Cape Buffalo & We Are Home in the States

After 36 hours in transit, we are now back home in Rochester, New York. We flew first from Nairobi, Kenya, to Johannesburg, South Africa--a 4-hour flight. There was a seven-hour layover in Jo'burg, but it is a delightfully modern airport, with great tourist shops. We then flew 8 hrs to Dakar, Senegal, where we sat on the ground for 1 1/2 hours, while the plane was refueled and we all went through yet another security check (even though we never got off of the plane.) After that it was a 9-hr flight on to Washington D.C. From Washington it was only about an hour and a half flight to Rochester. Our son-in-law, Jeff Bishop, and daughter, Karen Pereira, greeted us at the airport. The other family members in Rochester were either working or were in school.

We told you we would show some photos from our May 14 and 15 safari with family members. This took place at Maasai Mara, three days before we left the country. This is the best known game reserve in Kenya. Even though we had rain during part of the game drive on the 14th, we saw an amazing number of a great variety of animals. The Cape Buffalo is known to be the most aggressive and dangerous animal in Africa. It appears on this photo that he is telling us to go away.

This will be our last blog posting to Phil & Judy's African Adventure. We did have an amazing adventure BUT we are incredibly happy to be home!

Breakfast with the Hippos

On Friday morning, 15 May 2009, the second day of our safari at Maasai Mara, we took an early morning game drive. At 8:30 a.m., we were treated to a wonderful breakfast by the Mara River. Many hippos were cavorting in the water quite close to our table. (Apparently they aren't known to come up on to the banks of the river at that time of day.) Our breakfast included specialty omelets, crepes, many rolls and breads, variety of fresh fruit, and other delicacies--all served with linen, china dishes and crystal stemware. For Judy, this was the highlight of the safari. We had two Maasai young men, dressed traditionally, as our guides for this breakfast.

Topi

This large antelope has very unusual body markings which make it easy to identify. We saw large herds of these interesting creatures.

Sandal-Billed Stork

Kenya has an amazing assortment of colorful birds. We were told that Maasai Mara has over 300 varieties of birds. We were able to capture many of these birds with our camera.

Elephant Talk

Large herds of elephants greeted us while on the safari at Maasai Mara. These two were talking about the strange animal (a tall large green creature with people staring out of its many eyes) that was sitting on the road beside them.

Ostriches at Maasai Mara

These incredibly-large birds provide a delicious meal of drumsticks........or so we're told. We didn't actually get to eat much wild game while we were in Kenya.

Lioness

In Maasai Mara we saw many lions. True to being the predators, all of the lions we saw were eating their prey. A few minutes after we took this photo, this lioness joined two other lionesses to devour a topi.

We thought we were close to a leopard at one point, when another safari group radioed of a sighting. We went to that area and watched and waited, but never saw the elusive cat. However, the day before we left the Daystar Athi River campus, we went for a walk on the edge of campus. Two security guards told us that they had just seen a leopard walking between the buildings of the campus about 30 minutes earlier. The campus was quiet and nearly empty because the students were gone; but, it is still unusual for a leopard to be seen during the day.