Amboseli

Unfortunately we had to leave Rombo for Amboseli. Part 2 of our work was recording the elephant movements, numbers and group make-up in the migration corridors from Mt Kilimanjaro to Amboseli national park. We would be staying at the Masai community campsite on the edge of the park, and due to the distance involved, driving off-road both morning and night. On these drives we would literally drive anywhere, over mini-trees and bushes, and once got stuck in a warthog hole.

It took a few hours driving in our beloved KSM (which had returned with Simba a week previous) to our new camp. The green acacia-bush filled hilly landscape of Romba changed to flat-very flat- dust and rocks. Often Simba has to stop the car completely, as the dust rose up into an opaque yellow-brown cloud making seeing more than an inch mast the window impossible. A few moments and the wind (which was ever present there) would sweep it away. On one such moment, the wind cleared the impenetrable dust-cloud, to reveal maybe 500 elephants strolling just meters past the front of our vehicle. That was our introduction to Amboseli!

It was a nice place, we seen lots of animals, and recorded literally 1oo's of elephants, and had a drive through the park itself to get a picture of the ever elusive lion. The camp was ok, running water and a bar nearby, but the same cess-pit toilet arrangement (I was starting to find the short whistle and "flump" of a number 2 quite satisfying), and the tents were raised on platforms along with the usual thatched over-roof. Bit too commercial and touristy compared to our 'home' in the wilds of Rombo, but good none-the-less.

The best and worst thing about the camp however was the back-faced vervet monkeys. They were up to all sorts, and Kimani, having lost his sugar-bowl once to a particularly brave raiding party, had even brought a catapult to fire warning shots when they came too close. They knew his face, and would scatter whenever he appeared out of the cooking hut, despite ignoring the rest of us.

I caught one of them trying to make-off with our tea-bags. Another tried to take off with my t-shirt that was drying outside my tent. Thankfully he dropped it, probably while laughing at me legging it towards him, shouting obscenities with my sun-burnt face and un-fastened boots trying to trip me up.
I was putting all my wet clothes into my tent, only tom come out to find he'd jumped onto the line and nicked my clothes peg. I threw a stone at him, which he easily dodged, and ran to the other side of my tent. I followed, throwing, shouting, running, over again until I was fit to collapse, panting and burning in the mid-day sun. I was starting to think he was playing with me, so stopped chasing and just watched him. True enough, he eventually stopped chewing the peg and watching me and ran over to Reece's tent, where he chewed one of the guy-ropes to make the tent partially collapse.
Another one had torn a hole in the bottom of our tent trying to get in. Thankfully I caught him in the act before he managed to get in, and fixed the hole with safety pins. So he came back and crapped on our door-step in protest.

Still, they were cute.