You Go Sister!

Did you know that all the ants we see are females? Not only that, they are sisters!!

Would you like to be courted by someone who first offers you a delicious gourmet meal, then an extravagant wedding and THEN a beautiful home in which to raise a family? Then go find yourself a dung beetle!

How about standing above a termite mound and knowing that more than 2/3 of it is below ground and that down there, termites have air conditioning and water reservoirs?

Or... how about that wasp that hunts a spider and paralyses it. Then it digs a hole and puts the alive but immobile spider into it. Then it lays its eggs on top of the spider and then - beware oh the squimish - the wasp larvae hatch and - well - EAT the alive but paralysed spider bit by bit until it dies...

Alfred Hitchcock and Dario Argento must have been entomologists!

Our bug walks with Dino Martins this past weekend at the Suyian Yoga on Safari and Lifeshop Discovery Retreat were absolutely fascinating. Add to that a most heart racing display of elephant mating, observed from our lunch table under the Acacia tree and a leopard rasping just beside our spot for yoga on the rocks and yoga under a rainbow and we all must say that the recent weekend in Laikipia was a perfect combination of serenity, excitement and, good fun.

Yoga on Safari in a desert island paradise

Kiwayu Island sits before me as I madly race from my sunbed to my "banda" where I quickly throw both feet into an enormous, REAL, oyster shell filled with deliciously cool water. HOW can sand get so hot! This is the hottest time of year at Kiwayu and our yoga sessions in the morning and evening turned into "Hot Yoga" whether we meant them to or not!

Yoga on Kiwayu is the way to go. We took over one of the bandas where we could do inversions against the sisal matting on the walls and gaze out at sunsets over the Indian Ocean. We did yoga trance dance in a lone banda way down the beach and then had sundowners there. We did walking meditation on a wild beach as very surfable waves rolled in and we meditated on a platform underneath a giant Baobab tree. And that was just the yoga! Kiwayu is the desert island paradise that you are imagining and doing yoga there makes it all feel like a journey to another planet indeed.