Tsavo West and Amboseli

Can you spot the non tribe member?

Some large ugly birds behind a gas station

We continued on our way to the final two parks.  It was quite chilly at the foot of Kilimanjaro and not a clear view of it either initially.  By the early evening however, after the afternoon game drive, we could see it nicely.  At this lodge, we had no hot water and only had electricity during certain hours.  The room looked very new but there were few amenities.  The hot water would have been welcomed as well considering how dusty had had become through out each day.  We finally saw the whole family of lions on this trip as well as some hippos which was unexpected.  The convoy we were travelling in was involved in a head on collision.  People were injured but not seriously.  We were travelling through a lava field at the time so that portion of the trip had to be skipped over.  We felt bad for those involved initially but they weren't actually injured and tried to cancel the rest of our tour and force us to return two days early to Mombasa.  Sympathies ran out at that point.  There was no reason to drive 5 hours back to the resort and sit about for no reason.  The minorly injured people were loaded into our van and we were taken to a were ritzy  lodge that wasn't far away.  They were all seen by a doctor and an excellent lunch was provided for us.  They also had one of the best watering holes we had seen the whole time.  There was a nice giraffe standing very near to us while we ate a huge variety of cheeses.  Some zebras also put on a bit of show for us.  One of them was quite mischievous and kept biting the others.  The non overly injured people tried to weigh lay us for as long as possible and refused to eat any of the lunch put out for us until it was time to leave when they then decided they were extremely hungry and sat down to eat for a while longer.  Annoying!  Once we got back on track, we visited Mzima Spring which is where we saw the hippos and crocodiles.  The accident folk refused to go and look at them though which was a bit ridiculous.  You don't have a lot of opportunities to see hippos in the wild.  We saw about six of them which I was surprised at although they didn't come out of the river, they just poked their heads up so we knew they were there.


I accidentally burned this guy while trying to light the fire.  I think he
over reacted to this.  They're supposed to be warriors for goodness sake!

We went on another odd little excursion to the village of some Masai people.  It was a bit of a tourist trap where they tried to force you to buy jewellery that they had made at the end of your visit.  They showed us around their huts and did some singing and dancing with us.  I tried not overly successfully to light a fire in their traditional manor by rubbing sticks together.  Then they showed us their impressively hit jumping which apparently is an attractive trait in a man in the Masai culture.  In fairness, the jumping was quite high.  All in all, a very odd experience, like going to a zoo with people in it.  I tried to sell Caroline to the Chief's son but the match was rejected by all parties.  Shame. 
At the end of it all, we headed back to Mombasa for a rainy yet warm could of days.  It was a fabulous trip that I would recommend to anyone.  I don't know how we'll top it but I look forward to trying. Here are some highlights of the final days on safari.  I will dedicate a post to pictures of lions because they are my favourites!

Great zebra action shot

A group of cheeky hippos bobbing up in the river

In Tsavo West, we started to see quite a few large birds of various types. 
The best of the large birds has got to be the ostrich! 

The crested crane was the fanciest bird we saw.  I never got tired of spotting them.

While we waited for our car crash friends to finish their lunch, we spotted this horn bill feeding station. 
We really ticked off the whole cast of the Lion King that day.

A lovely sunset in Amboseli

 

Night time at the Taita Hills watering hole.  We saw about 70 elephants
come through in the space of 30 minutes.  Loads of babies too. 
A pleasant way to pass the time before dinner!