Rabbit rabbit! Can’t
believe it’s already September, two months left to write my NSF. Already have a
good draft going of my personal statement and getting ideas formulated for the
proposal so I’m feeling pretty confident.
We inventoried the
storage tent and the lab tent so now I actually know where everything in camp
is and I found a laser mouse which is making me really happy. Small things are
important out here.
But I haven’t gotten to
the best part yet. Wes slept in this morning, we got 5mm of rain which is
almost enough to make us stay in but Emily and I wanted to go out so Julie said
she would too so we decided to at least hit up north den (which is right on the
road next to the airstrip right now) and then see how the roads were.
Unfortunately Julie was sick this morning so she stayed in and of course
whenever someone stays in you are almost guaranteed to get awesome sightings.
Emily and I noticed about
7 cars all lined up on the long road about a kilometer from where we were, the
tracks were a little slick in this area but we took it slow until we hit the
long road then drove over to see what the deal was. The deal was little lion
cubs! Four of them all still pretty small and freakin’ adorable. Making squeaky
little noises while their mother lay in the grass about 10m from the road and
us. Super close! About the best lion cub sighting you could absolutely ask for.
We stayed for over 30 minutes and they climbed up on a mound very close to us
and posed perfectly for us. Cuteness overload.
This seems to be the time
of year for adorable baby animals, I think top of my list would be to see baby
leopards, but just leopards alone are still super cool. Even boring lions are
still moderately cool.
So spent two days driving
to the mara north conservancy for paintball and birthday celebrations forone of
the balloon pilots! There are only two balloon pilots in the serena part of the
park but given the huge number of lodges on the narok half of the park and also
in the mara north conservancy there actually is quite a number of them total.
It was maybe a two or three hour drive to the Fairmont safari club where JP and
his wife live. It was awesome to go further than the Oloololo gate drive along
the base of the escarpment. The river winds all the way up to the escarpment
and then meanders around the base for quite a while. Moses dropped off his wife
and daughter (super adorable) along the way.
I felt a little out of place among all these
balloon pilots only knowing a few people but paintball was super fun and I have
some green and black bruises to show for it. They provided us with jump suits
and masks and when the guy explained we would be playing “No surrender” meaning
you’re only out if you shout that you surrender I started to feel pretty
nervous. You can hit someone with enough paintballs and put them in enough pain
for force them to surrender?? I hadn’t realized paintballs could potentially
hurt that much! However it turned out they don’t really hurt that much unless
someone has you cornerd at three feet. Not that many people actually
surrendered though so the next game we played we went by one hit in a critical
area, arms and legs don’t count. That was fun too but I got out pretty quick. The
last two rounds everyone just needed to get rid of bullets (since some of us
got out with only firing a few shots) so we played the “no surrender” version
again and just had fun shooting each other. There was a flag that we were all
going for but mostly it was just shoot the other team.
We finally got the parts for the hi-lux so Langat is here in camp repairing the hilux so hopefully Wes and Julie can make it to Talek today. Kay is coming in to Talek tomorrow if all goes well and they both want to be around when she is there (Wes to learn darting and Julie to talk about her proposal). So then it'll be just Emily and I in camp which will be nice to have a very small quiet camp again. Missing those days where it was just Julia and I in camp. Everything seems to go a lot more smoothly.
