Full day at Amboseli

We slept well again; the fact that I slept is not the issue; the fact that the Sweet Thing slept so well is. We had a light breakfast then hit the road about 8:30. I must say, the animals at Amboseli are few and far between. There is no doubt that there are a lot more animals than what we are interested in by day 5. The zebra and gazelle/impala were plentiful, but not anywhere close to the maasai 2 days ago. The ground is littered with more carcasses than one would care to see. One word explains the problems on the plains of Africa ... drought. We were told it has not really rained here to any extent since December of last year; that's 11 months! On further investigation, we have found out that the rains have not really arrived for 3 years not 11 months. They do say in the western world that the countries that can least afford to, suffer the most from the effects of global warming. There are areas of the park that are swampy or very wet, and of course the game collects at those locales. The elephants were basking in the shallow water and sometimes one could only see their torsos as they were more than knee deep in the aqua. Sweet Thing is back to normal, so that's a gas (actually it isn't :)). We rented an hour of internet time and the wireless here reminds me of the world's worst internet that I experience every day in Ethiopia. ST said the cafe is much faster probably since it is wired. The Ileana flag has been red for a few days as I have not posted to this BLOG since last Friday. Just looking out into the park from the lodge shows terrain so indicative of what most of it looks like. As we drive around, we can see a definite green hue by scanning the plain as far as the eye can see. Once we get to the spot we just viewed, the grass is very short and there are clumps of it then sand and more sand and rocks. The ground as we come out of the lodge is littered with volcanic rocks the size of soccer balls. I finished the Grisham book I brought from Canada and the ending sucked, in my opinion. He left the whole issue with the perpetrator of the "crimes" committed up in the air as he has done in some of his other books I have read. I also brought a novel by Michael Connelly to read; it's a toss-up between him and Grisham for whose books I have read the most of over the past 10 or so years. The rest of the day is going to be spent outside; we are now sitting on the patio. ST is reading The Book Thief, as chosen in her book club, and loves it. We have taken close to 1.5Gb of shots (about 450 pictures) of the trip so far. I am going to give ST a USB SD card reader with all the pics on it to take back to Ottawa. She will stick it into my computer and I will copy them using LogMeIn. We have a game drive scheduled for 4PM; I will probably go by myself as the lack of wildlife has disappointed the Sweet Thing more than me. There seems to be a new crop of safari'ers that have arrived over the past few hours. They are all eager to go and, if like the Krabnick entourage (a.k.a., the Sweet Thing and me), will depart about 4PM. Actually, ST still does not plan on going on that drive. Both of us read this afternoon and grabbed 65 winks. They have been watering the lawn at the back of the lodge all day since breakfast. They supposedly pump the water from the swamp out back; the rest of the plains need that kind of soaking and they may not get it for quite some time. As it turns out the afternoon drive was very productive after all. We headed out of the hotel and turned down a road that passes by a deserted lodge. That lodge closed due to lack of business about 3 years ago. The animals were quite plentiful, with the same fare pretty much as the maasai. I got lots of pictures and figured out how to zoom, crop, then save on ST's camera so did a lot of that after the fact. Mount Kiliminjaro never did peak through the clouds though we ended up getting as close to the base as posisble. On the way back to the lodge, I got some shots of the sunset. We were back by 6:10 and the sun does not go down long thereafter. We had dinner at 7:30 then sat by the fire for some time. ST went for her usual evening stroll after dinner then we packed it in about 9:30. That was quite an experience, probably one that we will never forget. We took about 600 pictures altogether which will end up edited on a DVD at about 200 photos. I will give ST an SD card and USB reader with all the pics on it to take back to Ottawa.