Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

This week we continue with our Kenyan safaris. The other posts from my Africa trip are: Arusha , Tarangire National Park , South Serengeti Part 1 , South Serengeti Part 2 ,  the rest of the Serengeti tour ,  Ngorogoro Crater ,  Mt. Meru , Mt. Kenya, Part 1 , Mt. Kenya, Part 2 , and Kenya Safari Part 1 .  After our short and early drive at Lake Nakuru, we settled in for our 250-mile drive, which took 8 hours altogether--another day to stretch our boxed breakfast into a lunch! The drive wasn't without interest (great vistas of the Great Rift Valley, and insights into the transit problems of a country whose main truck route is a two-lane road), but we were glad to arrive at Amboseli National Park. A glad sight. Amboseli greeter. Back to Masai Giraffes, here just a few miles north of the Tanzania border. A really sweet room. Fences kept out the larger animals, but you had to be careful to keep the patio door latched when not in the room--the baboons painted on the wall are kind of a wa

Our Africa treks completed, we segued seamlessly back to African massage--i.e., too many hours sitting in a safari vehicle, bouncing over rough roads. We planned too many things too far apart (distances are longer in Africa than in the US, there being no freeways with 80-mph speed limits), but still really appreciated our overview of the country. The other posts from my Africa trip: Arusha , Tarangire National Park , South Serengeti Part 1 , South Serengeti Part 2 ,  the rest of the Serengeti tour ,  Ngorogoro Crater ,  Mt. Meru , Mt. Kenya, Part 1 , and Mt. Kenya, Part 2 .   We shifted from the Mt. Kenya trek to the safari at the park gate, and were soon bouncing along the roads down and around the mountain toward the Samburu Reserve--a drive of some 105 miles that took 5 hours, and dropped us from 9800' to about 3300'. The resulting increase in temperature sapped what was left of our energy, and the delay of lunch until after 3 p.m. nearly killed me. Road scenes: The mini-va