Anticipation, travel and Nairobi
The tension and anxiety that I always feel as a trip approaches escalated before our trip to Africa. My apprehension about... which safari company and which specific safari... and which other destinations to include after our safari... was likely aggravated by fears about terrorism. The terrorist attack on the mall in Nairobi had occurred after we bought our plane tickets to Nairobi. Hamilton and I talked seriously about abandoning this Africa trip that we had wanted for years to undertake. I struggled with a sense of panic and disaster, such that I had to eliminate coffee from my diet
Photo Albums: Flight-and-Nairobi / To-Nakura / Naivasha / Hell's-Gate / Amboseli / Masia-Village / Tsavo-West / Mizmo-Springs / Tsavo-East / Malindi / Mombasa / Zurich
Mercifully, almost as soon as we drove out of Benningnton, I began to relax into travel mode, dealing with what occurs, rather than anticipating disaster.
At Newark airport, a helpful United Airlines documents control agent helped us check in electronically. She explained that the airlines get fined $5000 to $27,000 and more if a passenger is allowed to fly without proper documentation, including necessary visas.
My night in a middle row on a crowded plane was made more tolerable by watching films "The Way, Way Back" and "Ghostbusters." By the time we changed planes in chilly, grey Zurich, and announcements came in French, German and English, Bennington felt far away.
Our butts sore from 18 hours traveling, we descended into Nairobi at night. Knowing that we could get Kenyan visas on landing, we had not applied for them beforehand.
We stood in one of many Immigration lines only to have the agent reject our $100 bill as "too old." Apparently she needed a new US $100, less vulnerable to counterfeiting.
Outside the airport, a sign "Lorna Cheriton x2" led us to our driver, Joshua, waiting in a long line of drivers. En route to our hotel, we saw heavy traffic jockeying for position on the highway and roundabout. Many people, including small vendors, were standing or walking at the edge of the road. Pedestrians were dodging traffic to cross the road, some vendors wandering precariously amidst the traffic, selling a variety of wares, even Scrabble games.
Our Kahama hotel has several security gates, staffed with personnel, between the road and the hotel itself. After we showered off the heat and sweat or travel, we slept and then woke to breakfast with delicious pineapple, porridge of an unknown grain, fried gizzards (optional) and African tea.
Joshua picked us up and drove us through Nairobi's crowded, unbeautiful third-world streets full of people scrambling to make a living amidst myriads of small dwellings and shops made of wood, cardboard and metal. Near a huge market of vegetables and fruits, women hawked very mature-looking and overcooked corn on the cob.
Leaving the city, we began to see goats, sheep and Brahma cattle. Donkeys, sometimes three abreast, pulled wooden arts. Especially near Nairobi, men served as their own best of burden, pulling a cart. As we got further from the city, Hamilton noticed less poverty.
Before we descended into the huge Great Rift Valley, the land of the Escarpment was dry. A lookout over the Rift Valley was festooned with shops selling souvenirs and soda and we saw farms in the valley. A woman approached me, telling me her shop sold camera batteries and aggressively sociable even after I excused myself to go take a photograph.
We were told that Lake Nakura, some three hours north of Nairobi, is "full." Indeed, trees and buildings stood half submerged in the excessive rain water that had raised the lake water level. In the first few minutes, we saw ibis, ducks, a flamingo, and a bird with iridescent blue on its back and orange-red on its breast.
Because of the flooding, we had to take a detour, a long bumpy ride on red, muddy dirt roads through big puddles to Lake Nakura Lodge. Enroute we saw zebra, buffalo, elat, Thomson's gazelles, and impala. By the time we reached the lodge, rain was pouring in torrents from the sky. Trying to leap from the van and over a fourinch-deep puddle, I had my feet slip lightning fast on the slick mud and I landed on my back in the water. Several staff rushed to help me but I leapt up so fast that I was barely wet.
We were led through gardens with cottages to our spacious abode with its African-themed curtains. A gang of baboons bounced around in trees consuming leaves and chasing each other. Some came down to walk on garden railings or eat the flowers. One sat on the railing eating and peeing.
On our first, late-afternoon game drive, we saw a giraffe standing alert, at attention. Joshua explained that it detected danger, maybe a lion. We also saw more gazelle, impala, zebra, flamingo, ibis, egret, spoonbill, and black heron. With Joshua raising the safari van's roof to create a two-foot high open space above the windows, I rode standing up in order to have no glass window between me and experiencing the African landscape.
At dinner, lamb with mint sauce made sense of all the sheep we'd seen en route. During the meal, the sounds of agitated birds captured everyone's attention; they heralded a congo line of cooks and servers dancing into the dining room, led by a man with a flaming torch in his hand. He led the line singing, clapping, and dancing around the hall, stopping to wave the flames in front of a tourist woman. She did not react, and he moved on, doing the same towards me, whether tantalizing or intimating, and I threw myself into the spirit, moving with the flames, even though I was still seated. As the line of dancers moved on, each of the dancers gave me a high-5. One was the woman chef who, when I'd gone back for a second helping of vegetables, urged me to come back many times to get "fat like me." The parade of performers arrived back at the table of the tourist woman, and exploded into exuberant birthday greetings. Her dour lack of excitement was in such contrast with the Kenyans joyful enthusiasm.
On an early morning game drive at 6:30am, we saw flamingos in the water, a few of them close by the road, their long curved beaks exploring the mud for edible bugs. A lone hyena walked towards a group of flamingos but they flew before it reached them. An African jackel padded towards a buffalo skeleton that looked bleached, but still found a bone worthy of being chewed. Joshua pointed out a warthog, which Kenyans call the "Kenya express" because of its ability to run fast on its short legs.
At the end of our first dinner, one waiter claimed us, asking us to sit at his table next meal. After breakfast, when I rose to take a photo of Hamilton, he quickly offered to take our picture at our table. My thanking him and giving him a tip evolved into his wanting a photo of "Mama" (me) with himself out on the balcony. He recruited a co-worker to photograph us and created a brief photographic intimacy by putting his arm around my shoulder. Going back in, he wanted me to photograph several of the cooks and be photographed with them. I’m glad I was receptive to this fleeting and maybe superficial connection; it was a warm personal interaction that lifted my spirits.
We drove south past a huge salt lake. People cut and sell salt especially from dried deposits, and sell it for use with cattle. We passed many school children in uniforms and many schools, both day and boarding, as well as many Christian churches and orphanages. Private schools are a booming business, since the public schools are often of poor quality.
The shoulders of the road are built of clay quarried from a pit that we passed. Then sizable rocks are placed on the shoulders of the road to discourage driving and passing there on the shoulder, where many people walk. Besides the rocks on the shoulder, speed bumps are frequent, especially in towns, instead of police and radar to control speeding. By the side of the road, people wait for matutus (mini-buses) which are always crowded. Tuk-tuks (mini-cabs) and motorbikes also wait by the roadside to take paying passengers.
As we headed back towards Nairobi, we saw steam rising from geysers surrounding the volcanic mountains, source of most of the hydroelectricity in Kenya. This highway extents from landlocked Uganda to the port city of Mombasa, a smooth thoroughfare but heavy with traffic, especially large transport trucks, often a half dozen in a line, jockeying for position, quick to pull out into oncoming traffic to try to pass.
Beside the road, a crowd of people in red and white were headed to Sunday morning church. South of Nairobi is a stretch of black fields; their crop of onions for sale in red bags in roadside stalls. We stopped at a tourist trap craft shop where I found four men outside under a tarp carving ebony, This dense and heavy wood, black inside and white towards the outside, is made into the carvings of African animals sold in the shop.
We passed towns of ramshackle shop fronts, larger ones showing third world urban squalor and ugly practicality, towns and highway peopled with vendors selling necessities and tourist crafts. We noted for sale: baskets, mangoes, water. Many trucks are marked with the names of East Indian owners. At a service station where we stopped to refuel, an attendant was filling 11 large gas cans so a motorcyclist could rope them on his machine and ride away with them. A nearby herbal store advertised the nutritional supplement moringa in various forms. I slipped away from the gas station to investigate, had an informative lesson in moringa’s benefits from the man tending the store and bought a package of moringa powder to sprinkle on cooked meals, but also had to apologize to Hamilton and Joshua who had feared my disappearance might not have been beneficial to my health.
Joshua stopped in the town of Naivasha where I went into a small electronics shop to buy a 3-pronged British plug to use with our electronics and then a photo shop to buy Hamilton an alarm clock battery. A very white, Caucasian, blue-eyed older man sat behind the counter next to a Kenyan woman bedecked in silver necklaces. After I complimented her on her appearance, I learned they had met in the Sultanate of Oman where he was on duty with the British Navy. Married in 1992, they happily run a shop in a small, very third-world, Kenyan town.
At Lake Naivasha we drove through a camp of luxury tents to the shore, where long, blue and white boats, each seating 8, were waiting. With a boat costing $100 to hire, I had tried to get our driver to try to let us join another group, but gave that up realizing his allegiance was to helping the boat company fill as many boats as possible with $100 couples.
Boat driver John motored us out through a magical palisade of drowned trees, festooned with cormorants resting, drying their wings, flying, or dropping to the lake and running along the water to get enough speed to take off and fly. We passed pelicans, African storks, ibis, and black herons. Spotting fishermen standing in the water with gill nets, John got several fish from them and took us to where two African fish eagles sat high in trees. He whistled, then threw the tilapia, which had been made to float by some small buoyant object that he had put into each fish’s mouth. The eagles lifted off, scooped up the fish and flew to another high branch.
Having eaten a bony tilapia for dinner, I wondered how the eagle dealt with so many bones, as well as with whatever John had inserted to make the fish float. On a short walk from the lake, we encountered wildebeest (gnus), did-dik (smallest of the antelope, and two young female giraffe munching tree leaves.
At the Naivasha Country Club where we stayed, I walked from our cottage down to the flooded lake. Close to the luxury tents perched on stilts, I sat quietly watching heron, ibis, two little love birds huddled together on a branch, and an egret. First the egret walked on the green leaves floating on the water, then along a branch that it grasped with its feet, then slipped into the water to stroll silently, hunting. In the evening, when I went out in a boat with a Japanese couple, flocks of cormorants gathered on trees in the lake, sharing them with the smaller egrets. A mother hippo and her child rose in the water just enough to expose their noses.
Kenyan staff down by the waterfront had described to me in frightening detail the hippos' 3-foot wide mouth, and teeth half the length of your arm, how fast they run, and how they "crush you into pieces." We heard they kill five times as many people as do lions.
Out of curiousity, I asked our driver to take us to Sopa Lodge where my sister and niece had stayed on their safari, greatly enjoying seeing animals right on the lawn outside their cottage. Sopa is spacious and sumptious, with extensive gardens and spectacular African decor. The huge high-celinged dining hall gives onto garden with paths that lead to pools with cascades and bridges between them. Across a huge expanse of lawn waterbuck and giraffe were feeding, at home as if the lodge’s lawn were wild savannah.
From Sopa we drove the road into Hell's Gate National Park which goes between sharply jagged, patterned cliffs. Zebra, gazelle, impala and warthog have been introduced and thrive since there are no big cats as predators. Still, over by the cliffs, zebras all swished their tails and faced the rocks, a sign that they detected danger - perhaps a snake or rock hydrax.
At the ranger post, we connected with Eric, a 22-year old Masai, studing IT, who guided us into Oi Njorowa, or Lower Gorge, a deeply slashed crevice in the rock. The entrance fees we paid go to Masai schools as public ones are distant , crowded, and generally have poor instruction.
At Hell's Gate gorge, the beautiful young woman selling beaded jewelery was wearing an elaborate beaded collar, and when I complimented her, she told me that girls wear as many as 12 beaded collars for their circumcision ceremony. I asked if she had had the ceremony. Of course she had, girls undergo female genital mutilation about age 9.
Joshua has three children, all "ladies," who he sends to private schools. He doesn't plan more children as raising them is so expensive. He has also been providing for the education of his younger brother's children, after the brother and his wife died.
East Indian food, curry and raita. Tusker beer is a savory Kenyan brew.
We left the Nairobi to Mombasa highway and bounced over bumpy dirt roads towards Amboseli National Park. At the entrance to the park almost a dozen Masai men and women in full battle dress rushed to each of the arriving safari vans, holding up carvings, necklaces, bracelets and spears and urging the tourists to buy. As we drove into the park, Kilimanjaro's snowy peak emerged from the clouds. At our lodge, we were guided to our luxury tent by a young woman who introduced her "brother," actually half brother, as her father, like many Masai, takes numerous wifes.
On our afternoon game drive, we had our first sight of African elephants in the green oasis along with zebra, gnus and gazelles. After talking with other drivers on his radio, sharing tips about where animals could be seen, Joshua speeded up to get to where a herd of humans was watching a solitary lioness lying in the grass. Her kill was on the other side of the road but, pregnant and satiated, she was content to twitch an ear, open an eye and roll over, showing us her white belly and huge paws. Other animals we saw: Kenyan jacana bird , eagle, ostrich, ibis and sacred ibis, grey heron, elephant, gnus, elephants, buffalo, hippos, giraffe, gazelle, bush buck hyena.
Returning, we saw golden light on the savannah as we passed a pair of hyenas. Ostrich, both male and female, strutted confidently as they are handsome birds with "white meat" that lions don't care to eat. Sunset dramatically silhouetted the acacia trees on the horizon. At camp, a Masai, looking like a warrior in traditional garb and carrying a spear, guided us to our tent.
Heading out next morning for a day-long game drive, we saw a horde of gnus, as well as many gazelles and elephants. We learned they had descended from the hills where they stay overnight to be safe. As we drove to the first of Amboseli's two swamps, Joshua explained that elephants, buffalo and hippos love swamps, for the edible plants that are softer than the dry savannah plants, to keep cool in the heat of the day, and to be safe from lions who will not go into water. We made much use of binoculars as Amboseli is a park of open spaces and many animals were at a distance.
But, finally, we had the wonderful experience of being close to elephants. A big one stood in the swamp water up to its belly only feet away from our safari van and a smaller one just a bit further away. We watched how they dexteriously wrap their trunks around clumps of grass and, when they have a satisfactory clump and a good hold on it, they pull out the whole clump and convey it to their mouths. Each step they made to get close to more swamp grass was accompanied by loud squish and slog sounds. Their huge ears flapped, Joshua says, to drive away the ibis and jacana birds who pick insects off the elephants' skin, eating both the bug and the blood drawn. We watched other elephants take dry earth into their trunks and blow it on themselves, also a defense against insects. In the afternoon, we encountered a group standing motionless, deciding, Joshua said, whether they would go to the distant hills for the night or back to the swamp.
Looking out over Amboseli's dry, yellow savannah, we saw hundreds of zebra and gnus as far as the eye could see. Zebra also made use of the dust, rolling back and forth in it, hoofs flailing in the air. Despite little coffee before the drive and drinking a lot of water during it, we were very dry and overheated by the time we stopped to climb the volcanic mound for lunch at the top and a look out over the savannah. Climbing in the heat, I was too hot and exhausted to have any interest in the information posted enroute and merely hoped there was some shade at the top. Under the hilltop pavilion, we sat depleted and stunned, eating the white bread tomato and cheese sandwich, boiled egg, piece of chicken, apple, banana and cake that would have been pedestrian if we hadn't been so hungry, especially in comparison to the soup, curries and fancy desserts at the Sentrim Lodge. Small, brightly-colored jacana birds flew close, seeking crumbs. Below the hill lay Lake Amboseli, ringed with green swampland where two hippos lay submerged so that only their backs showed, looking like two large grey rocks. Buffalos and elephants also stood in the water while, at the edge of the water, zebra and gazelle grazed.
Driving back, we saw many ostrich and giraffe but, flushed and overheated, Hamilton said even a dragon wouldn't interest him. At the lodge, I went straight to the swimming pool to cool down.
In the evening, we had the opportunity to visit a Masai village. The visit costs $25 per person which you offer respectfully to the chief or his son. Exhausted by the drive in mid-day heat, Hamilton chose to stay at the camp. I was welcomed by a community dance, men and women at opposite ends of the line. I began moving to the music and was invited to join the women's end, first hopping forward with the whole line, then linking arms with just two or three women and jumping forward in a duet, while the rest of the line remained back, like a chorus.
A young Masai, "Ben," was assigned to guide me around. Another young man accompanied us, and wanted my address so that he "could go to North America." They took me into the village, explaining that women make the round huts from elephant dung, grass and acacia twigs. He took me inside a hut, where my eyes stung from smoke from the cooking fire in what also served as the parents' sleeping room. The second room, for the children to sleep in, had a bedspread with a cow hide cover and a sheepskin blanket.
Outside again, Ben rubbed an acacia stick on a cedar block to show how the Masai make fire. Next he was going to take me to the "market" where I could select what I liked and a price "would be decided later." When I explained that I didn't plan to buy anything, he took me instead to the school, a several-room, corrugated, low metal building outside the village. One of the several rooms was furnished with a blackboard and wooden benches at shared desks that seated about three children at a bench. The guide pressed me for a donation for the school. At a distance was the acacia tree where children had taken lessons before the school was built. There was also a wooden outhouse "for tourists." Villagers just go "behind the bushes."
Presented to the chief, I learned he has 10 wives and apparently the whole village of 120 people are his offspring. My young guide Ben is married with two children.
Women can only have one husband. Other men than her husband can come to the house she's made, have a drink with the husband, and then have the wife, planting their spear at the entrance so other men know not to enter. When a man comes into the house, the woman is not allowed to speak. He can touch her on the head, but they would never shake hands.
Cattle and their herders had returned for the night from the grazing grounds to the round corral, built from thorn bushes. Several women slipped into a hut to avoid my camera but two young boys were happy to pose together, and several little girls smilingily waved bunches of grass at me.
The market square was ringed with Masai women and a few men, seated on blankets on the ground, with beaded jewelery, carvings, and items made of braided giraffe hair.
Each vendor held out an item, urging me to buy. Knowing it is important to ask before photographing someone, I asked and photographed one vendor after another, until
Ben, realizing I wasn't buying, started urging, then pushing me to get out of the market and back to the safari van.
Tug of war between Ben and myself, he trying to hurry me back to the bus and my trying for more time in the village. At the bus, I asked and made a photo of him and his sidekick; when I showed him the image, he took the camera and adeptly scrolled back through the images I had made in the village. His fluency with digital cameras and his quoting prices to me in US dollars seemed incongruous with his traditional Masai attire.
The two-hour and shortest way from Amboseli to Tsavo West is over an extremely rough road, Joshua told us, and requires an armed escort, so instead we drove 6 hours to cover the “three sides of a square” alternate route, a rough drive north on Amboseli's dirt roads out to the Nairobi-Mombasa highway, east on that highway with its heavy truck traffic , and then 90 kilometers, hot and weary, on the washboard dirt road through Tsavo West National Park. When we stopped for fuel on the highway, I bought the three of us the rare on safari treat of cold cokes to drink en route. On the red dirt road in Tsavo, Joshua slowed to look for animals and we encountered a spotted leopard tortoise who, sensing us beside him on the road, withdrew his limbs and head.
At the end of this endurance drive was a delicious and beautifully arranged lunch of Nile perch and passion fruit dessert, which revived us enough for the 4pm guided walk beside the river and around the small lake in front of our lodge, produced by damming a section of river. During lunch we'd heard the deep -voiced grunts of hippos in the lake. Walking up river, we found a half dozen in the water; close up they are huge and one of the most dangerous animals to encounter unexpectedly.
A big crocodile lay motionless in the water and a smaller, 4-5 foot one lay on the bank. A monitor lizard climbed up a tree. Foliage and small trees were heavily damaged by hippos and elephants knocking down trees to get the leaves. Now, rain had driven both elephants and buffalo away as they would slip on the slick mud. Our guide, Simon, showed us how Masai use the “toothbrush tree,” peeling the bark off a twig, feathering the stripped stem, and brushing without toothpaste as the shrub itself helps prevent decay. The plant is also good for stomach upsets. Simon then showed us how Masai take a thorn from another plant and poke a hole in the dull end
(with another thorn) to make a needle. Altogether, on our guided walk around the lake and river at Tsavo West camp, we saw: impala, 2 fishing eagles (juvenile and adult), grey ibis, heron, hippo, crocodiles, evidence of elephants (dung, footprints and damage to trees, including on the lodge's property... staff had chased them away using flaming torches)
After dark and before our dinner, we took a night drive: Joshua drove and a local guide, Matteus, wielded a huge flashlight, shining it into the trees looking for the reflected gleam of animals' eyes. He found us: Snakes that had climbed up into trees to sleep for the night, using “mattresses” of twigs and branches to support their long bodies, Green snake, Egyptian cobra, Striped sand snake, Impala, Gnu, 2 foxes, mice, white-tailed mongoose (the nocturnal mongoose), Jannet cat (spotted like a leopard, but smaller), Bush baby.
Our 4pm game drive in Tsavo West started hot but welcome coolness arrived with the warm color of late afternoon and sunset. The red, glowing sun on the horizon sank tropically fast. I perched on the back of the seat to be able to see without glass between me and the African skies, and to feel the breeze, getting down when the van struck thorn bushes or acacia trees that could whip into the open van.
Returning to the lodge, we discovered our table for two set out on the lawn facing the lake, with linen, silverware and glasses. Peepers were singing, the air balmy cool, the fire nearby, and the almost full moon overhead. Romantic or farce comedy? I had trouble deciding, with the hippos belching from the nearby lake. Dessert was graced with the sight and sounds of a mother hippo surging, with a huge splash, up the bank to join her youngster munching leaves out of the water.
We were waited on by Patrice, a sophisticated young man of the Luo tribe which lives concentrated near Lake Victoria in western Kenya. His father had had a scholarship to study in Russia in the 1960s-70s and had changed his name from the Luo when he went to Europe. He died before Patrice was born and Patrice was given his father's European names. Patrice went to public school and then studied International Tourism. He had on-the-job training at various posts here at the Voyageur lodge – working in housekeeping of rooms, kitchen, security, and dining room. Knowledgeable and polished, he explained that Kenya's recent constitution replaced colonial members of parliament with senators and governors. Another benefit of the new constitution is its providing a 30-day period for contesting a presidential election before a president is confirmed and becomes very difficult to challenge. About the 2007 post-election violence, Patrice spoke of the tension between Kikuya and other tribes, fears by each that the other tribe was using the elections to seize their land.
Patrice recognized our driver Joshua as a Luo by his appearance, name, and speech and they conversed in their tribal language. About the members of other tribes he works with at Voyageur, Patrice said it was a good experience since it breaks down barriers and promotes Kenyan unity.
Altogether at Tsavo West National Park we saw: termite towers, zebra, tortoise on the road, mongoose, fox with raccoon face, two big monitor lizards, giraffe, red warthog (Kenya express), the following members of the antelope family: dik-dik, impala, generuk (with its long neck), a galloping cock hartebeest (which has very visible ears and horns, the horns not straight but curvy), (kudu (a big antelope the size of a waterbuck), oryx (a large antelope, both male and female have very long horns, and brown and black spots. Birds: Secretary bird, Guinea fowl, Cory Bustard, Tawny Eagle, Crested Eagle, Lilac-colored crested roller, Bulba trees with eagle nests.
Leaving Tsavo West, we stopped at Mzima Springs to see the pure clean water of the spring gush forth, and to walk around the oasis of green lushness contrasting with
Tsavo's surrounding dryness. We saw a crocodile swim by, and we admired the smarts of the many birds clever enough to build their nests on a tree on an island that was surrounded by crocodiles in the water. In an underground viewing chamber, glass windows let us see underwater where schools of tilapia swarmed near and a long crocodile cruised by.
Bumping down the red dirt road into Tsavo East, I suddenly saw, in the shade of a tree, a dark shape with a feline tail. I burst out, “It's a cat!” Joshua turned the van around to go back, but the CHEETAH! sprang out of its hiding place into full speed, making a big circle that included crossing our road ahead of our van at top speed. Its cub hurtled along behind it. The mother tore through the bush and Joshua and Hamilton both exclaimed, “It's hunting!” Suddenly a storm of dust rose;
Joshua figured the lucky dik-dik escaped but Hamilton was not so sure.
Late afternoon, when we went out on our next game drive, the site of our cheetah sighting was a traffic jam! I counted 19 safari vans with camera-wielding tourists eager for a glimpse of the magnificent cat. Agreeing that nothing could equal what we had experienced of the cheetah mother and cub previously, we drove on and were treated to the sight of two male lions, brothers padding along silently and unconcerned with the vans stopping to watch. These brothers will stay together and hunt together until they fight over a female.
In Tsavo East National Park we also saw: many giraffe, the following members of the antelope family: redibuck, oryx, and an eland escaping the mid-day heat by standing in a tree's shade, elephants and zebras covered in red earth, the following members of the antelope family: dik-dik, impala, generuk (½ in frame), galloping cock hartebeest, kudu(big antelope the size of a waterbuck), oryx, (under a spreading tree, large antelope, both male and female have long horns)
Returning to the lodge, we saw a monitor lizard on a rock pile. At the lodge, after dark, , I saw bats as I stood on the raised observation platform. Hamilton saw a group of elephants come to the cistern provided by the lodge and illuminated by floodlights, one splashing the water with its trunk.
Photo Albums: Flight-and-Nairobi / To-Nakura / Naivasha / Hell's-Gate / Amboseli / Masia-Village / Tsavo-West / Mizmo-Springs / Tsavo-East / Malindi / Mombasa / Zurich
Mercifully, almost as soon as we drove out of Benningnton, I began to relax into travel mode, dealing with what occurs, rather than anticipating disaster.
At Newark airport, a helpful United Airlines documents control agent helped us check in electronically. She explained that the airlines get fined $5000 to $27,000 and more if a passenger is allowed to fly without proper documentation, including necessary visas.
My night in a middle row on a crowded plane was made more tolerable by watching films "The Way, Way Back" and "Ghostbusters." By the time we changed planes in chilly, grey Zurich, and announcements came in French, German and English, Bennington felt far away.
Our butts sore from 18 hours traveling, we descended into Nairobi at night. Knowing that we could get Kenyan visas on landing, we had not applied for them beforehand.
We stood in one of many Immigration lines only to have the agent reject our $100 bill as "too old." Apparently she needed a new US $100, less vulnerable to counterfeiting.
Outside the airport, a sign "Lorna Cheriton x2" led us to our driver, Joshua, waiting in a long line of drivers. En route to our hotel, we saw heavy traffic jockeying for position on the highway and roundabout. Many people, including small vendors, were standing or walking at the edge of the road. Pedestrians were dodging traffic to cross the road, some vendors wandering precariously amidst the traffic, selling a variety of wares, even Scrabble games.
Our Kahama hotel has several security gates, staffed with personnel, between the road and the hotel itself. After we showered off the heat and sweat or travel, we slept and then woke to breakfast with delicious pineapple, porridge of an unknown grain, fried gizzards (optional) and African tea.
Joshua picked us up and drove us through Nairobi's crowded, unbeautiful third-world streets full of people scrambling to make a living amidst myriads of small dwellings and shops made of wood, cardboard and metal. Near a huge market of vegetables and fruits, women hawked very mature-looking and overcooked corn on the cob.
Leaving the city, we began to see goats, sheep and Brahma cattle. Donkeys, sometimes three abreast, pulled wooden arts. Especially near Nairobi, men served as their own best of burden, pulling a cart. As we got further from the city, Hamilton noticed less poverty.
Before we descended into the huge Great Rift Valley, the land of the Escarpment was dry. A lookout over the Rift Valley was festooned with shops selling souvenirs and soda and we saw farms in the valley. A woman approached me, telling me her shop sold camera batteries and aggressively sociable even after I excused myself to go take a photograph.
Lake Nakura
We were told that Lake Nakura, some three hours north of Nairobi, is "full." Indeed, trees and buildings stood half submerged in the excessive rain water that had raised the lake water level. In the first few minutes, we saw ibis, ducks, a flamingo, and a bird with iridescent blue on its back and orange-red on its breast.
Because of the flooding, we had to take a detour, a long bumpy ride on red, muddy dirt roads through big puddles to Lake Nakura Lodge. Enroute we saw zebra, buffalo, elat, Thomson's gazelles, and impala. By the time we reached the lodge, rain was pouring in torrents from the sky. Trying to leap from the van and over a fourinch-deep puddle, I had my feet slip lightning fast on the slick mud and I landed on my back in the water. Several staff rushed to help me but I leapt up so fast that I was barely wet.
We were led through gardens with cottages to our spacious abode with its African-themed curtains. A gang of baboons bounced around in trees consuming leaves and chasing each other. Some came down to walk on garden railings or eat the flowers. One sat on the railing eating and peeing.
On our first, late-afternoon game drive, we saw a giraffe standing alert, at attention. Joshua explained that it detected danger, maybe a lion. We also saw more gazelle, impala, zebra, flamingo, ibis, egret, spoonbill, and black heron. With Joshua raising the safari van's roof to create a two-foot high open space above the windows, I rode standing up in order to have no glass window between me and experiencing the African landscape.
At dinner, lamb with mint sauce made sense of all the sheep we'd seen en route. During the meal, the sounds of agitated birds captured everyone's attention; they heralded a congo line of cooks and servers dancing into the dining room, led by a man with a flaming torch in his hand. He led the line singing, clapping, and dancing around the hall, stopping to wave the flames in front of a tourist woman. She did not react, and he moved on, doing the same towards me, whether tantalizing or intimating, and I threw myself into the spirit, moving with the flames, even though I was still seated. As the line of dancers moved on, each of the dancers gave me a high-5. One was the woman chef who, when I'd gone back for a second helping of vegetables, urged me to come back many times to get "fat like me." The parade of performers arrived back at the table of the tourist woman, and exploded into exuberant birthday greetings. Her dour lack of excitement was in such contrast with the Kenyans joyful enthusiasm.
On an early morning game drive at 6:30am, we saw flamingos in the water, a few of them close by the road, their long curved beaks exploring the mud for edible bugs. A lone hyena walked towards a group of flamingos but they flew before it reached them. An African jackel padded towards a buffalo skeleton that looked bleached, but still found a bone worthy of being chewed. Joshua pointed out a warthog, which Kenyans call the "Kenya express" because of its ability to run fast on its short legs.
At the end of our first dinner, one waiter claimed us, asking us to sit at his table next meal. After breakfast, when I rose to take a photo of Hamilton, he quickly offered to take our picture at our table. My thanking him and giving him a tip evolved into his wanting a photo of "Mama" (me) with himself out on the balcony. He recruited a co-worker to photograph us and created a brief photographic intimacy by putting his arm around my shoulder. Going back in, he wanted me to photograph several of the cooks and be photographed with them. I’m glad I was receptive to this fleeting and maybe superficial connection; it was a warm personal interaction that lifted my spirits.
We drove south past a huge salt lake. People cut and sell salt especially from dried deposits, and sell it for use with cattle. We passed many school children in uniforms and many schools, both day and boarding, as well as many Christian churches and orphanages. Private schools are a booming business, since the public schools are often of poor quality.
Uganda to Mombasa Highway
The shoulders of the road are built of clay quarried from a pit that we passed. Then sizable rocks are placed on the shoulders of the road to discourage driving and passing there on the shoulder, where many people walk. Besides the rocks on the shoulder, speed bumps are frequent, especially in towns, instead of police and radar to control speeding. By the side of the road, people wait for matutus (mini-buses) which are always crowded. Tuk-tuks (mini-cabs) and motorbikes also wait by the roadside to take paying passengers.
As we headed back towards Nairobi, we saw steam rising from geysers surrounding the volcanic mountains, source of most of the hydroelectricity in Kenya. This highway extents from landlocked Uganda to the port city of Mombasa, a smooth thoroughfare but heavy with traffic, especially large transport trucks, often a half dozen in a line, jockeying for position, quick to pull out into oncoming traffic to try to pass.
Beside the road, a crowd of people in red and white were headed to Sunday morning church. South of Nairobi is a stretch of black fields; their crop of onions for sale in red bags in roadside stalls. We stopped at a tourist trap craft shop where I found four men outside under a tarp carving ebony, This dense and heavy wood, black inside and white towards the outside, is made into the carvings of African animals sold in the shop.
We passed towns of ramshackle shop fronts, larger ones showing third world urban squalor and ugly practicality, towns and highway peopled with vendors selling necessities and tourist crafts. We noted for sale: baskets, mangoes, water. Many trucks are marked with the names of East Indian owners. At a service station where we stopped to refuel, an attendant was filling 11 large gas cans so a motorcyclist could rope them on his machine and ride away with them. A nearby herbal store advertised the nutritional supplement moringa in various forms. I slipped away from the gas station to investigate, had an informative lesson in moringa’s benefits from the man tending the store and bought a package of moringa powder to sprinkle on cooked meals, but also had to apologize to Hamilton and Joshua who had feared my disappearance might not have been beneficial to my health.
Lake Naivasha
Joshua stopped in the town of Naivasha where I went into a small electronics shop to buy a 3-pronged British plug to use with our electronics and then a photo shop to buy Hamilton an alarm clock battery. A very white, Caucasian, blue-eyed older man sat behind the counter next to a Kenyan woman bedecked in silver necklaces. After I complimented her on her appearance, I learned they had met in the Sultanate of Oman where he was on duty with the British Navy. Married in 1992, they happily run a shop in a small, very third-world, Kenyan town.
At Lake Naivasha we drove through a camp of luxury tents to the shore, where long, blue and white boats, each seating 8, were waiting. With a boat costing $100 to hire, I had tried to get our driver to try to let us join another group, but gave that up realizing his allegiance was to helping the boat company fill as many boats as possible with $100 couples.
Boat driver John motored us out through a magical palisade of drowned trees, festooned with cormorants resting, drying their wings, flying, or dropping to the lake and running along the water to get enough speed to take off and fly. We passed pelicans, African storks, ibis, and black herons. Spotting fishermen standing in the water with gill nets, John got several fish from them and took us to where two African fish eagles sat high in trees. He whistled, then threw the tilapia, which had been made to float by some small buoyant object that he had put into each fish’s mouth. The eagles lifted off, scooped up the fish and flew to another high branch.
Having eaten a bony tilapia for dinner, I wondered how the eagle dealt with so many bones, as well as with whatever John had inserted to make the fish float. On a short walk from the lake, we encountered wildebeest (gnus), did-dik (smallest of the antelope, and two young female giraffe munching tree leaves.
At the Naivasha Country Club where we stayed, I walked from our cottage down to the flooded lake. Close to the luxury tents perched on stilts, I sat quietly watching heron, ibis, two little love birds huddled together on a branch, and an egret. First the egret walked on the green leaves floating on the water, then along a branch that it grasped with its feet, then slipped into the water to stroll silently, hunting. In the evening, when I went out in a boat with a Japanese couple, flocks of cormorants gathered on trees in the lake, sharing them with the smaller egrets. A mother hippo and her child rose in the water just enough to expose their noses.
Kenyan staff down by the waterfront had described to me in frightening detail the hippos' 3-foot wide mouth, and teeth half the length of your arm, how fast they run, and how they "crush you into pieces." We heard they kill five times as many people as do lions.
Out of curiousity, I asked our driver to take us to Sopa Lodge where my sister and niece had stayed on their safari, greatly enjoying seeing animals right on the lawn outside their cottage. Sopa is spacious and sumptious, with extensive gardens and spectacular African decor. The huge high-celinged dining hall gives onto garden with paths that lead to pools with cascades and bridges between them. Across a huge expanse of lawn waterbuck and giraffe were feeding, at home as if the lodge’s lawn were wild savannah.
Hell's Gate National Park
From Sopa we drove the road into Hell's Gate National Park which goes between sharply jagged, patterned cliffs. Zebra, gazelle, impala and warthog have been introduced and thrive since there are no big cats as predators. Still, over by the cliffs, zebras all swished their tails and faced the rocks, a sign that they detected danger - perhaps a snake or rock hydrax.
At the ranger post, we connected with Eric, a 22-year old Masai, studing IT, who guided us into Oi Njorowa, or Lower Gorge, a deeply slashed crevice in the rock. The entrance fees we paid go to Masai schools as public ones are distant , crowded, and generally have poor instruction.
At Hell's Gate gorge, the beautiful young woman selling beaded jewelery was wearing an elaborate beaded collar, and when I complimented her, she told me that girls wear as many as 12 beaded collars for their circumcision ceremony. I asked if she had had the ceremony. Of course she had, girls undergo female genital mutilation about age 9.
Joshua has three children, all "ladies," who he sends to private schools. He doesn't plan more children as raising them is so expensive. He has also been providing for the education of his younger brother's children, after the brother and his wife died.
East Indian food, curry and raita. Tusker beer is a savory Kenyan brew.
Amboseli National Park
We left the Nairobi to Mombasa highway and bounced over bumpy dirt roads towards Amboseli National Park. At the entrance to the park almost a dozen Masai men and women in full battle dress rushed to each of the arriving safari vans, holding up carvings, necklaces, bracelets and spears and urging the tourists to buy. As we drove into the park, Kilimanjaro's snowy peak emerged from the clouds. At our lodge, we were guided to our luxury tent by a young woman who introduced her "brother," actually half brother, as her father, like many Masai, takes numerous wifes.
On our afternoon game drive, we had our first sight of African elephants in the green oasis along with zebra, gnus and gazelles. After talking with other drivers on his radio, sharing tips about where animals could be seen, Joshua speeded up to get to where a herd of humans was watching a solitary lioness lying in the grass. Her kill was on the other side of the road but, pregnant and satiated, she was content to twitch an ear, open an eye and roll over, showing us her white belly and huge paws. Other animals we saw: Kenyan jacana bird , eagle, ostrich, ibis and sacred ibis, grey heron, elephant, gnus, elephants, buffalo, hippos, giraffe, gazelle, bush buck hyena.
Returning, we saw golden light on the savannah as we passed a pair of hyenas. Ostrich, both male and female, strutted confidently as they are handsome birds with "white meat" that lions don't care to eat. Sunset dramatically silhouetted the acacia trees on the horizon. At camp, a Masai, looking like a warrior in traditional garb and carrying a spear, guided us to our tent.
Heading out next morning for a day-long game drive, we saw a horde of gnus, as well as many gazelles and elephants. We learned they had descended from the hills where they stay overnight to be safe. As we drove to the first of Amboseli's two swamps, Joshua explained that elephants, buffalo and hippos love swamps, for the edible plants that are softer than the dry savannah plants, to keep cool in the heat of the day, and to be safe from lions who will not go into water. We made much use of binoculars as Amboseli is a park of open spaces and many animals were at a distance.
But, finally, we had the wonderful experience of being close to elephants. A big one stood in the swamp water up to its belly only feet away from our safari van and a smaller one just a bit further away. We watched how they dexteriously wrap their trunks around clumps of grass and, when they have a satisfactory clump and a good hold on it, they pull out the whole clump and convey it to their mouths. Each step they made to get close to more swamp grass was accompanied by loud squish and slog sounds. Their huge ears flapped, Joshua says, to drive away the ibis and jacana birds who pick insects off the elephants' skin, eating both the bug and the blood drawn. We watched other elephants take dry earth into their trunks and blow it on themselves, also a defense against insects. In the afternoon, we encountered a group standing motionless, deciding, Joshua said, whether they would go to the distant hills for the night or back to the swamp.
Looking out over Amboseli's dry, yellow savannah, we saw hundreds of zebra and gnus as far as the eye could see. Zebra also made use of the dust, rolling back and forth in it, hoofs flailing in the air. Despite little coffee before the drive and drinking a lot of water during it, we were very dry and overheated by the time we stopped to climb the volcanic mound for lunch at the top and a look out over the savannah. Climbing in the heat, I was too hot and exhausted to have any interest in the information posted enroute and merely hoped there was some shade at the top. Under the hilltop pavilion, we sat depleted and stunned, eating the white bread tomato and cheese sandwich, boiled egg, piece of chicken, apple, banana and cake that would have been pedestrian if we hadn't been so hungry, especially in comparison to the soup, curries and fancy desserts at the Sentrim Lodge. Small, brightly-colored jacana birds flew close, seeking crumbs. Below the hill lay Lake Amboseli, ringed with green swampland where two hippos lay submerged so that only their backs showed, looking like two large grey rocks. Buffalos and elephants also stood in the water while, at the edge of the water, zebra and gazelle grazed.
Driving back, we saw many ostrich and giraffe but, flushed and overheated, Hamilton said even a dragon wouldn't interest him. At the lodge, I went straight to the swimming pool to cool down.
Masai Village
In the evening, we had the opportunity to visit a Masai village. The visit costs $25 per person which you offer respectfully to the chief or his son. Exhausted by the drive in mid-day heat, Hamilton chose to stay at the camp. I was welcomed by a community dance, men and women at opposite ends of the line. I began moving to the music and was invited to join the women's end, first hopping forward with the whole line, then linking arms with just two or three women and jumping forward in a duet, while the rest of the line remained back, like a chorus.
A young Masai, "Ben," was assigned to guide me around. Another young man accompanied us, and wanted my address so that he "could go to North America." They took me into the village, explaining that women make the round huts from elephant dung, grass and acacia twigs. He took me inside a hut, where my eyes stung from smoke from the cooking fire in what also served as the parents' sleeping room. The second room, for the children to sleep in, had a bedspread with a cow hide cover and a sheepskin blanket.
Outside again, Ben rubbed an acacia stick on a cedar block to show how the Masai make fire. Next he was going to take me to the "market" where I could select what I liked and a price "would be decided later." When I explained that I didn't plan to buy anything, he took me instead to the school, a several-room, corrugated, low metal building outside the village. One of the several rooms was furnished with a blackboard and wooden benches at shared desks that seated about three children at a bench. The guide pressed me for a donation for the school. At a distance was the acacia tree where children had taken lessons before the school was built. There was also a wooden outhouse "for tourists." Villagers just go "behind the bushes."
Presented to the chief, I learned he has 10 wives and apparently the whole village of 120 people are his offspring. My young guide Ben is married with two children.
Women can only have one husband. Other men than her husband can come to the house she's made, have a drink with the husband, and then have the wife, planting their spear at the entrance so other men know not to enter. When a man comes into the house, the woman is not allowed to speak. He can touch her on the head, but they would never shake hands.
Cattle and their herders had returned for the night from the grazing grounds to the round corral, built from thorn bushes. Several women slipped into a hut to avoid my camera but two young boys were happy to pose together, and several little girls smilingily waved bunches of grass at me.
The market square was ringed with Masai women and a few men, seated on blankets on the ground, with beaded jewelery, carvings, and items made of braided giraffe hair.
Each vendor held out an item, urging me to buy. Knowing it is important to ask before photographing someone, I asked and photographed one vendor after another, until
Ben, realizing I wasn't buying, started urging, then pushing me to get out of the market and back to the safari van.
Tug of war between Ben and myself, he trying to hurry me back to the bus and my trying for more time in the village. At the bus, I asked and made a photo of him and his sidekick; when I showed him the image, he took the camera and adeptly scrolled back through the images I had made in the village. His fluency with digital cameras and his quoting prices to me in US dollars seemed incongruous with his traditional Masai attire.
Tsavo West National Park
The two-hour and shortest way from Amboseli to Tsavo West is over an extremely rough road, Joshua told us, and requires an armed escort, so instead we drove 6 hours to cover the “three sides of a square” alternate route, a rough drive north on Amboseli's dirt roads out to the Nairobi-Mombasa highway, east on that highway with its heavy truck traffic , and then 90 kilometers, hot and weary, on the washboard dirt road through Tsavo West National Park. When we stopped for fuel on the highway, I bought the three of us the rare on safari treat of cold cokes to drink en route. On the red dirt road in Tsavo, Joshua slowed to look for animals and we encountered a spotted leopard tortoise who, sensing us beside him on the road, withdrew his limbs and head.
At the end of this endurance drive was a delicious and beautifully arranged lunch of Nile perch and passion fruit dessert, which revived us enough for the 4pm guided walk beside the river and around the small lake in front of our lodge, produced by damming a section of river. During lunch we'd heard the deep -voiced grunts of hippos in the lake. Walking up river, we found a half dozen in the water; close up they are huge and one of the most dangerous animals to encounter unexpectedly.
A big crocodile lay motionless in the water and a smaller, 4-5 foot one lay on the bank. A monitor lizard climbed up a tree. Foliage and small trees were heavily damaged by hippos and elephants knocking down trees to get the leaves. Now, rain had driven both elephants and buffalo away as they would slip on the slick mud. Our guide, Simon, showed us how Masai use the “toothbrush tree,” peeling the bark off a twig, feathering the stripped stem, and brushing without toothpaste as the shrub itself helps prevent decay. The plant is also good for stomach upsets. Simon then showed us how Masai take a thorn from another plant and poke a hole in the dull end
(with another thorn) to make a needle. Altogether, on our guided walk around the lake and river at Tsavo West camp, we saw: impala, 2 fishing eagles (juvenile and adult), grey ibis, heron, hippo, crocodiles, evidence of elephants (dung, footprints and damage to trees, including on the lodge's property... staff had chased them away using flaming torches)
After dark and before our dinner, we took a night drive: Joshua drove and a local guide, Matteus, wielded a huge flashlight, shining it into the trees looking for the reflected gleam of animals' eyes. He found us: Snakes that had climbed up into trees to sleep for the night, using “mattresses” of twigs and branches to support their long bodies, Green snake, Egyptian cobra, Striped sand snake, Impala, Gnu, 2 foxes, mice, white-tailed mongoose (the nocturnal mongoose), Jannet cat (spotted like a leopard, but smaller), Bush baby.
Our 4pm game drive in Tsavo West started hot but welcome coolness arrived with the warm color of late afternoon and sunset. The red, glowing sun on the horizon sank tropically fast. I perched on the back of the seat to be able to see without glass between me and the African skies, and to feel the breeze, getting down when the van struck thorn bushes or acacia trees that could whip into the open van.
Returning to the lodge, we discovered our table for two set out on the lawn facing the lake, with linen, silverware and glasses. Peepers were singing, the air balmy cool, the fire nearby, and the almost full moon overhead. Romantic or farce comedy? I had trouble deciding, with the hippos belching from the nearby lake. Dessert was graced with the sight and sounds of a mother hippo surging, with a huge splash, up the bank to join her youngster munching leaves out of the water.
We were waited on by Patrice, a sophisticated young man of the Luo tribe which lives concentrated near Lake Victoria in western Kenya. His father had had a scholarship to study in Russia in the 1960s-70s and had changed his name from the Luo when he went to Europe. He died before Patrice was born and Patrice was given his father's European names. Patrice went to public school and then studied International Tourism. He had on-the-job training at various posts here at the Voyageur lodge – working in housekeeping of rooms, kitchen, security, and dining room. Knowledgeable and polished, he explained that Kenya's recent constitution replaced colonial members of parliament with senators and governors. Another benefit of the new constitution is its providing a 30-day period for contesting a presidential election before a president is confirmed and becomes very difficult to challenge. About the 2007 post-election violence, Patrice spoke of the tension between Kikuya and other tribes, fears by each that the other tribe was using the elections to seize their land.
Patrice recognized our driver Joshua as a Luo by his appearance, name, and speech and they conversed in their tribal language. About the members of other tribes he works with at Voyageur, Patrice said it was a good experience since it breaks down barriers and promotes Kenyan unity.
Altogether at Tsavo West National Park we saw: termite towers, zebra, tortoise on the road, mongoose, fox with raccoon face, two big monitor lizards, giraffe, red warthog (Kenya express), the following members of the antelope family: dik-dik, impala, generuk (with its long neck), a galloping cock hartebeest (which has very visible ears and horns, the horns not straight but curvy), (kudu (a big antelope the size of a waterbuck), oryx (a large antelope, both male and female have very long horns, and brown and black spots. Birds: Secretary bird, Guinea fowl, Cory Bustard, Tawny Eagle, Crested Eagle, Lilac-colored crested roller, Bulba trees with eagle nests.
Leaving Tsavo West, we stopped at Mzima Springs to see the pure clean water of the spring gush forth, and to walk around the oasis of green lushness contrasting with
Tsavo's surrounding dryness. We saw a crocodile swim by, and we admired the smarts of the many birds clever enough to build their nests on a tree on an island that was surrounded by crocodiles in the water. In an underground viewing chamber, glass windows let us see underwater where schools of tilapia swarmed near and a long crocodile cruised by.
Tsavo East National Park
Bumping down the red dirt road into Tsavo East, I suddenly saw, in the shade of a tree, a dark shape with a feline tail. I burst out, “It's a cat!” Joshua turned the van around to go back, but the CHEETAH! sprang out of its hiding place into full speed, making a big circle that included crossing our road ahead of our van at top speed. Its cub hurtled along behind it. The mother tore through the bush and Joshua and Hamilton both exclaimed, “It's hunting!” Suddenly a storm of dust rose;
Joshua figured the lucky dik-dik escaped but Hamilton was not so sure.
Late afternoon, when we went out on our next game drive, the site of our cheetah sighting was a traffic jam! I counted 19 safari vans with camera-wielding tourists eager for a glimpse of the magnificent cat. Agreeing that nothing could equal what we had experienced of the cheetah mother and cub previously, we drove on and were treated to the sight of two male lions, brothers padding along silently and unconcerned with the vans stopping to watch. These brothers will stay together and hunt together until they fight over a female.
In Tsavo East National Park we also saw: many giraffe, the following members of the antelope family: redibuck, oryx, and an eland escaping the mid-day heat by standing in a tree's shade, elephants and zebras covered in red earth, the following members of the antelope family: dik-dik, impala, generuk (½ in frame), galloping cock hartebeest, kudu(big antelope the size of a waterbuck), oryx, (under a spreading tree, large antelope, both male and female have long horns)
Returning to the lodge, we saw a monitor lizard on a rock pile. At the lodge, after dark, , I saw bats as I stood on the raised observation platform. Hamilton saw a group of elephants come to the cistern provided by the lodge and illuminated by floodlights, one splashing the water with its trunk.
No comments:
Post a Comment