel grounds before setting off for a dusk safari. After dinner the boys went off to practice their song for tomorrow and myself, Mr Cheesmur and Mr Straw remained chatting in the restaurant. Suddenly a giant (and I mean giant, 6cm or so) fell onto the plate in front of us. As it rolled around in the butter Straw was the only one who remained at the table, from across the room me and Cheesmur regained our composure, only to realise that the thing had wings and proceeded to repeatedly fly at us. As a responsible trip leader I of course made sure that Cheesmur and Straw were ok and in no way use them both as a human shield.

After the drama of the beetle attack the staff all went to sit outside overlooking the watering hole, the place was silent and all we could hear were the insects and the sound of birds in the distance. We looked at the many stars in the sky (the lucky ones spotted the shooting stars) and made many jokes about how funny it would be if we turned around and there was a lion standing there. The lodge has armed guards as such things do happen. We became convinced that we could see animals down by the watering hole (half of our "sightings" turned out the be rocks in the harsh light of day) and speculated about what the sounds were (we thought elephants). So we sat out like this for half an hour or so, making jokes about lions creeping up and beetles dropping out the sky, everyone was a bit jumpy and became convinced things were crawling on them (the lodge had a lot of insects so this was most likely the case). In a lull in the hushed whispers three of us on the end heard a growl. No jokes. A growl. We decided that it was time to move back inside, we proceeded to do so as a group, thinking that if we didn't travel as a herd the mystery growler would pick the weak and slow amongst us off. It wanted us to split up! Back on the stairwell further giant flying beetles launched themselves at us, but we were now a herd, a jumpy herd. We used Cheesmur as a human shield to get back to our rooms safely.

In the morning me and Page woke up at 5:30 to see the sunrise from the window of our room and we set off for a morning safari. One of the highlights of this weekend for me was how the boys accepted Joseph and Isaac into our group, buying them drinks and ice cream and sharing their ipods. It was lovely to see and both boys really enjoyed their weekend so another big thank you for the fundraising efforts :-)

Tomorrow is our final say at the school so a roller coaster day ahead, whole school assembly bringing the happyness of the singing and then the goodbyes :-( Hope you haven't missed the blogs too much over the weekend xx