safari!

Thank goodness I felt well enough finally to go on the safari.  I would have been crushed if I had to miss that opportunity.  Anyone remember that scene in Jurassic Park where they come across that vast field filled with huge, lumbering brontosauri (is that a word) and other cool dinos running around.  It’s pretty much like that.  Seeing giraffe or elephants that close up is incredible. 

We went to two different game parks, Tsavo and Amboseli.  I recognized Tsavo from a really terrible 1990-something Val Kilmer, Michael Douglas movie about man eating lions. Ghost and the Darkness is a supposed-to-be-scary-but-really-is-comical adaptation of the story.  In the 1898, during the building of a railway these two lions killed a bunch of workers in Tsavo.  Theories about why these two lions started hunting men vary but they managed to kill 135ish people before they were eventually taken down. Now you can go visit them at the Field Museum in Chicago.  When I heard we were going to Tsavo, I made some of the girls watch the movie with me right before we left.  (I don’t know why I find it so amusing to scare yourself before a trip like this.  I watched The Descent the night before I went caving too, makes it more interesting.)  

We got up early and piled in our safari cars to head to Tsavo.  When we got in the park we did a short game drive. It was the middle of the day so we weren’t expecting to see much but it was a really overcast day so the animals were actually out and about.  The drivers in the park all have radios and talk to each other when they find something cool. Someone had somehow spotted a lion in a bush and we rushed there to find it too.  We could only see its face and some movement in the shadows at first.  We stayed for a while hoping it would come out but eventually decided to just come back in the evening. 

We headed for the lodge. We were told we were camping but when we checked in we quickly realized this was not like any camping we had done before.  The permanent tent structures had electricity and hot water and comfy beds and each one had its own patio and pool!  Yeah, this is camping.  We ate a delicious lunch full of fresh veggies and yummy soup.  For the first time in a long time there wasn’t anything fried on my plate.  We got to rest a little bit before heading out for the second game drive.  As soon as we got in the car the drivers starting booking it.  I knew we were in search of something but they wouldn’t tell us what.  We came up to a place where a ton of other safari vans were.  Everyone was looking in one direction but it took us a while to find out what they were looking at.  When we were getting ready for the safari I thought, no way would we see a cheetah. Lions, probably, cheetah, no way.  But there it was.  Hanging out in the grass.  We watched it sit there for a while then walk away into the trees and out of sight.  Of course a cheetah sighting just wasn’t good enough for one night so we drive back to the spot we saw the lion in the brush earlier. It had come out and was lazily hanging out in the grass.  I just wanted to get out and scratch its belly.  We say and watched it roll around for a while but had to get out of the park by 6 so we drive back to the lodge. 

The next morning I woke up and saw some shadows out on the field behind our tent.  Went out and just hanging out, eating breakfast we a herd of elephants.  Can’t really beat waking up next to a herd of elephants.  We made the long drive to Amboseli.  Same deal as Tsavo, morning drive through the park to get to the lodge.  Ambosli was completely different than Tsavo.  Tsavo had a lot more forest and brushland and while we saw a lot of animals, we saw them in small groups, and much closer to our vehicles.  Amboseli had immense open areas and much larger herds of animals.

Our lodging in Amboseli was not quite the luxury it was in Tsavo.  No private pool.  Shucks.  But the food was again fantastic.  We went on a drive in the evening as well.  Again, part way through the drivers picked up speed and in the distance I could see a dozen or so other safari vans.  When we got there I could not for the life of me figure out what everyone was looking at.  All I saw was this huge grassland.  A few minutes later I saw a head pop out of the grass. Then another. Then another.  Eventually we saw eight female lions walking along and playing in the grass!

Back at the lodge that night we watched a Masai dance around a fire and turned in early for a long ride home the next day.  It was one of the coolest weekends I've ever had.  There are a few photos below but you can see more here.