Lamu Island

Ngorongoro was the end of our Safari. Next we spent a night in Nairobi then flew out to Lamu Island to spend 4 days on the coast relaxing.I'll add more shots later but here are a few teasers.

Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

After a morning safari at Lake Manyara we take an afternoon drive to the famous Ngorongoro Crater. This is a World Heritage site and it doesn't take long to figure out why.It has it's own little ecosystem on the crater floor and it's just crawling with all sorts of animals.We spent the night on the crater rim then descended early morning into the crater. Within minutes we saw a pride of lions then we had a great drive seeing all sorts of critters.This old guy was on his last legs.Lions returning form a hunt.
We watched this guy walk right toward us from about a km away.He stopped a few feet from the Land Rover took a leak and walked away with big erection.I think he was considering mounting the truck and I was in the backseat!

Lake Manyara , Tanzania

We jumped the border into Tanzania for the next four nights of the Safari. First we went to Lake Manyara then to the Ngorongoro Crater for a night.Manyara was great ,but it was so hot that you pretty much had to hide mid day! We had a really close encounter with an elephant (See video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRe38_WoFFg Baby Velvet Monkee
BushbuckKen with a little friend in the background.Velvet monkee

Amboseli 2

Here are some more Amboseli shots, to give you an idea of what the park is like.This time of year it is very dry but still has a spring fed swamp from Kilimanjaro, so there is lots of animals, because of the abundance of water and green grass around the swamp.It is so dusty in the other areas, the dust is almost like a fine talcum powder and blows around in little dust tornadoes and gets into everything.


These are the dust funnels, they suck the dust up to the clouds then it all returns to get into my camera gear!

This Masai took us on a tour, we thought he was being nice but then brought up the "price" after we returned to the camp.
Me and Masai chief in of the mud/dung huts.
Big air, just like the snowboard industry, whoever jumps the highest gets his pick of the girls!

Masai warrior

They call the elephants in Amboseli Big Jumbo because they are generally the biggest in Africa. The tusks on these ones where so thick.

Kilimanjaro in the background covered with cloud and obscured by dust.

Amboseli

Amboseli is in South Kenya and borders Tanzania.It's famous for it's big elephants, we saw lots but most of the really big ones were pretty far in the distance.You had to sleep with a lantern outside your tent here to keep the elephants away.Mt Kilimanjaro is in the background , but it was always pretty hazy and dusty so I didn't include it in many of the shots.
On the way in to Amboseli I was asking our driver Joseph about African wild dogs, he was telling me how they were the rarest animals to see these days. Within ten minutes of the conversation we ran into a pack of 4 right in the middle of the road, I didn't get my camera out in time and all I got was this blurry shot.I still love it, I think it portrays their elusiveness!
We had another visit to a Masai village, this was was a little better photography wise and I'll ad more photos of the visit next post.These girls were so shy, but so cute.They live quite a different life from my daughter.

We saw two hyenas finishing off this Wildebeest when we first arrived at sunset.

Point N Shoot

I had a little Pentax in my pocket for the whole trip .He is a bunch of shots from various days of the trip up to this point. I really didn't like walking around with my big camera, it was nice to have this one because it didn't attract to much attention.Typical African seen, these guys were everywhere.Amboseli sunsetcoffee pickers en-route to Samburu