Nairobi National Park

This is my first post on the blog I used while in Iraq. I have returned to using Hillas' Histories to record some of my experiences traveling around the world while inspecting U.S. Embassies.  

Our team has been in Nairobi for a few days and I and seven colleagues decided to do a one-half day drive through Nairobi National Park, which is located just outside the capital.  The large, green plain north of Nairobi near the hills, where Out of Africa was filmed, was filled with lots of wildlife, which were sometimes visible with the Nairobi city skyline providing a contrasting backdrop.

We were fortunate to view the following wildlife:  gazelles (both Thomspson and Grant), cape buffalo, impala, a lion, hardebeast (which we saw more of than any other animal), elan (with huge straight horns), ostrich, giraffes, warthogs, vultures, guinea fowl, maribu storks, black heron, egrets, ox-peckers, yellow-throated spur fowl, hammerkopf (a hammerhead bird), long-taliled shrikes, kites, martins, black faced marvet (a monkey) and baboons.  

Below are some of the photos from our outing:

Our group upon exiting the Nairobi National Park.

Zebras grazing alongside the track we were on.  Note the mud on the top of his back.  We watched him roll in a mud hole.

These are Masai giraffe, which have darker mottling.

Giraffes enjoying a stroll down the track -- and not too interested in moving to the side.

Not sure of the implied connection between the road sign and the skull of a cape buffalo, but it caught out attention . . . . and we did not drive off road.  If fact, it was so wet we had to push our van out of a mud hole on the road.  

An elderly lion, favoring his right rear paw, limped down to where our vehicle was parked.  Somewhat haggard, he was clearly beyond his prime.  But, then, he may have thought the same about some of us.