Safari - Day 2 - Amboseli National Park

On Monday we woke up and hit the road to Amboseli National Park.  Amboseli is known as being one of Kenya's elephant hotspots so we were all pretty excited.  The drive from Nairobi was bumpy and about half paved, half... not.  This would be the first of many dirt roads we drove on safari.

Our first wildlife encounter would be one of our favorites.  As we passed an ostrich pair they took off and "raced" our car along the road for a few minutes.  It turns out, ostriches can go 35 mph and look darn graceful doing it.

We also wasted no time in seeing lions.  About a half hour into the park our driver identified three female lions off in the distance.  We were pretty excited to see them although in a few days this distant sighting would feel common-place (we're lucky people!).

Once at the camp, we ate a delicious Italian lunch, relaxed and headed out for our first afternoon game drive.  In Kenya, we had a driver (named David), a guide (named Humphrey), and a tough built-up LandRover we used for getting around.  Here's Mom/Dad out of the open top of the LandRover.

As promised we saw a lot of elephants in the swamps of Amboseli.  We also saw them co-existing with hippos.

We also saw our first Waterbuck, Guinea Fowl, Gazelles, etc, etc, etc on this first game drive but one cool highlight was Shannon's eagle-eye citing of a hyena, our first up-close predator.  Personally, I think Hyenas get a bad rap in Lion King and are pretty cool.

After we got home, some sort of sickness set in for me.  While Shannon and the 'Rents had dinner I began a 30 hour trial which involved emptying anything in my stomach repeatedly and... violently.  Was it the Ox Balls from carnivore?  Tough to say....