An African Safari at the Tsavo East National Park

Nov, 7th, 2011

Bret arranged for Johnson, http://ajtoursandsafaris.com/, to take us on a safari at the east Tsavo national park a couple hours north of us. We arrived at the park a little before noon and got the hat lecture by our park hat salesman. He informed me that I couldn’t wear my ball cap because it would blow off and could hurt the animals. He handed me a safari hat and said you can use this. I set it on the seat next to me. He told us to keep the windows closed and not feed the animals. Then he turned to me and asked if I would be paying in dollars or Kenyan shillings for the hat. I gave it back to him and said that I didn’t need it. Tom commented that he would make a good used car salesman.

On safari at Tsavo National Park

 Shee drove us through the park pointing out animals and stopping for us to get pictures. The terrain was dry and rugged. It reminded me of the Pocatello Valley range where we ran our cattle except instead of sage brush there were thorn bushes. We saw many types of antelope, zebras, elephants, lions, cape buffalo, baboons, lizards, crocodiles, hippos, and many other animals.

A herd of elephants crossing the road

The giraffe is very tall close up 

Zebras grazing on the plains

Our Safari driver 

Hippos floating in the river. We were glad that they emerged for the picture,

We stayed overnight at the Voi lodge and enjoyed three relatively nice buffet meals. The accommodations were nice although the beds were very firm. It was so nice to take a real shower that I took one before bed and one when I woke up. The lodge is set up on a hillside overlooking a couple of watering holes. There is a little walk way that goes down into a tunnel that looks right out onto the watering holes. There was an elephant and a water buck at the watering hole but nothing else. It would have been awesome if there had been a lot of animals there.

I helped Bret feed Screech again. We tried to feed him roaches. He didn't like them as well as the chicken but he would eat them.

When we finished with the days work we sat around the table and played a few card games with the group.