{"id":20276,"date":"2022-09-12T18:00:12","date_gmt":"2022-09-12T22:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=20276"},"modified":"2022-11-10T23:16:40","modified_gmt":"2022-11-11T04:16:40","slug":"didnt-miss-a-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=20276","title":{"rendered":"Didn’t Miss A Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linda Lou Burton posting from Sweetwaters Serena Camp, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Nanyuki, Kenya <\/em>\u2013 Ever get to a place and just want to stay forever? Ever sit on a front porch and just breathe, content to do absolutely nothing? Ever had guinea fowl make such a racket you stood up to look for invaders in your yard? Believe it or not, all those things happened to me, and to Rick, in our first hour at Tent #16, Sweetwaters Serena. I\u2019d never even heard of guinea fowl before! More precisely, I\u2019d never HEARD guinea fowl, but that awful sound got us up and looking for the problem.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The porch of our fancy-schmancy tent faced the water hole, a distance away past the tree line. And something over there was excited; it sounded like dogs-with-a-terrible-cold barking. Use your expertise to google \u201cguinea-fowl sounds\u201d and you\u2019ll see what I mean. That\u2019s what Rick did, as we finally spotted the \u201chelmeted chickens\u201d all in a fuss about something. They are known as \u201calarmists\u201d and considered useful (on a farm, or a wildlife preserve?) for sensing trouble.<\/p>\n

All that activity got Rick excited to see more animals, so he headed off to meet Abdi and Daniel and Frank and the rest of the gang for the very first Game Drive. In those 4x4s. Eek! \u201cI\u2019m not going anywhere!\u201d I said. \u201cA 5:30 wakeup today! A 5-hour drive with all that bumping and jabbering! I\u2019m taking a NAP.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Ahhh, peace and quiet. The guinea fowl settled down. The rain began, the kind of rain that politely falls without a mess, and whispers you to sleep. I headed inside. I\u2019ve done some camping in my day. I\u2019ve slept in pop-up tents, with sleeping bag on the ground, campfire for cooking, and potty relief behind the nearest tree. My Sweetwaters tent was nothing like THAT. It\u2019s called a \u201cpermanent tent\u201d set up on a concrete (tiled and carpeted) floor, with a permanent thatched roof above.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Sweetwaters Serena has 56 such tents; some are on raised platforms with balconies; ours was nearer the water hole, with a porch. Two comfy double beds. Two closets. Two robes. Two chairs inside; two out. Wi-fi and coffee station. Bath with tile shower, flush toilet, stacks of towels. Electricity! It qualified as \u201ctented camping\u201d because, in fact, all of this WAS inside a (very well protected) canvas tent. With windows and doors that zipped open, and closed. I left the door unzipped, and went to sleep with nary a dream of being devoured by a lion, as those who\u2019ve-never-been-to-Africa predicted would be my demise.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>An awful squawking woke me. I\u2019d slept an hour or so, felt rested now. I walked to the porch; a misty fog replaced the rain. I couldn\u2019t see the water hole; zoomed my camera; caught something moving far away. It was a mother and baby impala (I think, white ears rimmed in black), with a younger impala standing peacefully beside. Coming up on the right I could see the squawking guinea fowl.<\/p>\n

The gang would be back from their Game Drive soon, I realized. Dinner in the Rhino Room began at 7; everybody chattering; what they saw; what they did; what I missed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I didn\u2019t miss a thing. There\u2019s just something about a porch.<\/p>\n

Sweetwaters Serena, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Kenya https:\/\/www.serenahotels.com\/sweetwaters<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linda Lou Burton posting from Sweetwaters Serena Camp, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Nanyuki, Kenya \u2013 Ever get to a place and just want to stay forever? Ever sit on a front porch and just breathe, content to do absolutely nothing? Ever had guinea fowl make such a racket you stood up to look for invaders in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4318,4319],"tags":[4430,4338,4425,4431],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20276"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20276"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20929,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20276\/revisions\/20929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}