Pitch Perfect
Waking up to the African alarm clock
Due to the proximity to the equator, the sun rises on the horizon at almost the same time every morning all year round in East Africa. It also means that the sun sets more or less around the same time every day. We’re very used to the rhythm of the day now, and tend to sleep and wake up at the same time most days, except for when we camp. It’s not uncommon for us to sleep for a solid ten hours when we’re sleeping in our tent. The sun sets as usual at the campsite, meaning that there is nothing much we can do after 6.30-7PM other than sit at a campfire. After warming up by the fire with a whiskey, we’re usually sleeping by 8-8.30PM.
In the mornings the sun rises and the warm rays heat up our tent. But that’s not what wakes us up… Without fail we are woken by the African alarm clock every single time - an extremely loud chorus comprising of the Laughing Dove, the Red-Billed Hoopoe, and the Hadada Ibis. Not even my industrial grade ear plugs can drown out the the loud, harsh, « witchy » cries of the Hadada Ibis… But that’s the thing with camping, you cannot escape the African alarm clock.
As a person whose blood is favored by mosquitos, I especially enjoy sleeping in tents. It’s a small enough area that I can easily manage to hunt any mosquitos before going to sleep, and where I can almost guarantee a bug free night. Our camping gear is extremely minimalistic, we can fit everything including mattresses, sleeping bags, pillows, a lamp, and the tent into one medium-sized backpack. The tent is a Hilleberg Nallo 3, which was kindly gifted to us by Dominik’s mother Bea (thank you Bea!), and we couldn’t be happier with it. It’s absolutely 100% waterproof and leakproof (tried and tested in Ugandan rainstorms), and it takes less than 5 minutes to set it up - we’ve setting up and packing up down to a fine art at this stage.
Our favorite camping spots
Camping at 3090m on the side of an extinct volcano was quite the experience. It was a pretty cold night… We already knew that our sleeping bags were not warm enough for the low temperatures, so we wore all of the clothes we had with us, including coats, which did allow us to get a few hours of sleep. That was until gale force winds sounded like they were about to rip our tent off the side of the mountain. We were pretty cold when we started to get up the next morning, but after a few minutes warming up in the sun’s rays with a cup of tea in hand, we were soon recovered. Waking up to the view over the Great Plains of Tanzania made it all worth it.
Camping at the edge of Amboseli National Park in Kenya at full moon with Mount Kilimanjaro overlooking us, was definitely one of our favorite spots. We even heard hyenas prowling around at night… After waking up to the African alarm clock, we enjoyed sunrise views of Kilimanjaro with a cup of tea.
Another favorite camp spot of ours was on Lake Ruhondo in Rwanda. We pitched the tent on a piece of land that jutted out into the crater lake, meaning that we slept with water on three sides. To top it all off, we had a view of Virunga National Park and Rwanda’s largest volcano.
At Lake Naivasha in Kenya we camped right in front of the lake, which meant we could hear the hippos munching on grass at night. This was also the campsite with the most Hadada Ibis birds, and they made sure that we did not sleep a second past sunrise. As well as birds and hippos, we also had visits from monkeys, who thankfully have not yet learned how to open zips on tents…
There is nothing like sleeping on the ground in close proximity to animals, and enjoying the sounds of the wild African landscapes at night. We loved all of our camping experiences in Africa so far, and plan to do a lot more. We have never made a bad experience, and we even start to look forward to our African alarm clock…