Amboseli

Monday, last week we went to Amboseli National Park. The drive took about 40 minutes from KBC. When we arrived at the gate we drove another 10 minutes straight to the office headquarters to listen to lectures for 4 hours. Our first guest speaker was Amboseli’s Senior Park Warden. He was pretty interesting as he explained how he manages the park and the wildlife within its corridors. Nothing we haven’t heard of before, but they have more of an active management plan here in Kenya then Tanzania. Then we sat around for an hour waiting for another guest speaker. When she showed up she explained to us about her research at Amboseli Elephant Trust. She told us stories of her encounters with elephants and a lot of personal stories about them. I’m sorry I can’t remember more I was dying to get out and view the wildlife at that point and when I lose focus, I really lose focus. Anyway after lectures around 1pm we popped the tops to the jeeps and were cruising around the park. The first thing we saw were cows. The Maasai are aloud to come into the park for water for their livestock during the dry seasons.  Though they are not aloud to graze their livestock, they do anyways. But right behind the cows was a dead zebra and 5 lions in close proximity. They weren’t feeding on the zebra because stalking them was a spotted hyena. Can you say Species Association?!

            After that we drove to this lookout point where we were stopping to eat lunch. We parked at the base and walked up this massive hill to see such an amazing view. I already ate my lunch waiting for the guest lecture that morning so I just walked around taking pictures of the landscape. I should mention that the whole day has been pretty cloudy and we haven’t seen a clear view of Mt. Kilimanjaro but up ahead it was raining the sky filled with dark rain clouds. We stayed there for an hour while the drivers got lunch but I was growing bored wanting to see more wildlife. Around 3 it was time for our game drive. FINALLY! We saw so much! Elephants wallowing in a swamp up to their bellies, zebras, baby hippo out of water, lions having sex, wildebeest, and so many more elephants. By the end of the day we were getting ready to drive home, when I see a bunch of tourists cars. Driving over to check out what they were looking at we see a herd of elephants crossing the road and Kili just starting to clear up. I was finally going to get my elephant crossing in front of Kili picture. But of course there were so many tourist cars blocking my shot. I did get a nice one of the SFS cars in front of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Overall it was such a great day despite the slow morning. Here is a little bit of what I've had the good fortune of seeing:

Cloudy view of elephant in front of Kili

Elephants 

And more elephants!