Labda Hata Mimi

After the mountain, before we had even worked out the kinks from our muscles, we found ourselves on Safari in the Samburu Game Reserve. Willis was in his element. No BMZ [excuse the embarrasing xanga link] to worry over here. Just Lilac-breasted Rollers, Marabou Storks, and all manners of Chats, oh and the Lion over there. As we were driving into the park in our rover we opened up the roof for the first time to see a herd of elephants, a few zebra, a couple waterbuck and far in the distance a certain unique species of ostrich. When we got to our campsite monkeys were everywhere. Looking back I imagine this must be an amazingly common thing for people there, monkeys and people colliding but actually pitching tents under a troop of monkeys, when you had never seen one without zoo bars between you and it, is something else.

Hangin’ on Thad’s Tent

These fiesty things stole a loaf of bread, which we retrieved, but after they had sunk their teeth into it. One jumped up and stole a sandwhich out of Michelle’s hands. They snuck into the car through the open roof and took out an open bag of my dried fruit at one point. Annoying buggers but they are quite cute before you realize it.

The next day on our first official safari Willis told us that we should keep a special eye out for Leopards because although there are no shortage they are very hard to locate during the day and they are a rare sight. We were amazingly fortunate and we saw two–one in the morning in a tree and one with an Impala kill during twilight.

Leopard saggin’ off a classic African-style Acacia tree

This shot above was one of the few fortunate exposures from my 35mm photography. A great majority of it was blighted by some black sticky bile on the shutter which prevented it from opening fully a large percentage of the time (I shot 12 rolls and something like 400 photos, about 50 really turned out. Gah! Imagine my horror when I got my photos back from development. Luckily I took 2000 digital shots. I can’t say enough though that it was a major loss, I had my father’s high end 300mm zoom lens for the 35mm. Blast it!

!http://tappan.wcp.muohio.edu/~thad/photos/qdig-files/converted-images/qdig-files/02%20Samburu/Willi/med_DSCN10162.jpg!

I also have to put all my future blog pictures to shame by linking to our host “Willis’ photography “:http://www.users.muohio.edu/okechowm/ from almost 15 years of work as a safari guide. The photos all get so much more vivid once you truly believe those wild beasts exist and have seen them with your own eyes.