Africa

Africa was awesome! The elephants would come to the watering hole at our bungalow every night. The only problem is that sometimes their trumpeting would keep me up all night. I didn't mind too much, though, because after all...I was in Africa! I like to call this shot "elephants in the mist". This was one morning just before heading out for our first safari of the day.
These are the bungalows. You can see how close they are to the watering hole. We saw so many animals really close up. The most common were elephants, zebras, baboons, warthogs and lots of birds.
These zebras were on the side of the little road we took through the Taita Hill Wildlife Sanctuary Park, which is right next to Tsavo National Park. They didn't seem to mind us gawking at them...

Isn't he the cutest? This particular kind of giraffe is called a masai giraffe. I like the cool pattern his spots have.
This cute little baby impala was having dinner. I had a really good zoom, so we didn't bother him at all...
This little guy is called a dik dik. They are a tiny antelope, barely bigger than the African hare.
Scary looking monkey, creeping me out with that stare!
Baboons are scary, too, but that little one is just too cute with his ears sticking out! There was an underground tunnel at the Salt Lick Lodge that went out by the watering hole. We could go in there and observe the animals really close.

Look real close...do you see him? It's a monitor lizard. I think it's so cool to see animals camouflage themselves.
Male ostrich. Never thought I'd see one in the wild...
This is a secretary bird. We saw him and another nesting in a small tree. They are so big!
We saw so many birds it was ridiculous! This was one of my favorites, the lilac-breasted roller. He had a lot of colors all over him...
We saw this jackal first thing in the morning. Our guide told us this was rare because they are nocturnal and are usually hiding by sunlight. As you can see, he was running pretty fast to get outta site!

This big 'ol herd of water buffalo came to the watering hole. They smelled awful! It was pretty amazing seeing that many big animals, though.
What chew lookin' at?!
This was the best thing...a lioness and her 3 cubs. Luckily, we got to see them before all the other safari groups came around and scared them off.
Me and Jason and the Land Rover. We were very lucky to have our own driver and car!
This is the baobab tree. The Kenyans call it "the tree of life". Look at the cute lady walking down the street. We saw people walking everywhere. Some of them carried water or fire wood or something else really heavy on their heads...for miles! It really makes you grateful to have what you have.

This is entering the city of Mombasa. It's on the coast of the Indian Ocean. Notice the gross exhaust coming from that car...it was like that all over...Nairobi was the worst. Jason and I went SCUBA diving, but the waves were so rough! This girl in our dive group was throwing up the whole time. At least the waves are pretty...
We saw this guy on the beach. He was a member of the Masai tribe. He was very nice and talked to us for a while. We bought a necklace from him.
We went to a show that had a bunch of people dancing. It was this tribe's culture to jump as high as possible. The highest jumpers got first pick of the ladies.
I was invited to dance with one of the tribes. This lady was really sweet. I bought a scarf from her.

The entire trip was so much fun! It was definitely my favorite, probably because of all the animals. It was really neat to see how other cultures live as well. I don't want to be a big nerd and talk about how educational it was...but it really was. I'll never forget it, that's for sure!

Autumn