whats my number??

a few quick and entertaining stories before pictures: as i left the house this morning in my new ride (ive opted for the small subaru over the enormous safari 4x4 because its much easier to get around town in) i stopped for a few at the stop sign to fix my ipod and get some tunes going. an attractive girl about my age rode up on a horse and began talking to me. i had to crane my neck out of the car to see her and this became very uncomfortable so essentially i felt like i was talking to a horse:

• horse: i like what youre listening to, what is it?
• me: ghostland observatory (or what frank likes to call 'ghostface embroidery')
• horse: its good, i like american bands (horse was british). so are you new in town, i havent seen you around the neighborhood?
• me: yes, im working for a safari guide for awhile. i take it you live around here?
• horse: yes, just around the corner. so how long are you here for? i just got back from school and you should meet up with some of my friends and i.
• me: until late october.
• horse: great, whats your number and ill call you sometime when we go out.
• me: 0720 2...shit, i have no idea. whats yours, ill put it in my phone? (i reach for my pocket only to realize i am phoneless.) actually i dont have mine, but whats yours ill remember it?

i forgot her number (cellphone numbers are 11 digits) as soon as i turned the corner. just my luck, but maybe ill run into that beautiful stallion again. but on the bright side, a french lady that anthony and fiona know has her niece coming in town with a friend of hers, so from what i gather were all being setup for tuesday night, which is great because then i leave for zanzibar the next day for five nights to go fish and dive....typical

in other news i got stuck in a roundabout (i like to call them circles of death) for about 6 laps on the way to teh travel agent to book my zanzibar flight. finally i got fed up, closed my eyes and jerked the wheel to the left. when i opened them, i was out of the circle of death but heading right for a herd of goats. no goats were harmed.

anyways, more pictures....

john and i above camp in the mara. hes pretty much the closest thing i have to a friend out there besides anthony and we usually spend the day when im not out with the clients talking and he teaches me swahili, which is coming along nicely. i can pretty much say anything that i need/needs to be done around camp thanks to john.

leopard in a tree with the remains of a warthog kill. she had a cub with her at first but when they heard the car, the cub bolted and i only got a chance to see it flying out of the tree and into a thicket. very rare sight.

black rhino. not a particularly good picture as it was taken right before the sun came up but i thought it was worth it because they are so rare. a very endangered species, there are only 12 in the mara and a few thousand in africa as a whole. we saw this one about 5min from camp and the last time anthony had seen one was over 5yrs ago.

anthony got stuck in a huge mudhole at one point, so guess who's job it was to hop out and find a place for our other car to cross so we could winch ourselves out...

one day this guy will be a killing machine

we were looking for this guy for about 30min around a river bend because we heard a mother had cubs last year in the area. just when we were about to give up, our other car began to frantically point behind us. the leopard came up out of the grass about 5yds away and then sat around and waited for its mother, which we never saw. some people come to the mara and never see a leopard; we were lucky and saw four different ones in as many days. unfortunately by the time i got my camera out she was kind of far away, but its better than nothing

a little less violent

just so you know its not all blood and guts on safari, here a few tame pictures.

three young impala buck just doing whatever it is that impala do, whish is mostly just eating and getting eaten by other animals with the occasional fornication.

Amboseli and the Mara

what follows are pictures from the four days in the masai mara. viewer discretion is advised as things are not always pretty when they die over here. but if it helps, just think of the lion king (which i have watch about 1,032 times with anthony's kids) and the elton john song 'the circle of life', at least thats what i told the clients with queasy stomachs to do. so here they are...

after picking up the clients at the airstrip, we headed for a small game drive back towards camp. riding up on the roof, i spotted about 6 thompsons gazelle in a full sprint coming over a hill about 150yds away. the clients thought 'oh how cute, they gazelle are playing.' knowing a little better, i said to them watch for the cheetah and about a half second later it exploded over the ridge in a full-out run and began to close the distance on the gazelle. i got out my binoculars just in time to see the take down. cheetah 1 - gazelle 0.

as the cheetah began to eat the adorable little antelope things started to get a little ugly...i chose not to post the worst of the pictures our of respect for my mother.

eventually, after eating almost the entire gazelle, a hyena caught wind of the kill because of circling vultures and moved in for the taking. cheetahs are esentially programmed not to get into fights and she quickly conceded the kill to the stronger animal. bastard...

we saw cheetah everyday in the mara, which is very uncommon as they are the most rare cat.

these are three brothers that we saw on a few separate occasions.

more cheetah, they could be my favorite. the clients for some reason thought it would be a good idea to pay $385 per person for a balloon ride over the mara. while this seemed absurd to me, it did yield a good find as they spotted a pride of lions feeding on a giraffe, which is an incredibly rare kill for a pride of lions.

there was one cub in the pride that was particularly active and he kept running off into the tall grass. his mother would become nervous with our two cars so close and she ran off many times to chase him down and carry him back. this happened about 4-5 times and from what i gathered, seeing something like this is pretty rare...the guides see it only once or twice every couple years.

more cub action. at one point, be climbed completely inside the hollowed out giraffe to have a look around. hes too young to eat meat yet, so instead he constantly cried for milk.

so i guess i can tell yall a bit about what im actually doing over here. as of right now, im moving the cars to and from camps for the safaris and in between, while clients are at the lodges, i return to nairobi for a resupply. while on safari, i ride on top of the car and act as a spotter and tell the clients about the animals as they bounce questions off of me. im essentially traning to be a guide on later safaris so tim and anthony stayed pretty quiet while i was talking to see how i was doing. as well as being taught about the animals im learning how to drive around them so as not to spook them and to set up the clients for the best possible shot. from what i gather, it sounds like i might start being a guide for safaris in august, and in the meantime i will be spending lots of time int he mara at our seasonal camp on the mara river. as well as hosting clients, i might be doing some driving and little guiding for them. posting these pictures and editing the blog takes a long time and ive spent about three hours on this alone today, so ill work more tomorrow and send and email when its all done.