Update

The trip has been wonderful so far. While the realities of city life are so far away I've found time to spend hours just looking at scenery. I wonder why people don't do it more often.

Two more weeks have gone by and with them 4 more main stops. As my computer access time is limited I'll summarize again. I hope to be able to post photos next week when I return to London.

Pemba Afloat
Living on a sailing yacht anchored in a lagoon on a small remote island. Waking each day to a beautiful sunrise and watching local fisherman return in their dugout canoes with the night's catch. Some canoes stop by to sell live fish, crabs, lobster or squid which become lunch or dinner. A nearly constant breeze keeps it comfortable and free of insects. Brilliant night skies filled with stars since there is no real town with electric lights for 20 miles. A nice relaxing place to have time slip past.

Saadani Safari Lodge
This was as much a beach resort as a game lodge. Sunrise over the ocean each morning streams into the cottages on the beach. There isn't much wildlife though due to both the season and large areas of land having been burned deliberately - by poachers, park rangers or both depending upon who you speak with.

I see giraffe each day and spot lion tracks in a dry river bed. I also see antelope tracks on the beach one morning only a few hours old. Most notably I start to observe population differences in the same species I saw in Kenya. Obvious differences occur in color and hair, for example the warthogs here have long manes and whiskers. On the last evening we spot a pair of lions in a grassy area apparently waiting for the daily trek of the herbivores from the grazing areas to the river to drink. They jog away as we approach, the only time I've seen lions move due to human presence.

When leaving we stop by a rural Maasai village where the homes are mud and stick and the people sleep on cow hides on dirt floors. Appearances can be deceiving though, because the village elder second in status to the chief carries a mobile phone and I'm told owns 600 cows valued at about US$300 each.


Selous Impala Camp
This is a luxury tented camp where the target market is upscale tourists looking for comfort in the bush. This is the first place I stay where hot water is available on demand. All of the other places used solar water heaters except Pemba Afloat which had no hot water at all. The camp is on the river and you hear the male hippos calling each night.

Game is plentiful here as the river draws animals during the dry season. I see male hippos mock battle for territory, a large greater kudu with horns almost 4 feet long horn the mud, male giraffe sparring head butts, baboons digging up roots and knocking the dirt off them before eating and elephants smelling each other's mouths when meeting. The real highlight is the boat safari and when we beach the boat in the mud to watch two male elephants graze. After about 20 minutes of this one has come to within 10 feet of our boat. He takes some mud and throws it on his back with his trunk and then takes more and throws it at us! Some splatters on me and he turns and slowly walks away to graze again without looking back. I think that he was tired of having us be there.

Mdonya Old River Camp
This place touts itself as an adventure camp and really delivers on expectations. Animals walk through camp every night and in the 3 days I'm there I see greater kudu, impala, and giraffe eating close to me and have elephants [night 1] and buffalo [night 2] eat and sleep just outside my tent. There are lion tracks in the camp after night 3 which is likely why nothing slept outside my tent that night. The warning not to walk around outside at night is well heeded!

Game concentration and diversity here are outstanding. By far the best park I've visited so far. My last morning I saw 10 species of mammals before breakfast. Although there are so many highlights from here, two really stand out.

During a full day drive we see numerous lions (38 by end of day), but the big cats are always interesting. While we are driving I see what appears to be a large cat walking on a hill in the distance. I tell our guide who instructs the driver to go up the hill. As we drive the guide asks me exactly where on the hill I saw the shape and I try to direct him to the spot. He seems skeptical, but as we get to within 50 yards of the area he spies the cat and identifies it as a leopard. Leopards are solitary and generally nocturnal, so are not often seen by tourists. It is a big deal to see one and the other tourists in the car congratulate me on spotting it. For almost 30 minutes we watch the leopard as he slowly walks further up the hill, occasionally stopping to lie down which allows us to really study him. They are amazing animals combining beauty, grace, and power. Finally he walks over a rise we can't safely drive beyond and we watch him disappear.

The next morning I go for a 2 hour walk along the Ruaha River with the same guide. It is hot and uneventful. We stop for a breakfast break on the drive back and then continue as it is well over an hour back to camp. I doze off and on in the jeep as it is hot and sunny and while driving at almost 30 mph game generally run when they hear the jeep coming. Almost back to camp and during a brief waking period, I am staring out at the trees eyes largely unfocused when I catch the prototypical profile of a male lion with full mane. "Lion" I shout and the driver immediately breaks hard. I tell him to back up and as he does we all search the trees. The guide spots 2 lions, but not where I saw the profile which I'm frantically searching for. Then I spot him and immediately next to him why they are there. There is a freshly killed young female giraffe lying in the trees. Little of giraffe has been eaten yet and it is interesting to see what has been eaten and guess how they caught and killer her.

Over the next 22 hours until I have to fly out we revisit the site 3 more times to watch the lions (5 total) progress eating the body. In the early morning visit we watch both a lioness and the big male actually feed. They wrench meat from the bone and move parts of the carcass with obvious great strength. I hear their teeth scraping against bone and cutting flesh. Their labored breaths mark the struggle to rend meat and separate joints. At one point the male shifts position and brushing his tail against the resting lioness feels she is too close. He turns on her with blinding speed and fierce aggression; roaring jaws wide open with teeth bared. She roars back as she cowers on the ground ears flat back.

I take loads of photos hoping at least some will turn out. The camp manager surmises that the lions drove the giraffe into the thicket of smaller trees where she couldn't easily run and tripped and fell over a tree (there was a sapling bent under her body) where upon the lions quickly killed her by crushing her windpipe with their jaws. Seeing it was an experience that I will never forget.

Kigongoni Lodge
This is a quaint hillside lodge on the outskirts of Arusha a city of 400,000. It is far enough out of the city to be peaceful and overlooks fields of coffee and greenhouses of roses and strawberries. I'm only overnighting here due to flight schedules. Tomorrow I fly to my last stop at Mahale to hopefully see the chimps there. There are rumors that the park has stopped chimp viewing hikes after several chimps caught flus from tourists and died. I'll have to see what the situation is when I get there. I hope to see them, but can understand how protecting them is much more important.

Kenyan experiences

A little over a week into my trip now and I feel like I've left everything behind and am really enjoying not knowing what day it is or thinking ahead much more than what I'll be eating for my next meal. There is a lot to share from my experiences so far, but as I'm at a slow internet cafe in Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania I'll have to summarize a few key points and then try and fill in the gaps at a later time.

Nairobi
I passed through Nairobi for my first night in Africa and again for a brief few hours when leaving Kenya on my way to Tanzania. I didn't see much during the one night I was there, but did find it interesting that every ATM in the city has at least one guard posted by it all night long. I had to try 4 ATMs before I could find one that accepted my card and was working and at each one the guard just sat there quietly while I conducted my transactions. It was a bit of a strange experience, but was comforting in a weird sort of way.

On my way back through Nairobi I visited the Giraffe Center and the Karen Blixsen museum. The former is run by a non-profit to raise funds for animal welfare and to provide education mainly about giraffes. They have about 6 Rothschild giraffes there (an endangered subspecies of giraffe) which have largely been raised in captivity. The highlight is that you get to grab a handful of feed pellets and hand feed the giraffes. It is a fun experience, though I have to say that giraffes salivate a bit when eating so the nearby handwash station was well positioned. I passed on the "kiss" experience which is to put some food pellets between your lips and have the giraffe lick them from there. Ummm...can you say I want to wash my face?

The Karen Blixsen museum was interesting especially as I didn't know much about her at all. She was the author of Out of Africa and used the pen names Tania Blixsen and Isak Denisen in addition to her own name. The museum itself is in her former home and is largely a reproduction of it when she was there. Some of the decorative and furniture pieces are original and others are from the movie. It was good for a short visit, but I wouldn't classify it as a must see in Nairobi.

Il N'gwesi
This was my first real stop on my vacation and it was spectacular. This is a real gem of a place that I would add to my list of places to return to. Although it is very remote (1.5 hours from the main airstrip over a bumpy dirt track) once you are there is well worth it. The location is on a hillside overlooking about 20 miles of relatively untouched forest and the view is outstanding especially at sunrise. There are 6 bandas (bungalows) and I had #1 which is supposed to be the best one. I was told that Prince William, the eldest son of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, has stayed in that banda on a few occasions and I can see why. There is a wooden deck which extends out over the hillside a bit and overlooks the water hole where animals come to drink. It is large enough that upon request the staff will move the queen size bed from within the room to the deck and you can sleep under the stars (with mosquito net of course due to the malaria risk).

I had them do that and slept under the full moon on a nearly cloudless night. It was an amazing experience. The last night I was there as I went to sleep I heard the elephants feeding about 50 meters down the slope from me and saw a few waterbucks drinking at the watering hole and then awoke to a concert of birdsong.

There weren't many animals at Il N'gwesi, but you go for the setting and not the game. From the hillside though you can look down at the animals in the forest and can see a huge area which gives you the ability to spot what little game there is much more clearly. I kept thinking it was like the overhead forest view shown in the movie Jurassic Park because it was a little bit other-worldly.

If you are coming to Kenya I would put this on the must see list if you want something quiet, relaxing and peaceful. Likely it will be found soon enough and in 10 years you might read about this place in a top 100 list somewhere.

Basecamp Masai Mara
This camp was completely different than Il N'gwesi. It is an eco-tourism lodge that prides itself on its extreme measures for low impact tourism. I would say that they are doing a great job in this regard and highly commend them. For me the highlight was going to the Mara and seeing the game though.

I was there for 3 full days and during that time saw a large number of animals. Admittedly the animals are so used to people and vehicles that one has to wonder whether the experience is "real" or not, but it was still interesting. The key highlights were:

• Watching a lionness dragging a wildebeast kill into the trees. Later we returned to find 3 lionnesses and 4 cubs sleeping in the same area and believe that they had just fed on the kill.
• Watching a female cheetah stalk a gazelle only to give up when another jeep approached and scared the gazelle away.
• Watching the crossing (migration) of zebra and wildebeast across the Mara river in both directions at the same time while crocodiles lazily slept nearby. Then seeing a baby wildebeast return to the river when it realized its mother had not crossed and seeing it risk crossing back to return to its mother.

I saw lions each day and had numerous sitings of gazelle, impala, buffalo, elephants, giraffes, warthogs, and cheetah. There was also a leopard siting in the river directly below my tent, but it was at night and dark so I only heard the leopard calling and didn't see it.

Stone Town, Zanzibar
I've had only one day in Stone Town as I arrive late last night and leave early tomorrow morning. It is a very touristy location and there really isn't much here to see, plus it is relatively busy compared to the parks and reserves that I've been staying in. I really can't wait to move on to Pemba tomorrow where I'll be staying on a small sailing yacht just off a beach. I guess after a week in Africa being in a small town already seems stressful and hectic to me. I have to wonder what it will be like to return to the city after this trip.

Vaccinations

Prior to going to Africa I had to get a number of vaccinations and also start taking anti-malarial drugs. After discussions with my doctors I opted for Larium as the anti-malarial drug. I wan't too enamoured with the known side effects of hallucinations and in severe cases possible suicidal tendancies, but I was told that it was the best drug for me to take. So if I don't end up coming back from Africa....

I also had to get a yellow fever vaccination. I was warned that most people get flu like symptoms 3-4 days after the shot, because it is a live virus and so you get a mild case of the disease in order to build immunity. I wasn't at all prepared for the severity of the "mild" case though. I went from being fine one hour to feeling like I had a really horrible flu with high fever and body aches the next. For about 24 hours I was in a terrible state and really thought that if this was a mild case the full blown disease must by awful. Maybe it was just the yellow fever or maybe it was in combination with the Larium, but I had some wild dreams during my night of fever. I haven't felt that bad in years. It all passed almost as abruptly as it came though, and now I'm supposed to be protected against yellow fever for 10 years.

If you are going to travel to Africa at all and have to take Larium and get a yellow fever shot, I really suggest getting the shot well before you start the Larium. Plus you should make sure that you don't have anything really important 3-4 days after the shot as it really put me down.