Monday, April 23, 2018
I had a girl friend 35 years ago who was a great fan of "Dune," the popular science fiction novel by Frank Herbert. (Today, the term "fantasy" has apparently squeezed out "science fiction.") In my attempt to get or keep her enamored, I plowed into that 412 page novel, the first of a six book series. After Herbert went to the big sandbox in the sky in 1986, his son continued with more novels set before and after the time period of the original.
It did not take me many pages to shed the thought of reading anything else Dune-like, although I made it through the end of the work at hand. The romance ended soon thereafter, but the turgid Dune legacy has kept me away from any science fiction ever since, in any form. I haven't seen a "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" film for all this time. I went to see the first of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, "The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001), to help entertain Max the Wonder Boy, then a teenager. I recall beautiful scenery, but Frodo has faded while Fredo remains vivid in my mind. As for Harry Potter, I'm sticking with Harry Truman.
It did not take me many pages to shed the thought of reading anything else Dune-like, although I made it through the end of the work at hand. The romance ended soon thereafter, but the turgid Dune legacy has kept me away from any science fiction ever since, in any form. I haven't seen a "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" film for all this time. I went to see the first of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, "The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001), to help entertain Max the Wonder Boy, then a teenager. I recall beautiful scenery, but Frodo has faded while Fredo remains vivid in my mind. As for Harry Potter, I'm sticking with Harry Truman.
One lasting sci-fi memory, however, is the immortal Star Trek phrase "Beam me up, Scotty." This came to mind as we boarded United flight 134 to Zurich, Switzerland at Newark Airport at 6:30 PM Sunday evening, connecting to United flight 9764 to Nairobi, Kenya, scheduled to arrive at 6:40 PM local time Monday evening. Even after subtracting the seven hour time difference, that's a long trip. How nice if, in fact, Scotty could arrange a much faster means of getting us from place to place.
By the way, as with "Elementary, my dear Watson" and "Play it again, Sam," the phrase was never actually uttered in ur-Star Trek episodes. http://www.todayifoundout.com/
By the way, as with "Elementary, my dear Watson" and "Play it again, Sam," the phrase was never actually uttered in ur-Star Trek episodes. http://www.todayifoundout.com/
. . .
The flights went very well, no drama, (mostly) quiet babies, approximations of food, particularly good desserts - lemon sorbet and frozen crème brûlée. I made an observation on the Nairobi leg, a full Airbus with about 300 passengers that surprised me. Others may find it naive, even stupid. About 2/3 of the people on board were white, the others mostly black, a few Asian-appearing folk. Of course, many of the whites may be African, while many of the blacks may well be American or some European flavor. It just wasn't what I expected.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Our first full day in Kenya opened with heavy rains, which lasted for several hours as we drove east and then south from Nairobi to Kilima Safari Camp in the Amboseli National Park, our first stop. As in other developing countries, the acquisition of a motorbike seems to be the first accomplishment after meeting the immediate needs of food, shelter and clothing. An unusual local touch, probably in response to the weather, was umbrellas sitting upright over the drivers even as they flew along. Instead of a symmetrical round canopy, these umbrellas had a platypus-like trailing section to offer the semblance of protection to a passenger.
Once in the countryside, leaving the Long Island Expressway where we spent the first hour, there were frequent roadside animal sightings in the next three hours, but only of cows and goats, often intermingled, offering an encouraging picture of intergroup harmony. But, even before we reached Kilima Safari Camp at the edge of Amboseli National Park, we hit the big time. First, a small herd of zebras, really with stripes and everything. Then, down the road, a large group of giraffes, about two dozen majestic creatures. Everyone jumped out of our vans to watch, take photographs and marvel, but it got better. After we checked into our large, beautifully furnished cabin, we went out to look for animals and we struck gold. Elephants, zebras, two kinds of gazelles, jackals and lions, plus vultures and crown cranes. The lions were the trophy sighting. We were the second or third van to pull over to see the lions, but within minutes there were 20 or more vans, minibuses, Land Rovers and Land Cruisers summoned in Swahili by the first drivers on the scene. The lion sighting was special not just because of their eminence in the jungle, but there are only about three dozen in Amboseli National Park.
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
We took an early morning drive around the park and saw hippopotamuses and wildebeests for the first time, as well as two families of elephants immediately in front and behind us.
Additionally, for Barbara Alfange and my other birder friends, we spotted some wonderful birds:
Black and gray herons
Ostriches (much larger than I imagined)
Crowned, blacksmith, spurwinged and long toed plovers
Black belllied bustards
Starlings
Pelican (1)
African spoonbill
Fulvous whistling ducks
Saddle billed and yellow billed storks
Black winged stilts
Fish eagle (1)
Egyptian geese
And that was all before breakfast!
Thursday, April 26, 2018
We left for Tanzania early this morning, but needed almost all day to get to Planet Lodge, Arusha, an urban hotel on lovely grounds that evoke the countryside. The extra long drive was necessitated by the washing away of a key bridge connecting Kenya and Tanzania, a result of the heaviest rains in East Africa for many decades. Fortunately, shortly after we we set out, we had two special sightings, which made the next many hours more bearable --three giraffes standing tall and three dozen baboons gamboling about within reach. At a rest stop on the way, I found cheeseburger-flavored Pringles on the market shelf. My curiosity was satisfied just by looking at the package.
Wi-Fi was not working at Kilima Safari Camp so reentry to the Internet at Planet Lodge was a bit like a return from space. However, I decided to reconstruct the wins and losses for the Mets since the weekend rather than keep up with the hirings and firings in Washington in the same period.
Friday, April 27, 2018
Arusha was only an intermediate stop to limit the day's driving time to about the length of some Trump appointments. Again it was early to rise and hit the road to Ngorongoro Serena Safari Lodge on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater, a geological phenomenon about 20 kilometers across and 600 meters deep (nearly 12 1/2 miles and 1,970 feet).
Much of the ride for the last two days was through Maasai country, who number about 800,000 in Tanzania and closer to 900,000 in Kenya. Many (most?) of them stick to the old-fashioned ways, wrapped in colorful robes, wearing bright beaded jewelery, devoted to herding their cows and horses, the men notably thin and rangy, polygamous with their wives literally doing the heavy lifting.
The long ride was broken up by a visit to Lake Manyara National Park, kept lushly green year round by spring water from the highlands in contrast to Amboseli which is usually arid except for the rainy season. While we did not see any of the park's famous tree-climbing lions, we added to our animal collection by sighting a Cape Buffalo, impalas and wart hogs. Also, we added to our existing inventory of animals were more zebras, wildebeests, baboons and ten hippopotamuses languishing in a shallow pond.
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Another early wake-up call and then a drive down to the floor of the crater. The Ngorongoro Crater was formed when a large volcano exploded and collapsed on itself over 2 million years ago, or in the 1820s on the Creationist Calendar. Except for a few toilets and unpaved roads, it remains wild, populated by a wide variety of animals. Today, we saw hyenas and a black rhinoceros for the first time. We also saw lions and hippopotamuses much closer than before, as well as hundreds of wildebeests, zebras and gazelles. In the bird department, we made initial sightings of an African harrier hawk and flamingos.
So where are his pictures, you might ask? Why is he wasting my time with all of his verbiage. Well, some unannounced conflict seems to have arisen among Samsung, Google and Blogspot, leaving me unillustrated and only partially illuminating. Too bad, I really got a great shot of the lion.
Friday, April 27, 2018
Arusha was only an intermediate stop to limit the day's driving time to about the length of some Trump appointments. Again it was early to rise and hit the road to Ngorongoro Serena Safari Lodge on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater, a geological phenomenon about 20 kilometers across and 600 meters deep (nearly 12 1/2 miles and 1,970 feet).
Much of the ride for the last two days was through Maasai country, who number about 800,000 in Tanzania and closer to 900,000 in Kenya. Many (most?) of them stick to the old-fashioned ways, wrapped in colorful robes, wearing bright beaded jewelery, devoted to herding their cows and horses, the men notably thin and rangy, polygamous with their wives literally doing the heavy lifting.
The long ride was broken up by a visit to Lake Manyara National Park, kept lushly green year round by spring water from the highlands in contrast to Amboseli which is usually arid except for the rainy season. While we did not see any of the park's famous tree-climbing lions, we added to our animal collection by sighting a Cape Buffalo, impalas and wart hogs. Also, we added to our existing inventory of animals were more zebras, wildebeests, baboons and ten hippopotamuses languishing in a shallow pond.
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Another early wake-up call and then a drive down to the floor of the crater. The Ngorongoro Crater was formed when a large volcano exploded and collapsed on itself over 2 million years ago, or in the 1820s on the Creationist Calendar. Except for a few toilets and unpaved roads, it remains wild, populated by a wide variety of animals. Today, we saw hyenas and a black rhinoceros for the first time. We also saw lions and hippopotamuses much closer than before, as well as hundreds of wildebeests, zebras and gazelles. In the bird department, we made initial sightings of an African harrier hawk and flamingos.
So where are his pictures, you might ask? Why is he wasting my time with all of his verbiage. Well, some unannounced conflict seems to have arisen among Samsung, Google and Blogspot, leaving me unillustrated and only partially illuminating. Too bad, I really got a great shot of the lion.