After narrowly dodging a lumbering ostrich on the dirt runway, we landed at 8:00 am at a lonely airstrip near Amboseli in the Selenkey Conservancy (a private area owned by the Masai, only Porini camps can stay / drive there). This is in southern Kenya, at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro (which is across the Tanzanian border). The six passengers disembarked the Cessna and looked around the empty landscape of orange dirt and barren shrubs. Two Gamewatchers / Porini jeeps arrived ten minutes later, taking three of us to one Porini camp (Porini Amboseli), the rest to another Porini camp.
Two Masai sat in the front of the open sided jeep: the driver Julian and a spotter John, both wearing the traditional red plaid cloth capes and skirts.
Even though our camp was ten minutes away, they proceeded to take us on a two hour game drive on the way to camp. They drove on dirt tracks, often into the bushes. They often stopped, leaned out each side to peer closely at the animal tracks, fresh dung - looking for wildlife, conferring, debating. Oh we saw so many things in that first drive! The animals were not bothered by the jeep, and in many cases we were 10-20 feet away.
Giraffes
Elephants
A pride of lions (females and young)
So many variants of deer I can't remember which is which - eland, gerunuks, dikdiks, gazelle, etc.
Zebra
Warthogs
Baboons
Buffalo
The Masai were informative, identifying every animal, gender, age, behavior. No need to bring a reference book! Beyond the familiar species there were so many animals I'd never even heard of.
After 2-3 hours we headed to the Porini Amboseli camp to check in, have lunch outside on a picnic table, and "have a siesta" for a few hours. I've come to realize that the siesta happens in all these camps - the animals are napping during the hottest time of day, so game drives happen in the morning or late afternoon when the animals are active and searching for food.
