05/20/2010

We started off on safari at 7:30am... but not after a good night's sleep that was followed by scrambled eggs, toast, fresh fruit and French pressed coffee. As we walked toward the dining area, Katie and I came upon a baboon sitting on the walkway. "Aggggh," she said.... not "exclaimed," or "yelled," rather, she just said it. It's quite humorous hearing her reactions. It was as if she crosses paths with baboons all the time, but she still needs to say something, so she said, "aggggh." She does it all day long, which is comforting because although she sits behind me in the Land Rover, it feels like she's right next to me.

We left with the same people as the day before, and that seems to be the norm for the other three vehicles as well. Even dinner the night before was the same set up... the meal was different, but the same people sat at the same table. This changed tonight, but I'll get to that after the pictures.

Rick (or "Lord Jim" as he asked to be called while wearing his pith helmet), Marilyn, Alex, Ashley, Katie and I set out with Isaac. The light was soft, and we saw a lot of animals. Most of the animals were easily visible... elephants, giraffe, gazelles, topi, warthogs, all pretty easy to see. The cheetah and lions were a little more difficult. We found the cheetah by watching other vehicles congregate in an area where the grass as fairly high. Nobody cared if it was cheating or not. The lions were more difficult. We drove through high grass that surrounded goups of green brush. We did that for quite some time before I spotted a tail flip up in the air - it was a groupd of 5 lionesses. It was mad cool! Here are the highlights.

The rhinoceros and the leopard continue to elude us, but Isaac has assured me that we'd find them tomorrow. We'd have a better chance of finding them in the morning as opposed to during the drive later today. We got back for lunch around 2:30pm, and were told that we'd head back out again at 3:30/4pm after lunch and some brief down-time.

We went out on time at 3:45pm, and went in search of some different lions that were said to have recently killed a gazelle. I spotted these two also. Isaac told me he'd hire me if I wanted to relocate. Isaac proceeded to drive the Land Rover within about 6 feet of the lions. The interesting thing was that they barely paid attention to us. They were apparently full, because after lifting their heads to see what the noise was, they dismissed us and went right back to sleep. In hindsight, that was the perfect reaction.

By the time we get back to the camp, it's getting dark, so we once again went through routine of cleaning up and preparing for dinner. This time I had the tillapia, and it was very good. It's nice eating vegetables, too. Besides skumawiki, we didn't come across many in Maseno.

A chocolate brownie later, and we were all in bed, thinking about the day behind us and the day ahead.

See you tomorrow.