Nairobi Trip

October 6th

In Nairobi again and its really not too bad. It seems like the short rains may be here, been getting a ton of rain! We had several nights with no obs the last week before Wes left. Camp very quiet with Wes gone, we all spent two days in Talek and had a going-away party for Wes. It was very fun to spend two nights in Talek. Cruiser up and running again, rewiring seemed to fix everything! We have a new receiver for the radio collars too so hopefully tracking will be better now.

Dave found North’s new den and we found where Happy Zebra has been hanging out, so now we’re just waiting for some head pokes from these south cubs and hopefully we’ll have a communal den there now too. Bellagio has been hanging out at FML Den along with a lot of the other hyenas, they all seem to be clustering around there. Emily just got back from Nairobi from dropping off Wes, but now Dave is leaving for all of October and into November for his brother’s wedding so Phoebe and I are in Nairobi to drop him off. Its pretty hilarious, Hadley seems to be the Talek equivalent of Emily and I am the Serena equivalent of Phoebe. Both Emily and Hadley are runners, both Phoebe and I are nerds. Now that I’ve stopped shaving my armpits I am even more like Phoebe!

Went riding this morning with Dave and Phoebe and got to do some really fast galloping which was really fun, going all out, its been a while. Got a really good horse this time named Survivor. Phoebe was on Achi and they got along well though he definitely took advantage of her. But by the end both Phoebe and Dave got a few strides of canter in and had fun trotting. Dave was on a horse named Small-T. Our guide’s horse was named Richard and I forgot to ask the name of the guide’s horse who stayed back with Phoebe and Dave.  Just a one hour which I think is a good amount of time, two hours was a little longlast time.

A littler nervous to be in Nairobi what with the Westgate stuff, but the security at Galleria is WAY amped up so that makes me feel pretty good. Nothing is probably going to happen so soon after the last one. Been seeing a ton of cheetahs and lions lately in the mara. There is a trio of three young cheetah brothers that Julie and I have had some STUNNING sightings with. The other night we also saw a pride of 9 lions, probably the mgorro pride. Three adult females, two large subadult males and four smaller subs. They were all walking and playing and running while we drove home in the dark from happy zebra.