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The pool, though appealing in its location and its amazing view, was about twenty degrees too cold for our weakened California sensibilities. The constant stream of coffee, however, was just what Dan needed to get into the hyper-aware safari state at 6am. And to make the coffee even more appealing, the Europeans have made an incredible advance in coffee technology: hot milk!
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We definitely have a weakness for baby animals... I think
our photo album will give the impression that every mammal in East Africa has
cubs/foals/etc. So in rapid-fire-baby-animal fashion, here's a baby zebra...
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...and here's a baby impala. The one in the middle isn't
quite a baby, but he's still pretty young... his horns say he's a male, but
(a) they're still quite short, and (b) he's still hanging around his mom's
breeding herd. So he's not full-grown yet. The one to his right is real
small.
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...and here's a baby Thomson's gazelle.
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Three of the "big five", one after another... first, a
lion yawns some five feet from our car... lions cared less about us than just
about any other animal in Africa. They have no natural enemies, so their
instinct is not to worry too much.
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...next, a rather large elephant. Elephants are the ones
one worries the most about in the safety of a safari truck, since they're the
only ones who can really knock your car over.
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...third, a cape buffalo. Among the most aggressive
animals out there... charge first, ask later.
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The bird life was amazing... martial eagles roosted in the few trees that broke up the plains...
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...and vultures circled overhead, indicating a nearby
kill.
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...and marabou storks waited their turns - behind lions and hyenas - at kills.
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Antelope of all sorts roamed the Mara. This is a mom
hardebeest with her baby.
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...and this is the most common antelope in most of the
parks we saw, the wildebeest (fleeing from something). This is the blue
wildebeest; in Amboseli and in all the Tanzanian parks except Serengeti, we
saw primarily white-bearded wildebeest.
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This is a topi, just sittin' around chewing grass, which
is what most of the antelope were doing. The topi is a close relative of the
hardebeest, but the distinctive blue patches above his hinds legs make them
easy to tell apart.
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Lion cubs with mom were one of the highlights of our trip. They're so cute that it's easy to forget that she would have torn our arms off had we gotten out of the car.
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This is a pretty typical Masai Mara scene... wide plains with low hills in the distance, zebra and gazelle dotting everything in between.
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This was just about the most common sight we saw in Kenya... wildebeest everywhere, occasionally looking up at passing tourists.
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Baboons (in this case olive baboons) were possibly the most watch-able of all the animals we saw. They rarely sat still and were constantly doing something entertaining and/or cute.
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...and virtually every troop had babies amongst them.
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We got out of our car to hang out at a nearby lodge... Merrie looks excited
to see some hippos, who lived just behind this lodge.
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...and she's even more excited to take pictures of them. We took turns with
the digital and film cameras. We also tried to mix the 300mm zoom lens
pictures with the 80mm not-so-zoom lenses, sinec we didn't really know how
the zoom lens pictures would turn out without a tripod. Turns out they came
out fine, so most of the pictures you see here are zoom lens pictures from
the digital camera.
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A zebra gets a drink... the water in the Masai Mara was generally
crocodile-free, so zebras could enjoy a relaxing beverage.
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A male waterbuck avoid the heavy traffic of the wildebeest, zebra, and impala
streaming behind him. This is either a common waterbuck or a Defassa
waterbuck; the only way to really tell them apart is by the conspicuous white
ring the common waterbuck has on his behind, which this picture doesn't help
us with.
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This family of vervet monkeys - with a little tiny baby that might be too
small to even be visible in the thumbnail - was just hanging out on the grass
behind the hotel we were stopped at. Vervet monkeys and baboons made of 99%
of the primates we saw, although in Tanzania we saw a few blue monkeys.
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This was maybe our most fortuitous moment in the Masai Mara... our guide heard news on the radio and got our van up to about a zillion miles an hour to get a front-row shot of these cheetah cubs crossing just a few feet in front of us. They're crazy small.
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Our safari friends (all British folks) in our van, Joanne and Liz in the
back, Lorna and Richard in the front. This picture makes Richard look a
little angry, but all the people we traveled with were quite friendly, which
made for a very pleasant safari experience. I can imagine that spending 9
hours a day in a car with someone you don't like could really ruin a
vacation. |
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We stopped at a Masai village to learn a bit more about the locals... this was a traditional village, except for the influx of $20 per visiting tourist.
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A large-spotted genet wandered into our hotel lobby that night... this
picture also illustrates the incredible magic of the Photoshop
"shadow/highlight" filter, which turned this picture from a big black spot
into a pretty decent picture of a genet.
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The genet was followed closely by the local bushbabies, for whom food was
left out in the hotel each night. They didn't live there, though; they just
came and went as they pleased.
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We saw quite a few elephants, sometimes in giant herds, sometimes just a small family like this one.
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This giraffe was actually just off the road on our way out of the Masai Mara, on our way to Lake Nakuru. We even saw giraffe just an hour or so outside of Nairobi. That would be like seeing a giraffe off of 101 in San Mateo.
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