We left the hotel at 6am because we have an early charter flight to Amboseli. There were only 8 people, including us, on the plane — a Cessna 208.
We arrived in Amboseli which is on the southern border with Tanzania around 9:30am. The primary reason for coming to Amboseli was to see Mt Kilimanjaro. We saw it from the plane, here is a lousy picture of it though the plane window.
At the “international” airport we were met by Joseph, our guide. We had coffee and tea while we waited for two more guests to arrive on a different plane. It turns out the other guest were Douglas Costa, a pretty famous soccer player, and his wife.
Amboseli is a game park and brags of elephants with some of the largest tusks. The Kenyan government has been aggressive in protecting these elephants. The security patrols are instructed to shoot to kill any poachers they find, so they’ve been pretty effective. We did a game drive on the way back to the camp. I think Joseph is the most knowledgeable guide we have ever had. He provided details on all the animals we saw but I’d be here for days if I tried to recount them, so I’ll just post some pictures.
We learned that Amboseli is named for the dust devils that we see frequently. They are formed by the sun heating up the rocks and dirt.
Climate change has been blamed for a four year drought in Amboseli. Of course the animals are affected by the drought and we see zebra and wildebeast carcasses everywhere. The clouds get caught by Kilimanjaro and the rain is dumped in Tanzania. It doesn’t make it to Amboseli. They are hopeful that they will get rain soon.
After about a 2 hour game drive we arrived at the camp. On a clear day Kilimanjero is visible from the camp, however it is often covered in clouds. Here are pictures of our camp, including the monkeys and dik-diks who were hanging around our tent.
After lunch we relaxed/blogged until 4 when we went out on another game drive. We saw a lioness who had just taken down a zebra. She had her two 6 month old cubs with her and was teaching them how to hunt. It was gruesome so I’ll spare you the details. We found the rest of the pride which included two more lionesses, two sets of cubs, (a group of 4 three month old cubs and a three week old cub). Joseph thought there were more three week old cubs, but we couldn’t find them. We finally came acros the father and two other females.
Here are some pictures from the afternoon game drive.
We had dinner at the hotel and went to bed early because we have an early morning game drive tomorrow.
