2017/09 Part 2 Amboseli - Sat pm Hippos & lions |
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When Nzuki picked us up, the van now had its roof up so we could stand up and take pictures with no glass in the way. We were supposed to sit down while moving but getting up and down was too painful for my spine so mostly I just stayed up and held on to the roof brackets.
We had to stay inside the van for our game drive. The animals have become used to safari vehicles but 
not to wandering tourists. There’s a risk of ending up as cat food, but probably a bigger one of spooking a buffalo or elephant or rhino and being charged and trampled or gored by a ton or more of angry mammal.
As we came out onto the plain, there were animals as far as we could see, mostly ones I’ve already mentioned, but this waterbuck was new to us. There were elephants in the mix, including this mother who was just standing still, letting her baby sleep in the shade 
of her body. It was quite warm but probably cooler than Hope had been this summer.
About a quarter of the park used to be prehistoric Lake Amboseli, but now it’s a mixture of dry fertile ash, swamp, and some open water, an ideal environment for many species. We could see distant hippos wandering over dry ground and, closer to us, were lots more submerged with only their ears and nostrils above the surface. Finally, one of them put its head up high enough for a picture.
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Amboseli Saturday PM game drive (4.53) |
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Beyond the hippos was a long thin island crammed with great white pelicans, hundreds maybe thousands 
of them. 
Any twitcher would have loved this area as the birds were magnificent. A black-headed heron landed in front of us. A spoonbill was resting with its spoony bill on the ground. A jacana, similar to its Australian cousin, was striding with its big feet across lily pads, looking 
like it was walking on water and giving rise to its other name, the Jesus bird.
Around the world, most open country like this has its local species of the plover; we’d already 
seen two of the dozen or so found around Amboseli, the crowned plover and the blacksmith plover.
Similarly, there are dozens of species of raptor in the park. We’d see them in the tree tops or circling above us, identifiable through binoculars, but rarely close enough for a photo. 
This African fish eagle, with its similar colour scheme to our bald eagle, looked to have caught something but we were too far away to see what. Many of those raptor species are vultures; these ones roosting in a tree vandalized by elephants, are white-backed vultures.
Returning to the drier areas we saw our first wart hogs, very large pigs and yes, they are ugly. Their usual defence when attacked by lions is to run for it as they are quite fast but they may turn and fight for their piglets and their tusks can damage predators.
Just before sunset we saw our first lions: a pair and then a pride of eight adults, most spread out in relaxation.
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Amboseli Saturday PM lions (2.12) |
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They looked to be fast asleep, but eyelids would flicker open, clearly keeping an eye on us. There’s something 
different about watching lions in the wild rather than in a zoo, particularly if you can’t see them all at the same time.
The sunset, framed by the palm trees, was beautiful but short as they don’t last long at the Equator and we were only two degrees south of that. Total darkness comes on very quickly.
Amboseli is advertised as Kilimanjaro’s Royal Court, with good reason as the mountain’s 
close by, just across the border in Tanzania. However, for most of the day it’s hidden by haze and clouds and all we could make out was the white streaks of its snows. These are much 
diminished since Hemingway wrote his novel, but must still be large to be visible to us nearly three miles below its 19331 foot summit. Twenty years ago I might have trekked to the summit, but I left it too late.
After being mostly invisible all afternoon, the mountain briefly appeared at the end of the day and Sandie captured this view as it lit up with the setting sun.
Back at the lodge, we did our best with an excellent dinner but we were struggling to stay 
awake. Was it still only Saturday? Sandie collapsed into bed while I downloaded pictures and copied them to memory sticks, wrote notes for this journal, and recharged camera batteries. Power sockets are mostly 240 volt English pattern.
That night I could hear the unmistakable sounds of lions panting, coughing, and roaring. This reminded me that the walkways outside had clearly marked panic buttons.