For Mom
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Joined: Jul 2001
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From: La Crescenta, CA
For Mom
#1
Mrs. Raptor and I were in Masai Amboseli, a huge game park in southern Kenya, at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro, near the Tanzania border. The park is run by the Masai. The phones were out, so we couldn't make reservations at the lodge. In August, the mountain pops out of the clouds at 5 PM like clockwork. You point in the right direction and drive across a dry lake bed. We picked up this African kid who was waiting at the entrance to the park and worked at the lodge and gave him a ride. The lodge was full. He called me his brother and put us up in a nearby Masai village in a thatched roof mud hut. We heated up some canned food with a gasoline-fired backpacker's stove we bought in Switzerland the month before. The cans were dented because all the cans in all the stores in Nairobi were dented. I got deathly ill from some Botulism-type thing.
Here I am, lying in a hammock with mosquito netting with big holes in it. Every five minutes a baboon would look me in the eye curiously or a five-pound gecko or monitor lizard would bounce off my shoulder. I wanted to go outside to puke, but couldn't, because there was this horrendous noise outside and the ground was shaking furiously. I wasn't about to go outside and find out what it was. Instead, I puked into a large plactic laundry bag. It was a lovely sight. Turns out a herd of rogue elephants came through and trampled the village. Flattened a couple of mud huts and injured a couple of villagers. In the morning, they were grazing peacefully as if nothing had happened the night before.
Mrs. Raptor drove us back to Nairobi, where I got a shot with what looked like maybe not a clean needle from an Indian Sikh doctor.
#2
We're in Samburu, a game park in northern Kenya named after the predominant local tribe, the Samburu, who are closely related to and look very much like the Masai in the south. We're driving this tin can car on a dirt road and wander off on an elephant walk. The elephant walks are often bigger than the roads. We get to a dry river bed with a berm in the center so we can't see across it. I have to make a decision: punch it and hope we can skate across the sand to the other side of the river bed or turn around and go back. I punched it, we go across and over the top -- straight at a huge outcropping of shale that would have turned the oil pan into a historical footnote. I put the car into a spin and there we were -- stuck. Noon, 100
Mrs. Raptor and I were in Masai Amboseli, a huge game park in southern Kenya, at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro, near the Tanzania border. The park is run by the Masai. The phones were out, so we couldn't make reservations at the lodge. In August, the mountain pops out of the clouds at 5 PM like clockwork. You point in the right direction and drive across a dry lake bed. We picked up this African kid who was waiting at the entrance to the park and worked at the lodge and gave him a ride. The lodge was full. He called me his brother and put us up in a nearby Masai village in a thatched roof mud hut. We heated up some canned food with a gasoline-fired backpacker's stove we bought in Switzerland the month before. The cans were dented because all the cans in all the stores in Nairobi were dented. I got deathly ill from some Botulism-type thing.
Here I am, lying in a hammock with mosquito netting with big holes in it. Every five minutes a baboon would look me in the eye curiously or a five-pound gecko or monitor lizard would bounce off my shoulder. I wanted to go outside to puke, but couldn't, because there was this horrendous noise outside and the ground was shaking furiously. I wasn't about to go outside and find out what it was. Instead, I puked into a large plactic laundry bag. It was a lovely sight. Turns out a herd of rogue elephants came through and trampled the village. Flattened a couple of mud huts and injured a couple of villagers. In the morning, they were grazing peacefully as if nothing had happened the night before.
Mrs. Raptor drove us back to Nairobi, where I got a shot with what looked like maybe not a clean needle from an Indian Sikh doctor.
#2
We're in Samburu, a game park in northern Kenya named after the predominant local tribe, the Samburu, who are closely related to and look very much like the Masai in the south. We're driving this tin can car on a dirt road and wander off on an elephant walk. The elephant walks are often bigger than the roads. We get to a dry river bed with a berm in the center so we can't see across it. I have to make a decision: punch it and hope we can skate across the sand to the other side of the river bed or turn around and go back. I punched it, we go across and over the top -- straight at a huge outcropping of shale that would have turned the oil pan into a historical footnote. I put the car into a spin and there we were -- stuck. Noon, 100
make that 4
