Capturing the Moment

     Located six hours of hair-raising drive southeast of Nairobi, Tsavo East National Park is where we begin our Kenyan safari. The park is massive, and famous for its dust-red elephants and its history of man-eating lions. Another incredible feature of the park is that over 500 species of birds have been recorded here.      Our group stayed at the intimate Sentrim Tsavo camp. Individual tents and a main dining area both overlooked a very active water hole. During our two nights we saw tons of elephants, waterbuck, zebra, impala, hyena, and giraffe at the waterhole. That was when we weren't out on game drive which we would do in the mornings and afternoons. We covered a lot of ground on our animal searches, but with constant stops for wildlife viewing we were only able to scratch the surface of the massive park.     Cheetah watching us as we watch it Wild dogs in Tsavo East!  Some of the animal highlights included a group of three cheet...

Our Spot for the Night  After a star filled night where the milky way shined bright and the wild animal noises woke us up through the night, we made sure there was just enough time to grab a cup of coffee before meeting up with our driver James and heading out for an early morning game drive. We left our camp, Tsavo Sentrim, here in East Tsavo National Park with high hopes and beautiful sunrise colors. Lioness posing for us   One of our first surprises of the morning was a lone lioness. She walked out of the shrubs towards us, but then found a nice mound to plop down on for a bit of a rest. This isn't too out of the ordinary since lions do rest for about 18 hours of the day. The road curved back around behind her so we drove around until we had a great angle looking up at her on her dirt mound. After careful examination through pictures and binoculars we deduced that it was the same female lion we saw yesterday. She did glance up at some elephants in the field behind...

  Enter the land of the man-eaters.   Tsavo National Park is one of the oldest, and biggest parks in Kenya. It is located between Nairobi and the coastal city of Mombasa, and is as close to the coast as we will get on this safari. The park was split in two by the construction of the Kenya-Uganda railroad. One of the most famous stories from this area was during the construction of a bridge over the Tsavo River, two maneless male Tsavo lions stalked and killed many of the workers.     The project was led by Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson . During the next nine months of construction, the two lions stalked the campsite, dragging Indian workers from their tents at night and devouring them. Crews tried to scare off the lions and built campfires and bomas , or thorn fences made of whistling thorn trees around their camp for protection to keep the man-eaters out, all to no avail; the lions leaped over or crawled through the thorn fences. After repea...

Geranuk Silhouette of a eagle Let the African safari begin! Last night we picked up my sister Lea, and Rebecca and Alison from the Nairobi International Airport. We said goodbye and good luck to Joe after transferring one more baseball4africa equipment bag hand carried over by Lea. Then the three girls, Jack, Jim, and myself all piled into a taxi van and jetted back to Acacia Camp for one more night before hitting the road for an all-out wildlife tour of Kenya.        We were able to see zebras, gazelles, and wildebeest on the night drive into Acacia camp as well as tree hyrax, bush babies, and a couple of genets that were expertly spotted way up in a tree by Rebecca. In the morning we had just enough time to eat a quick breakfast, introduce the girls to Eliot, the pain-in-the-ass two year old eland, load our stuff into our safari vehicle and head out. Male Lion framed by the bush Intimidation or just a yawn?     It was a ...