Game Drives

The main thing you do on a safari is go on "game drives," where you pile into a van and drive around looking for animals. The best times to do this are early in the morning, or late afternoon. It seems the animals are otherwise engaged for the rest of the day.

We have now been out 3 times, and already have seen a lot of animals, including jaguars, giraffes, baboons, monkeys, lions, elephants, water buffalo, and lots of birds. The animals are amazingly unconcerned about us or our vans. They wander around as if we weren't there. We don't feed them, nor do we shoot at them, so I suppose they have learned that we are not dangerous but also not particularly interesting.

We are not allowed to get out of the vans, since then we might get very interesting to a passing jaguar. I imagine a slow-running sedentary middle-aged American might be very tasty (if high in fat), and would require very little effort for the jaguar, compared to the fast-moving prey he usually has to chase.

Here are some pictures I took. These are all taken here at Samburu.

Kenya