Man Eaters and Friends

Tsavo is famous for two things: man-eating lions and red elephants. Its also famous for red rhinos, but unfortunately they were the only of the "big 5" that we missed (Those would be the Lion, Elephant, Buffalo, Rhino, and Leopard). Yes I know, you've never heard of red rhinos or red elephants; but that's because biologists classify things according to "natural" characteristics as in "black and white rhinos" (they're not racist are they?). But when one rolls around in red dust to keep the flies and ticks, even the dull grey of an elephant hide gets a nice dusty sheen of rust. See for yourself...

Okay, so these aren't the reddest elephants we saw, but they are the best pictures of elephants we took; we had to have seen close to 60 elephants in about 25 different groups (including individual bulls). Now about those man-eaters...

...they don't have manes. Apparently there's a relationship between the mane-lessness and their purported aggressiveness -- high testosterone = hair loss. I think we knew that already. (Though the first lion we saw had a very healthy large mane, probably visiting from out of park).

Here's the pride of the man-eater above. (Okay, so they haven't really eaten a lot of people since the railway was finished about 100 years ago, but the reputation sticks). In addition to these stars, we saw plenty of interesting animals; without further adieu, here are the highlights:

Buffalo - We call him Phil and Daren is jealous of his Pippy Longstocking hat.

"Hakuna Matata, Hakuna Matata..." There're two warthogs in here; the other's wallowing deep in the mud.

Tons of these tall blondes about

Why did the tortoise cross the road? Not sure, this one never got around to it. Just kept waddling along the edge.

What can you say.... Ostrich! mmm, tastes like chicken. Actually, more like turkey.

Zebra: the mascot for racial harmony

Shaggy the Waterbuck: this is the mama, we also got pictures of her hubby and child, but not in the same frame. Among Waterbucks its the mama who wears the beard.

And what's a safari without hundreds of impala... literally hundreds scattered in herds of 10-50. We thought you'd like to se the babies.

And the fighting bucks.

How far away was this do you ask? 30 feet. The safari lodge puts out a goat leg every night for the leopards to come and eat. Glad it was preoccupied with that instead of us, though the number of flashes from cameras probably helped keep it at bay as well. (We also saw a leopard in a tree from our safari minivan about 200 yards off, but the pics are a little fuzzy).

So those are the animal highlights, we'll try to post some of the scenery we saw too. It kinda looked like you'd expect a savanna to look like, plus some cool mountains - including one that looks like an elephant head.