ANOTHER LION? WHAT ELSE YA GOT?

Oh, the jaded soul who does almost a dozen safaris in three days!!!! Dad & I just finished up a three-night stay at the "fancy - yet understated!" Fig Tree Camp in Masai Mara. One of those places where they have permanent tents with real bathrooms and Masai Mara warriors everywhere and all-you-can-eat buffets and private breakfast in the bush complete with a private chef making omelets under an acacia tree and overpriced glasses of wine and you're not sure who to tip and how much. But, it was truly lovely and it was hard to leave.

The setting was fantastic, the staff couldn't have been nicer or more helpful, we went on ten (!) safaris in the special 4WD Land Rovers with only 2-4 other people instead of the mini vans and we saw literally LOADS of animals:

* Elephants, hippos, giraffes, jackals, hyenas, zebras, buffalo, lions (male, female, cubs), cheetahs, wildebeests, gazelles, elands, impalas, hartebeests, topis, antelopes, duikers, dik-diks, waterbucks, oribis, hyrax, ostriches, crocodiles, warthogs, baboons, colobus monkies, a black rhino, a python, a cobra, tons of birds . . . everything but the ever-elusive leopard.

It really did get to the point where everyone went from gasping and taking hundreds of photos of deer/zebras on the way in from the terrifying bush landing airstrip on the scary SafariLink plane to barely dragging out their camera for shots of cheetahs eating a fresh kill. It's so overwhelming and in such a short period of time, it morphs into this feeling of "oh, another elephant herd. Is there a big bull elephant? No? Let's keep driving."

We went to a Masai village and got to see/participate in some traditional dances. Have some great pix of uncoordinated me in a mating dance and Dad in a warrior jump wearing a lion's mane mask. I will be posting pix when I get home, by the way. The camera I had to buy in Istanbul doesn't have compatible downloading software (and it is all in Turkish anyway!). It was a pretty humbling experience, as the traditional hut for a family (four "rooms" - one for baby calves, one for the wife, one for the husband, one for the children) is made of cow dung, is dark & stuffy & has only three ventilation holes even though they do all the cooking over a fire in the hut . . . and is smaller than my dining room. The people have NOTHING, not a change of clothes, not any extra anything other than what they need to live. Makes you realize what we place values on and how very much we take for granted in American society.

Another terrifying SafariLink ride back to Nairobi, in an even smaller plane filled with death-defying BO and an emergency buzzer that kept going off because we were too high. Argh. Luckily only 40 minutes. Back to  Kavi Mivilani hotel for late night scrambling about Rwandan entry forms, samosas & wine. Meeting Drago group at 6PM tonight for kick-off meeting . . . wish us luck that it is a good group!