Pictures!!!

A bunch of people asked to see some of our better pictures from our recent trip to Kenya and Tanzania. This was a great trip, and the scenery and experience was amazing. I've tried to pull out a few dozen of the more interesting (and yes, spectacular) things we saw.

We went with Road Scholar, which was fine. Our tour mates were pleasant, and our guides and drivers were knowledgeable and safe. Neither of us got sick, and we took our malaria prophylaxis.
So, here goes:

We flew into Nairobi, and stayed in a modern hotel the first night. After that, we pushed off for the Amboseli National Park, which is known for its elephants.

First, typical road scene:

Small shops, vehicles, mixture of dirt roads and asphalt.

Met a giraffe or two on the way...

Gazelles

And, of course, elephants. It's hard to envision this-- there must of been 50 or so elephants moving toward where they spend the night. Fascinating animals, more I learned the more impressed I became-- smart, social, good memory.

Saw some cheetahs, more on cheetahs later

Amboseli is famous for having views of Kilimanjaro, which was breathtaking. There had been recent rains, so the snowcap had recovered a bit.

We saw Cape buffalo,

wildebeest,

and flamingos.

Later, we saw hyenas,

baboons,

and of course zebras. Tons of zebras, in lots of parks. More in the Serengeti as well.

We crossed in Tanzania and spent a day in the Ngorongoro crater. This is a huge caldera with approximately 20-25,000 animals that generally don't migrate.  We got lucky and had some interesting sightings:

Rhinos

Ostrich

and lions!!

and beautiful crested cranes

When we left Ngorongoro, we traveled across the Serengeti plain and encountered thousands of wildebeest and zebras migrating from one portion of the Serengeti to another. As far as one could see, there were animals.

We saw warthogs

Unfortunately, we only saw one leopard, and the animal was at a bit of a distance. Nonetheless, we did see one

Occasionally, lions will climb a tree to escape the bugs and be able to see widely over the plain.

Cape buffalo are quite common

and we saw hippos.

We returned to Kenya and entered the Maasai Mara Conservation area, a region with both Maasai living traditionally as well as wild animal conservation.  We had some interesting encounters with cheetahs here.  The first couple of pictures are just a couple of animals lounging around. The pix of the four together and the animal near the safari trucks are in the context of an unsuccessful attack on a topi (picture below). Subsequently, we saw the four brothers run down, kill, and drag away a small gazelle. We were told that the next day they indeed did snag a topi which would have been a considerably larger meal.

Lots of herbivores

Impala,

topi (fairly big animal)

and of course a jackal.

I am uncomfortable taking pictures of people; I always feel like I am invading their space. However, this was an arranged performance and here are some Maasai doing their jumping dance.

That's it for now. Hope you enjoyed!