Walking with meerkats

I haven’t slept well and I’m already awake when my alarm goes off at 5am. My clothes are ready and camera bag packed, so by 5.15 I’m in the farmhouse kitchen and looking for breakfast. There’s tea and coffee, fruit and rusks (hard biscuits best dunked before eating). I grab a banana, dip my rusk in some coffee and I’m ready to go. We’ve been assigned to three meerkat groups; I’m with Denise visiting the Lazuli group and we set off to HQ with Mike at about 5.40. He’s only driven the road once, in daylight and in the opposite direction, and he quickly reaches a fork where none us are sure which way to go. Fortunately Simon rescues us and leads us to the farmhouse where we meet our guide, Alice.

We walk out to the burrows where Lazuli group went to bed last night and find the arrow marked in the sand that shows us which burrow they entered. Alice rubs it out and we settle down to wait first for dawn and then for the meerkats to emerge. Her first job will be to weigh them before they set out foraging; she’ll weigh them all 3 hours later than take a break until the afternoon when she’ll visit another group and weigh them before they settle down for the night. This data enables the project to monitor how effectively the meerkats forage and what effect the availability of food has on their behaviour. Other observations are also taken while the researchers wait for weighing; they are all volunteers, mostly post-grads from the UK as the project is overseen by Cambridge University. Alice tells us she comes from Exeter and has been at the project around six months. She’s friendly and happy to chat about her life on the project and beyond; she tells us that they think the dominant female has had pups but they haven’t been seen yet.

Suddenly the first meerkat head pokes out of the burrow and Denise crouches to set her Go Pro to film them emerging. Amazingly a couple of tiny heads appear and Denise beckons me over – the pups are in the mouth of the burrow! Alice rushes to get the hair dye that is used to mark the Meerkats and dabs a little on the four heads she can see. The little ones don’t emerge entirely but we’re privileged to have been present when they first saw the light of day. Bobby-Jo had told us yesterday that she had the same experience when visiting previously; it’s something few people ever get to see.

We wait for a while after the adults leave the burrow, but the pups seem to be staying put. One of the adults remains behind to babysit – in this case, unusually, a young male as the group has no mature females other than the dominant female and adolescents can’t be trusted. Alice weighs each meerkat in turn, tempting them onto the scales with either a morsel of boiled egg or some water from a hamster bottle. Most are cooperative, although the dominant male scent marks the scales constantly with secretions from his anal gland and Alice has to fend him off with her record book. The book contains the weights of the meerkats – and, in this case, the blood of a previous visitor who was bitten by the dominant male.

 The meerkats sun themselves only briefly before scampering off to forage for insects and grubs in the sand. They locate them mainly by smell and then dig for them with their front paws; their eyesight is geared to distance and they have poor close-up vision. We follow and Alice monitors them, making a note of particular behaviours and collecting samples of their faeces. I’ve already worked out that the zookeepers are preoccupied by poo – they were keen to identify a specimen left by the steps to the landing stage at Riverplace Manor – as a result some of the suggested names proposed for our group are Poo Patrol and Scat Attack.

It’s hard to keep track of the meerkats, as the dominant male and dominant female go separate ways and some follow each. They are soon spread over the dry riverbed and beyond. They call out at intervals, so that they can keep track of each other; a more high-pitched, cat-like cry is used when a meerkat can’t immediately locate the others. The weighing is a way to check how successful their foraging has been. It has been dry lately and that makes food more scarce; at times of drought their numbers decline sharply as they reproduce less and pups are less likely to survive.

There are separate projects to study the ground squirrels and tortoises, as well as a programme that studies mole rats for potential insights into cancer and ageing. The dominant meerkats have radio collars attached, so that the researchers can track them, and so do the tortoises that are being studied. We find a large tortoise without a radio box on its back and Alice radios the tortoise researcher with its coordinates. She looks at its rear, as the shape of the back of the shell differs between the sexes, but isn’t sure enough to confirm its gender – that question is settled when the tortoise lays an egg. She hasn’t dug a hole for it and makes no attempt to cover it over before she ambles off. One of the meerkats approaches and I wonder if it will be eaten; it’s disregarded after a few sniffs though.

The tortoise researcher arrives on a quad bike and we go back to watching the meerkats. They are very scattered now and Alice has trouble locating them all for weighing. That task completed she leads us back to the burrow where Denise left her Go Pro in case the pups re-emerged. We’re quite late back as a result and Sue and Ray are already in the combi. Alice admires Sue’s top, which appropriately features an embroidered meerkat, and Sue kindly offers to give it to her. I take Alice’s email address so that I can send her the photos I took while she was weighing the meerkats and Mike drives us back to our farmhouse.  On the way back we disturb a herd of wildebeest. Lunch includes last night’s leftovers plus a delicious frittata, which we name “hakuna frittata” – another potential team name perhaps?

Bobby-Jo had been hoping to see Tim Clutton-Brock while we’re here – he’s the project’s founder and literally wrote the book on meerkat behaviour; it’s called “Flower of the Kalahari” and Ray and I have brought copies with us. Tim makes a surprise visit towards late afternoon, arriving just as it begins to rain heavily; we sit and chat to him in the farmhouse dining room. He’s friendly and unassuming and happy to sign our books and have a photo taken with us all. Unexpectedly he invites us for drinks the following evening at his house in the reserve. Sadly his wife Dafila, whose paintings adorn the farmhouse walls, is ill and hasn’t been able to travel with him this time.

It's time for our evening visit to the meerkats; this time I’m with Sue, Ray and Bobby-Jo visiting a group called Hakuna Matata. They have made their home in a property across the road and Mike drives us to the project HQ where we meet Doug, who takes us to where the meerkats were last seen foraging. The rain had stopped but begins again, more gently this time, and a half-hearted rainbow appears. We interrupt two amorous tortoises; there are four in all and we stop to photograph them against yellow flowers. The rain has stopped and the sky begins to redden as the sun sinks behind the trees.

The meerkats are still foraging, apart from the sentry who has chosen the top of a bush as his vantage point; he takes no notice of us as we photograph him. I take Bobby-Jo’s advice to stay low, and enjoy the novelty of looking up to a meerkat. The light is fading fast and soon I have to abandon my SLR and use my camera phone; the sunset is pretty spectacular. One by one the meerkats enter the burrow, then we walk back to the reserve and get ready for dinner - Mike has cooked a spaghetti Bolognese. After dinner, Bobby-Jo sets up her camera to demonstrate night photography, using Denise’s rondavel as the foreground for a photo of the milky way. Lightning is still flickering and we can hear the distant rumble of thunder.

Off the beaten track

I slept so well last night. The bed was really comfortable and will be welcome when we return at the end of the trip after camping! We have breakfast at 7, including delicious warm muffins and bizarrely square bacon which might have been reconstituted except that it has fat. Mike has gone to get the propshaft fitted to make our vehicle 4-wheel drive so after packing we have some free time to relax and take photos in the grounds, then it’s off to the mall again to stock up on booze and snacks for the trip.

After stopping for fuel and air (right next to the elusive Bi-Lo restaurant) we finally leave town at around 11 to drive around 200km to the Kuruman River Reserve. We leave the tarmac just outside Upington and take a dirt track at a fairly modest pace due to the well-loaded roof rack and trailer. Sue is wearing a fabulous top featuring an embroidered animal and as we chat on the journey we learn that she makes these herself.

The road is straight and its sandy surface is pale yellow, just like the roads I saw from the plane. The landscape is sparsely populated with a farmhouse every 20 or 30 km. They have corrals by the road with sloping runways designed for offloading livestock from vehicles. The poles carrying the power lines are topped with massive sociable weaver bird nests that make them look like they’ve been badly thatched.  There are few turn-offs apart from the driveways to properties, and Bobby-Jo has a map with distance markers and photos of the intersections where we have to make turns. The first one is a little further along than indicated but we finally spot the church that marks the turn – just a single storey building with a cross on the gable end.

We’re looking for a shady spot to stop for lunch, but there are few trees on the road side of the fences. Finally we settle for a modest tree and Mike sets about making ham and tomato sandwiches on a Breaking Bad chopping board. Louise quickly spots the ticks that are making a bee line across the dust for our blood, and those in shorts and sandals hastily apply insect repellent. We eat in the meagre shade of the tree and the truck and Bobby-Jo takes our first group photo.

We hit the road again and set a steady pace until Bobby-Jo sees a startled steenbock dart towards the fence and thinks it may have become entangled. Turning around with the trailer is a challenge but somehow Mike manages it. Fortunately the creature isn’t stuck – but, before long, we are. Unable to turn the trailer on the narrow track, Mike ventures up the sandy bank and the towbar gets stuck. We pile out and manhandle the trailer to the other side of the road, then help push the vehicle off the sandbank; Mike reattaches it and we pile back in.

Our journey resumes and we notice that the quantity of wildlife is increasing as we get further from Upington. Karen is excited to spot a wild meerkat, we also spot ground squirrels, steenbok, gemsbok, red hartebeest, springbok and common warthogs. The ranchers are keen to deter humans, judging by the notices that show a handgun contained in a red circle; more elaborate and detailed signs contain a skull and crossbones. There are no other signs of habitation apart from the ranches and although we pass an occasional vehicle we never see anybody on foot.

Eventually we make a right turn onto a paved highway; the entrance to Kuruman River Reserve is about a kilometre along on the left. We enter through a gate and make our way to the farmhouse where the Kalahari Meerkat Project has its HQ. This is where the Meerkat Manor TV series was filmed, and more recently some episodes of Animals with Cameras. We are fortunate to be here, a privilege extended to Bobby-Jo who knows the family of the founder – it’s primarily a research establishment; tour groups are not usually allowed to visit.

We’re directed to another farmhouse called Gannavlakte where we will stay, both in the house and in rondavels nearby. We’re shown around by Simon who manages the property; there is a separate manager for the research project. The house is single storey with a veranda along each long side, ample living space and a well-equipped kitchen. There are shower and toilet blocks, outside tables and chairs, a firepit and a large barbeque – known here as a braai. We choose our rondavels and unpack; I’m already feeling right at home here.

Our meerkat encounters will begin tomorrow morning, but meanwhile we are visited by ground squirrels and a tortoise. Bobby-Jo gives us our first photography lesson, sitting outside under a shady tree. She begins with some top tips and then goes into a little more detail about composition; there’s a lot of emphasis on the creativity of the photographer and the skill of “painting with light” and less on the type of equipment. The more technical information about camera controls will follow tomorrow, but I already feel I know more about how to spot a photo opportunity and then make the most of it.

I grab a shower before dinner; Mike cooks us a braai of steak, lamb and sausages with a salad and cornmeal which we eat al fresco. The sky looks very close and the stars are really bright – the milky way is clearly visible. We sit around for a while chatting but we have an early start tomorrow so nobody stays up very late. I try to message Simon and Alex before bed but there’s very little signal here … 

Joburg and beyond

My flight to Jo’burg arrives 10 minutes late but that still gives me two and a half hours before my connection to Upington. I have to reclaim my bag and then navigate my way to the domestic bag drop off. It’s confusing and not well signed but a young man wearing an airport pass offers to show me the way, waits while I drop my bag and then walks me to security. I tip him a probably over-generous R50, the smallest value note I have.

Having slept for no more than an hour on the flight I go in search of proper coffee. Bobby-Jo sends a Facebook message to say they are waiting for me at the gate so I finish my coffee, settle up and go to meet them. Only Sue and Denise are there, the others have gone to buy sim cards. I had looked for a place to buy one while in search of coffee but the sole electronics shop didn’t have any. It turns out the sports shop has a side gig and Bobby-Jo takes me there; I end up with more minutes and less data than I wanted but apparently I can convert some minutes to data if I need to.

We introduce ourselves and chat a little before boarding the flight. There’s a couple, Jim and Sue, and the rest of us are solo women; everybody but me is from Australia. Karen and Louise are zookeepers, Karen takes care of meerkats and is very excited at the prospect of seeing them in the wild. Louise also works with Denise at a separate dog-grooming business. Everybody seems very friendly. The flight is called and we’re driven out to a smallish jet; the flight to Upington takes around an hour and a quarter, flying over scrubby terrain criss-crossed by straight dirt roads; there’s a green ribbon flanking the river that runs through the town.

We’re met at Upington by Mike, our driver, who is dismayed by the amount of baggage we have. He fetches a combi van from the car park and manages to cram everything in. It’s only a short drive to Upington.  Riverplace Manor, where we’ll be spending the night, is down a dusty drive past neat rows of vines; Denise and I will be sharing a room with a river view. There’s just enough time to drop our bags in our rooms and change into something cooler before Mike drives us down to the Kalahari Mall to get some lunch. We eat fast seafood at Ocean Basket, getting to know each other as we eat.

Back at the lodge we have some free time to relax, get organised and explore the grounds, then we meet with Bobby-Jo for drinks and a chat about the plans for our trip. Bobby-Jo explains how she came to be running wildlife photography trips and asks each of us what we’d like to get out of the trip. It’s all very relaxed and friendly, with no snobbery about needing to have the latest kit or the biggest lenses. Her passion for wildlife, and her enthusiasm for raising awareness of conservation through her images, really shine through.

For dinner, Mike has reserved us a table at a restaurant that’s a short drive away. Or, at least, it should have been. This being Africa, there seems to be some uncertainty about its location although two different apps agree on its address. Mike follows the guidance and we find ourselves in a black-only suburb with modest single-storey homes. The GPS takes us to a restaurant which, while extremely lively and busy, is clearly not one that takes table reservations. We feel pretty conspicuous although our presence seems to cause little more than mild amusement. It’s only later we remember the huge mound of camping equipment under a tarp on the roof which must have made us resemble the Griswalds.

A few phone calls later, we drive past a car park party that looks like it might be a regular Sunday fixture and return to the centre of town. We finally manage to find the restaurant,  arriving about an hour after we set off on what would have been a 20 minute walk. It’s name “Bi-Lo” is also the name of a local supermarket which seems a little bizarre, and has added to the confusion about its location. We’re seated at a long table in the gardens, chosen because of the chance of seeing steenbok, although it’s dark by now.

The menu is so extensive I find it hard to choose, but I finally pick something I’ve never heard of and which the waitress tells me is pork. When it arrives it’s pretty much an entire leg of pig, served with onion rings and chips. The plate is piled high and although I give it my best shot, when I’ve finished there seems to be the same amount of food as before I started. The journey back to River Lodge takes only a few minutes and I make a brief Skype call home before bed.

Leaving Zanzibar

I’m awake way too early but it gives me a chance to watch the sunrise. No sign of any bush babies, though. After breakfast we’re driven to the public beach in a rickety 4x4 for our sailing trip. The boat turns out to be a Ngalawa, a traditional outrigger canoe, with a crew of 3 led by Simba, who speaks English. It’s pretty cramped and the only place to sit is on the side of the hull. Simba asks if we have any questions and Simon tells us later that he wanted to ask “where are the lifejackets” – instead he asks how long it takes to build the boat; the answer is 3 months. The central hull appears to be carved out of a single tree trunk, the outriggers being lashed on in a way Alex finds ingenious. The sail is clearly hand-stitched and I doubt a single mechanical aid was used in the construction.

For the crew to set the sail, we have to crouch in the bottom of the hull. One of the crew balances on a strut joining the outriggers to the main hull. It’s clear that with 3 passengers on board the manoeuvrability is compromised, as it’s difficult to tack when we have to be made to duck. We sail towards the north side of Mnemba Island but the wind is not favourable for the planned circuit of the island and we turn around and return to the public beach around an hour later. We make the short walk to the private beach and a few minutes later take the scheduled motorboat back to the lodge.

We spend the rest of the day by the pool and we’re ready when our driver arrives a little early to pick us up. It’s a fairly hair-raising drive to Zanzibar airport. The quality of the roads improves as we go, from rocky track to corrugated dirt, to Cuban-style potholed asphalt, smoother asphalt and finally a 2-lane dual carriageway. Our driver approaches them all with a similar level of urgency. There are many obstacles including ducks and hens with chicks in tow, bullock carts and cycles, Matutus that stop and pull out without warning and hoards of schoolchildren looking extremely smart in clue and white uniforms. There are no pavements or road markings and much overtaking, often perilously close. Despite the fact that many of the buildings look barely habitable and everything is covered with a patina of red dust, the schoolboy’s shirts and girls’ headscarves are pristine white.

As we approach the airport, Simon receives an SMS advising that our flight time from Nairobi has changed and that we have been moved to a later flight from Amsterdam to Heathrow. The timings are still a bit unclear, but it will give us longer transfer times than the hour or so we had been expecting. It more or less negates the benefit of having chosen the alternative flights to avoid long night-time waits for connections, notwithstanding the extra time we had at Matemwe.

Zanzibar International is a step up from Arusha, but not much. The flight changes mean that the boarding passes we downloaded are not all valid and we can’t get a replacement boarding pass for the final flight here. When we reach the departure lounge there are only 3 gates, a snack bar with a loudly whining fridge and a handful of shops, mostly closed. The announcements about departures are almost incomprehensible and there is no departures board, but we finally ascertain that our flight is being called and are taken by bus to a Kenya Airways twin-engine jet. Alex is asleep before we take off.

At Nairobi we repeat the now familiar transit security process and arrive at the departure gate to find it so full we can’t sit together. There is a loud hum from something – air conditioner, perhaps? – that sounds like one of those high-powered air hand driers, but Alex still manages to fall asleep on my shoulder. When the flight is called, Simon has to go right down to the gate and indicate by sign language when our seat numbers are called as we can’t hear the announcements over the noise. We arrive in Amsterdam with just enough time to have made our original flight to Heathrow, which of course is no longer possible as our seats were cancelled. We have breakfast and do some shopping instead.

I watch our bags being unloaded while we’re waiting for the airbridge at Heathrow and I can’t see mine … my fears are realised when it doesn’t arrive on the baggage carousel. I file a report at the baggage desk and they confirm that it was left behind in Amsterdam. I’m given a claim reference and a url for tracking and told it will be delivered. On the Railair bus to Reading I turn on my phone and find an SMS telling me my bag was not loaded; it was sent before we landed which I guess is pretty efficient on one level at least. We’re greeted in Reading by heavy rain and a much-anticipated lunch at Nandos on the way home.

FOOTNOTE:

Our trip was the Explore Worldwide Family Serengeti Safari, booked through Putney Travel. In place of the standard flight package, Charlie at Putney Travel secured slightly more humane flight timings resulting in around 36 hours extension to the holiday and a £100 saving on the brochure price. This was a fantastic introduction to East Africa for anybody who has never been on safari before, and I would highly recommend it.

Some top tips for Tanzania:

·        If you’re flying to Kilimanjaro Airport from Nairobi, ask for a seat on the left of the plane for a view of the mountain

·        On our trip, we could have managed quite easily with just US Dollars which are accepted pretty much anywhere. If you do want to change cash into TZ Shillings, you get a slightly better exchange rate for $100 and $50 dollar bills, and the worst rates for $5 and $1 bills.

·        My most useful piece of kit was a snood – good for keeping dust out of your mouth and nose on dusty dirt tracks as well as keeping your neck warm when you get up early for game drives and it’s still chilly (also keeps long hair out of your eyes when it’s windy!)

·        Unless you are a very serious photographer, there’s no need for ultra-long lenses – my 16-300mm lens was perfect for 99% of shots and meant that I didn’t need to keep changing lenses or lug around a huge camera bag. Do put a UV or daylight filter on your lens, though, to avoid it getting damaged by the dust, and take a blower brush.

·        We took a while researching the best photo-sharing site when we got back, and recommend Shutterfly which allows a private website to be created where you and your fellow travellers can share your photos at full resolution and with no storage limits and a promise to never delete an image.

And then there were three

I get up around 6.30 and put a couple of bananas outside in case of bush babies. I’ve heard them during the night but none materialise – I suspect I’ve left it too late but after so many early mornings I didn’t want to set an alarm. At breakfast Sharon tells me that the Batley teens left a banana out overnight and heard a bush baby in the morning but could be bothered to get up and look. The banana had gone, though …

The Batleys are the first to leave and we all wave them off. We grab some pool time before seeing off the Georges at noon. We get the keys to our new rooms soon after – our bags have already been moved for us. Our new room is elephant themed, so clearly it was destined to be mine all along! We’ve booked a sailing trip for 8.30 tomorrow morning, which means we will have to be packed and ready to check out before we set off. We can keep one room to shower and change before we leave.

This afternoon, we borrow masks and snorkels and attempt to go snorkelling from the beach below the lodge. It’s not a success – the sea urchins are everywhere so it’s hard to see where to put your feet and the water is very shallow quite a long way out.

After dinner Alex and I lie on the loungers on the jetty to look at the sky, which is clear and bright with stars again. We both see shooting stars.

... and relax

I wake early and sit on our terrace with a coffee, watching tiny birds sip nectar from the flowers and listening to the sound of the fishing boats passing by. Breakfast is tightly wrapped in cling film to thwart the many flies and wasps – more than we’ve seen all week. Coffee is the most disappointing thing at this lodge, being drip rather than push, and the cooked breakfast includes chewy tinned mushrooms but the proper bacon compensates. Having overhead the manager telling somebody that putting bananas out sometimes tempts the bush babies to visit, I take a couple back to the room.

We spend the day in and around the pool, watching the boats go by and reading. The wind gets stronger in the afternoon so we retreat to the scuba training pool which is more sheltered. We find out that there has been a room allocation mix-up. We were supposed to get the rooms occupied by Mervyn and Chloe, because of our extra night’s stay, and have been asked to move tomorrow. Since those room are right on the water’s edge we don’t make too much fuss.

We’ve booked a table for 10 so that we can all eat together tonight as the Batleys and Georges both leave tomorrow – the former to another resort and the latter home. We have an extra night and most of an extra day thanks to Charlie’s efforts – and a £100 saving too! It will be sad to see the others go when we’ve shared so many amazing experiences together.

It’s relatively late (10.15!) when we walk back to our cabin and above us the Milky Way is clearly visible along with the most and brightest stars I can recall seeing. Alex observes that the scale of the universe messes with his head when it can be seen that clearly, and I’m inclined to agree.

 

 

 

To Matemwe

Although the Tembo Hotel was a lovely place to stay, I’m not sorry to be leaving Stone Town. After the gentle kindness of the people we encountered in Tanzania I found the constant hussling here wearing and the disrepair of its attractions was the worst I have encountered. It’s depressing to see a place with such a rich – if controversial – history being left to fall into disrepair when so many livelihoods depend on tourism.

Driving to Matemwe there’s a chance to see the contrast between the landscape on Zanzibar and in mainland Tanzania. It’s more lush and green, tropical vegetation and many palms. Homes are similar apart from the apparent absence of Maasai villages. Ox-carts are the primary means of personal transport here, and cattle roam freely in ones and twos, unlike the Maasai herds. There are local minibuses, known as Matutus, adapted from pick-ups with bench seats along the sides and a simple roof; most are tightly packed, sometimes with somebody hanging on the back. Sloping wooden structures made from tree trunks, sometimes with a simple roof, appear to be bus stops.

We follow a tarmac road for about an hour before taking a dirt track to Sunshine Marine Lodge which is located north of the village of Matenwe. We are greeted with champagne flutes of tamarind juice. Emily thinks it tastes of stewed apple, and I agree. We have arrived earlier than expected and not all our rooms are ready, so we are taken on an orientation tour and then wait by the pool.

After a week of fabulous lodges in stunning locations, this manages to top them all. The two storey cabins are set in lush tropical gardens and there are 3 pools including an infinity pool overlooking the ocean. When we get to our room we find the bed has been sprinkled with bougainvillea blossoms.

The lodge is located at the top of a small cliff and there’s only a tiny strip of beach below, accessible at low tide. But it has a private beach just up the coast that can be reached by road or boat in 10 minutes; it’s also possible to walk or borrow a mountain bike at low tide. There’s only a simple bar there but we can order food here and they will drive it down for us – Zanzibari deliveroo!

We decide to have lunch there and Mervyn and Chloe join us. We’re advised to wear diving shoes due to sea urchins; the 25 minute walk is mainly rocky with pools containing fish and crabs as well as the sea urchins. It’s a stunning piece of coastline with rocky outcrops eroded to form exotic shapes and small caves, fine white sand and picturesque boats. On the horizon is Mnemba island, an exclusive resort.

We reach the private beach and have a drink at the bar while they prepare our table; our food follows around 30 minutes later. We don’t stay long as we have to get back before high tide. The afternoon is spent by, and in, the pool before unpacking and getting ready for dinner. I wander back to the jetty to look at the view and notice a crowd has gathered; Chloe tells me some people got stranded by the incoming tide and had to be rescued and now it seems there may be somebody in difficulty in the water. I go back to get my camera and use the zoom lens as a telescope – there is somebody clinging to an upturned boat on the reef. We watch and worry as a boat approaches and somebody swims out with a lifebuoy, but the boat can’t approach to pick the people up because of the reef. Eventually it speeds off and returns on the right side of the reef, and the rescue is accomplished. Two scuba divers are brought to our lodge and wrapped in towels. They don’t appear to be especially traumatised, but it’s a reminder that this beautiful country is still wild enough to be dangerous.

Before dinner we sit in the gallery above the bar and admire the view. The restaurant has open sides and heavy hardwood furniture; we’re surprised by warm focaccia with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. The menu includes pasta and salads as well as the normal chicken and chips and features surprising touches like home-made feta.