Sun Downers and Night Game Drives

8-24 

Since MBB and Tyler will be leaving soon, we’ve been upping the number of sundowners and night game drives.

We had a great sundowner up on Lizard rock with the smaller crew.  I’m really enjoying having the smaller crew b/c I feel less shy and that the group is just overall closer.  Up on lizard rock I suggested some cool jumping pictures, which turned out great, though you can tell who the person is who is favoring their busted knee.

2 nights ago we had an amazing sundowner on Eagle Scout vista.  Rarely does Mount Kenya show it’s magnificent face in the evenings, but on this night, MBB’s last night, the clouds disappeared.  The view from Eagle Scout vista is great b/c it looks over a huge area including the river.

Our 3 nights drives this past week were amazing.  Matt was the driver, which helped to make them amazing.  He’s is a wild driver and will push full speed ahead off road in the bush in the dark with just our spotlight on the animal of interest while everyone holds on for dear life in the open back of the land cruiser.  But his technique works b/c I saw more in those 3 game drives than any of my other night game drives combined.

The list of cool and unusual things we saw: 2 lionesses on separate occasions (one with a fresh warthog in its mouth fending off hyenas); tons of spotted hyenas; a few rare striped hyenas; an aardwolf; several zorrillas; several bush babies; white tailed mongooses; civets, a couple caracals (small cats), a leopard.  The highlight, however, had to be the aardvark that we saw.  MBB has been here for over a year and a half and had never seen this super hard to see nocturnal animal.  Actually none of us had seen one besides Matt who had spent around 3 years in Africa.  I wish I had made a recording of the slew of super excited expletives that were erupting out of Matt and MBB’s mouths as we chased the aardvark through the savannah.  They were so utterly pumped.  It was just awesome.  The night game drives have become quite fun and exciting.  Crazy is one of the lions we saw was just outside of our camp and then I saw its footprints on the road that I walk to get to my banda.

The drought has continued here.  We've run out of rain water for showers and hand washing, so now we have to use the nice and dirty Ewaso river water that is carried up to us in water trucks.  If you've ever seen the elephants and hippos pooing in the river, you might be scared to shower in the river water, haha

you can tell who is me by finding the person who is favoring their knee