Apologies for disappearing - Tsavo East NP

I apologize for not posting in the last month, but taking over as Kenya Country Engineer has been very time consuming. In the January trip, the last pictures I posted were of a day off in Nairobi at the elephant orphanage and giraffe park, the only other interesting things that I took pictures of was a stop in Tsavo national park. The February trip was extremely busy for me, and though I took many pictures, many of my pictures were lost when my laptop burned up on one of the last days there.   Though I thought that was as bad as it could get, on the same day my large (150mm-500mm) camera lens broke.  That was a very bad day for me.  I lost roughly 4000 pictures from the February trip. 

In January, the last trip was a pass through Tsavo East National Park.  It’s an awesome park, full of history.  A movie, The Ghost in the Darkness, is based upon true events that occurred in Tsavo. 

The most special part of Tsavo was the elephants, they are so different than elephants in a zoo.  These elephants are wild, wary of humans, and know they are the biggest animal in town.  

Kate and I stopped at one of the washed out bridges.  The road now snakes further upstream and crosses the wadi.  I can only figure these are all impassable during the wet season. 

A beautiful bird that landed on a branch next to the road.

A water buffalo calf with its heard; the rest of the herd was very protective. 

These were two of the males that were interested in defending the young, even if it meant going head to head with a Prado.  They were grunting, pounding the ground with their hoofs, and making a range of other gestures.

This male was so agitated, he had snot dripping from his nose.  He just made a gurgling sound as he stood there staring us down. 

These two elephants were hundreds of meters away, but were very aware of us and were not comfortable with our presence, moving off into the trees as soon as we stopped.

 

A flock of egrets passing from the river, in the bright morning sun, they were basically glowing.

Another bright bird in the park. 

These two elephants were cooling themselves in the river and wandered out of the valley right past us. 

These ostriches were a trio of females that were close to the road.  All others I saw were far off in the distance and running away.  This was the first close ones that I could get a decent picture of, but the sun was moving overhead and did not provide good light.