Tue 18 Aug We left the house at 6am to fly in an 18-seat, twin-engine, fixed-gear airplane to Amboseli. Our guide, Gerod, is an exchange guide from South Africa. He said he had two years of experience. He drove us right up to a herd of elephants walking to their watering hole. Later that day we found a herd of sixty or more elephants including some big bulls and a very young (maybe only six months old) elephant. It was relatively cloudy today (blame it on El Nino) so I only caught a glimpse of Kilimanjaro. Maybe we'll get a better look at it tomorrow.

	This is the plane that Linda and I flew in to Amboseli.
	Our driver picked us up at the airfield and we immediately went on a game drive. Amboseli has swamps filled from runoff from Kilimanjao. The pelicans like it.
	This picture and the next one go together. This is a pair of vervet monkeys bonding with each other. Up in the tree next to them is an eagle that will sometimes eat monkeys, but these two monkeys are totally relaxed. It turns out that there is a sentry monkey (no photo of this) keeping an eye on the eagle.
	This is the eagle. It looks very much like an American bald eagle, except the white feathers on an American bald eagle stop at the neck while this eagle has white feathers on its breast.
	We had two amazing elephant experiences in Amboseli, which is famous for elephants. I've heard stories that an elephant will come right up to your vehicle and put its trunk inside, but that didn't happen to us. Instead, we parked at the swamp. This group of females and their offspring walked up to the swamp, drank, interacted with each other, and then left. The whole experience took about 45 minutes, and it was just fascinating to watch.
	The first group we encounted had about twenty members including some very young elephants. Egrets like to hang out with the elephants. We saw one juvenile, ears flapping, chase an egret. The egrets hitch rides on the elephants or walk on the ground eating insects disturbed by the elephant's step. That's my sister Linda on camcorder.
	After taking their fill of water, some of the elephants simply stood and contemplated life. People have commented that this picture looks like one elephant picking up another. They're strong, but not that strong. Your humble photographer just took a bad picture.
	This young elephant is just starting to get tusks. Elephants are protected from poaching in Amboseli National Park. In fact, this park is a prime elephant research area. While I was in Africa, I read Coming of Age with Elephants by Joyce Poole, which I recommend.
	An Elephant is not born knowing how to use its trunk--it must learn this skill. In order for a young elephant to get water, it must drink with its mouth like this.
	This is one of my favorite pictures. Mama and baby elephant. These two were on the opposite side of the land rover from the group drinking from the swamp, and they seemed to pose for this picture.
	I guess this guy just has tired feet. I love the way mom's ears are flared while baby's ears are plastered againt its head.
	After the elephants finished, they strolled off into the distance. We got out and removed the cover from the land rover as they walked away. You can see our guide, Gerod (an exchange guide from a camp in South Africa), behind the wheel.
	This is another one of my favorite pictures because the elephant is so bright and the colors are so crisp. After we had lunch back at Tortilis Camp, we went on an afternoon drive, and we saw this male walking alone. Look at the size of the tusks.
	I haven't talked too much about these little guys, but they were everywhere. These wart hogs are in Amboseli, but our driver in the Mara, Musa, called them "lion sausage." If you've seen Disney's Pumba, then you know how they move. As usual, the Disney animators did an exelent job of capturing reality.
	I had plenty of opportunities to take pictures of zebra butts. Here's a rare moment during which I caught several zebra actually looking at my lens. Our driver, Gerod, says that a group is a dazzle of zebra.
	On our afternoon game drive, we encountered a group of sixty or more elephants not too far from where we'd seen the group in the morning. This one is wearing a radio collar as part of some research project.
	Here's a pair of juveniles play fighting. We watched the large group for about an hour. I could have watched all day, but we had to get back to camp because there is no driving in the park after 7pm.

Wed 19 Aug The animal that I've seen early and often is the zebra. I saw many at the Nairobi Game Park, at the Mara, and many here at Amboseli. I've seen males, females (pregnant and not), and juveniles. You've probably heard that a zebra's pattern of stripes is unique. Seeing twenty at a time you can tell that no two are the same. Our guide says that the collective is a dazzle of zebra. Today was not a good day for zebra. On our 6am drive we came across a zebra with an injured right rear leg. With all the hyena in the area, Gerod did not think that the young male would survive the day. Later that day, on our afternoon game drive, we rode with three people from Spain who said they'd seen two hyena and many vultures feeding at a zebra kill. We tried to find the spot, but we could not. We found no bones, but hyenas eat bones. We did see a tree with many full-looking vultures. Later that afternoon we were about thirty meters from a troop of baboons, and the dominant male was expressing his authority. He growled at and chased a female, knocked her to the ground, and possibly bit her. She cried out and her children tried in vain to stop the big male. Eventually the female gave up and lay still, but the male was relentless. At one point our guide thought the male baboon was going to kill the female. But he got his point across, and the female eventually walked away. Still later we passed a dead zebra about three meters from the road. It appeared to be a pregnant female. On the way back to camp that night we spotted the same injured zebra that we'd seen that morning, so it survived the day. Still no view of Kilimanjaro.

	On the next day, we encountered this male (whose tusks are even bigger than the other male's). I like the palm trees in the background.
	We drove across a causeway through the swamp where we saw these flamingos.
	The zebra in the picture like to graze near the giraffe because the giraffe can see danger from farther away. When the giraffe leave, the zebra know it's time to go, too.
	On our afternoon game drive, we'd heard that some hyenas had killed a zebra. We couldn't find the hyenas or the zebra in the area that the other guides had radioed to us, but we did spot this tree full of vultures near the suposed spot.
	We came upon this zebra on the way back to the camp that evening. Gerod said it hadn't been there that morning, and it wasn't that hot, so it probably wasn't bloated. But it's so big we thought it might be pregnant. It didn't seem to have been killed by predators. Perhaps it died due to complications during childbirth. We'll probably never know, espically since all evidence was gone the next morning. Nearby, a male zebra was calling every few minutes, probably for this female.

Thu 20 Aug Every drive in the bush is a game drive. This morning our driver is Ali. He's from costal Kenya, and he's been driving for ten years. Just on the way to the airstrip this morning we saw three giraffe at close range. We saw a group of about six hyenas who had just killed a wildebeast. All that remained were horns and ribs, and those would soon be gone. We were too far away for my camera to get good pictures. We drove past the location of the dead zebra. All that was left was a chunk of meat and a hip bone. The hyenas had a good morning.

	The next morning, before we went to the airstrip, I had my picture taken in front of the "attack vechile" (as one guest called it).
	Every drive in Kenya is a game drive. On the way to the airstrip to fly back to Nairobi, we drove by the dead zebra we'd seen the night before. This hyena has part of it. Linda and I speculated that it might have been a fetus, but who knows?
	Our guide said this hyena had the hip bone.
	At the airfield, we're just about to board this plane to fly back to Nairobi.