Monday, August 15, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Africa
Back in Nariobi after an amazing time out in the bush monitoring the black rhino and many other things and animals as well! Kenya is the end of the rainbow. The people are so kind and very welcoming and so soft spoken and mellow. My first couple days in Nariobi and now again staying at a beautiful hotel, the Fairview. It is like paradise here, the grounds are lush and you have no idea you are in the middle of a bustling city. I leave for Uganda tomorrow, Aug. 10th and will be gone a week. Three days in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the Silverback gorillas and then off for a couple days to ride the rapids of the River Nile :>) After that the Masai Mara to see the migration of the wildebeest and maybe then Tanzania to see Mt. Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar.
On the first day of our expedition and we entered Ol Pajeta conservancy and within our first minute we spot a giraffe and she is following a lion!! Then the lion stops at the side of the road and we pull up and take her picture. From there on it was one amazing sighting after another with the animals. We saw all but the leopard. I'm good with that, hung out with jaguars in Brazil, lol. To name a few on the animals we saw, gazelles, Impalas, Waterbucks, Cape buffalo, Rhino's, elephants, giraffes, jackals, hyenas (yeah), elands, hippos, zebras and much more. There is nothing more magnificant than seeing a herd of giraffes run across the land with Mt Kenya in the background. I love the savahanna at dawn! But the most precious gift we were given when we took of one morning and a pack of wild dogs walk out onto the road up a head of us and wait! We stopped and stared at one another for a short bit and then they decided to investigate and a couple of them came up to the jeep, one wagging it's tail!! They were so beautiful, some tortise shell color and of course their round ears. Our director who has been at this site for over 10 years told us he has never seen wild dogs before and our driver who has lived here said it was his second sighting in 17 years!!! A rare gift indeed :0) Unfortunately this means they near extinction like so many other animals here. There are 7 white rhinos left in the world and 4 of them are in Ol Pajeta. The black rhino population is slowing growing but poaching is still a serious problem. There are 85 black rhinos here and I think a total of 200 in the world. In the 1970's there were 20,000! It is a sensitive balance balance between the rhinos, elephants and giraffes as they eat the same tree, the acacias. The elephants break down many of the trees or bend them over and cause damage, the giraffes and baboons like the flowering buds so then not enough trees can seed.
It is winter here and the days are like warm fall days and the evenings cool. Also windy most of our days on the expedition. There went my Greece tan! Thank you once again for all of your on going prayers and support, I REALLY APPRECIATE IT!
Jungle Jan
On the first day of our expedition and we entered Ol Pajeta conservancy and within our first minute we spot a giraffe and she is following a lion!! Then the lion stops at the side of the road and we pull up and take her picture. From there on it was one amazing sighting after another with the animals. We saw all but the leopard. I'm good with that, hung out with jaguars in Brazil, lol. To name a few on the animals we saw, gazelles, Impalas, Waterbucks, Cape buffalo, Rhino's, elephants, giraffes, jackals, hyenas (yeah), elands, hippos, zebras and much more. There is nothing more magnificant than seeing a herd of giraffes run across the land with Mt Kenya in the background. I love the savahanna at dawn! But the most precious gift we were given when we took of one morning and a pack of wild dogs walk out onto the road up a head of us and wait! We stopped and stared at one another for a short bit and then they decided to investigate and a couple of them came up to the jeep, one wagging it's tail!! They were so beautiful, some tortise shell color and of course their round ears. Our director who has been at this site for over 10 years told us he has never seen wild dogs before and our driver who has lived here said it was his second sighting in 17 years!!! A rare gift indeed :0) Unfortunately this means they near extinction like so many other animals here. There are 7 white rhinos left in the world and 4 of them are in Ol Pajeta. The black rhino population is slowing growing but poaching is still a serious problem. There are 85 black rhinos here and I think a total of 200 in the world. In the 1970's there were 20,000! It is a sensitive balance balance between the rhinos, elephants and giraffes as they eat the same tree, the acacias. The elephants break down many of the trees or bend them over and cause damage, the giraffes and baboons like the flowering buds so then not enough trees can seed.
It is winter here and the days are like warm fall days and the evenings cool. Also windy most of our days on the expedition. There went my Greece tan! Thank you once again for all of your on going prayers and support, I REALLY APPRECIATE IT!
Jungle Jan
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