Amboseli National Park, Monday 8/22 - Wednesday 8/24

	A hungry hyena wanders across the desert-like, dusty plains of Amboseli. You could see the dust kicking up behind everything that moved. It desaturated all the light some, which made for nice pictures. It also made us really dirty every time we went out in the park.
	An elephant gets a little closer than maybe we would have liked. In general we got within five or ten feet of all the animals we saw, but elephants you give some room to. But once in a while one of them - like this old male - would walk up pretty close before you could back up.
	A tawny eagle rests on a log.
	Another hyena sets around around sunset, probably looking for dinner.
	The Thomson's gazelles were everywhere in almost all of the parks we visited. They're easy to pick out, thanks to the dark stripe on their side, and they're entertaining to watch, since they tended to run and jump a lot more than most of the antelope. They're probably a little skittish, since they're the smallest animals out there that are big enough to be a useful meal for a cheetah or leopard.
	A secretary bird, one of the largest birds of prey.
	A giraffe in the foreground, with the outline of Kilimanjaro in the background. The park was at the foot of the mountains, and would have provided a great view of the tallest peak in Africa on a clear day. But there is never a clear day in Amboseli, since dust is always flying everywhere.
	Guineafowl are like the pigeons of East Africa, running around everywhere in large groups.
	Two male Thomson's gazelles spar to toughen up for the mating season.
	Merrie sits outside after lunch, having a deep conversation with this vervet monkey.
	The monkeys were residents of the hotel grounds. They didn't bother anyone and weren't afraid to get close to people, and occasionally stole food if they could sneak past the anti-monkey guards.
	A cattle egret (the same species we have in California) gets a ride from an elephant. The elephant looks like he just wandered out of the swamp, where the elephants, buffalo, and hippos hung out to stay clean and cool.
	A large male ostrich watches a group of zebra in the distance. The males are black, because they sit on the eggs at night and need to blend in when they're vulnerable. The girls are brown, since they sit on the eggs during the day.
	A zebra approaches the swamp, probably to look for a drink. No crocodiles in amboseli, so the swamp is pretty safe, although the tall grasses could make a good hiding place for lions (which were numerous in amboseli, although a bit more shy than the lions we saw in other parks).
	A group of wildebeest; the one in the back is only a few months old (you can see that his horns are still short and straight, not curved like the others').
	A flock of sacred ibis enjoy the shore of the lake.
	We got out of the car and walked up to the peak of "observation hill", a good spot for pictures.
	Below us, in the distance, hippos enjoyed a private island in the lake.
	Here we're on our way back down the hill; you can see the seemingly-infinite plains of amboseli.
	Our group poses for a team picture, from left to right: Merrie, Dan, Titus, Liz, Joanne, Lorna, and Richard.
	Two warthogs talk some trash amongst the wildebeest.
	All the zebra we saw on our trip were plains zebra. The other common subspecies in Africa - the Grevy's zebra - has narrow stripes. It took me a long time to come up with a way of remembering this that worked for me, but in the end I settled on "plains zebra are more _plain_ because they have fewer stripes".
	Mom, dad, and baby Thommie.
	A buffalo rests below the tall grass with some egrets.
	A warthog can pick up a surprising amount of speed, and kicks up quite a bit of dust when he takes off.
	A hyena looks around to decide whether it's time to go out looking for food yet...
	...but ultimately decides to park himself back in his den.
	An elephant meanders toward the lake, looking for a drink.
	In two weeks, we probably saw 500 hippos, and only two of them were out of the water, walking around. This was one of them, a not-quite-full-sized hippo out grazing in the middle of the day (usually they don't come out to eat until after dark).
	This is what the other hippos were doing all the time, just sitting in the shallow swamps or rivers.
	Elephants were often found in small famliies, probably a couple of adult females and their young.
	A female common waterback rests on the grass.
	Small dust storms like this one were constantly springing up all over Amboseli. They weren't dangerous, just dirty.
	Where are these zebra going?
	Oh, they're headed for the football pitch. Soccer truly is universal.
	A hyena defends what is now his kill, the remains of what used to be a buffalo.
	...while a group of marabou stork wait patiently for their turn.
	An elephant munches on some grass...
	...occasionally stopping to look at us, but generally uninterested.
	A family of elephants... the baby is a little shy, and prefers to hide under mom.
	A herd of giraffes runs across the plains, on their way from one acacia forest to another.
	Elephants cross the road in front of us. On our way out of Amboseli, a large male elephant parked himself in the road and wasn't going anywhere, requiring some off-road adaptive maneuvers from our guide.
	An elephant wanders into the sunset... one of my favorite pictures from our trip.
	Back at our hotel, we saw a zebra just a few feet outside the lobby. Flash photography was tricky in near-pitch-darkness, hence his blurry head.

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