03|06|06 - 19|06|06 - Hjalli and MD travelled around Kenya and Tanzania with Exodus.  For this tabblo we have picked the best pictures we managed to capture with our beautiful new Canon D20 most of them using the marvellous 75-300m lense with image stabilizer.

In all we took some 1300-1400 pictures since we had brought with us some 5GB of memory space we were quite trigger happy.

What surprised us perhaps most in this trip was how close we were able to get to the animals.  That and how similar camping in Tanzania in June is to camping in Iceland in June.

We arrived in Nairobi and drove immediately out to Lake Naivasha, a fresh water lake north of Nairobi.

There we visited Elsemere, the home of Joy Adamson of Born Free fame.  The Colobus monkeys live near Elsemere and use every opportunity to grab a snack from the tourists when they have tea and crumptes on the lawn.

This is also where we had our first Safari walk.  We walked around Crater Lake game sanctuary, a private park which includes a lot of wildlife but no predators.  Therefore we could walk around and get very close to the animals on foot. Do you have any ideas how tall giraffes are?*

*Actually up to 5.2 meters

The neck of the giraffe is it's strong and weak point. This is where predators bite to kill. Predators rearly try however, because of how big the giraffes are. And because to defend itself the giraffe can swing it's head like a golf club and try for a hole in one with the predator.

The graceful and extremely friendly looking 'necking' between the giraffes is a way to set the pecking order. The strongest neck is boss. 

The herd of antilopes are Thompson's gazelles. The one with the authoritative horns is the boss. His posse is only made up of girls. 

Zebras, we found, are about as common in East Africa as sheep are in Iceland. Just much more beautiful.  You can see how they seem to crop up in the background of most of our pictures.

Next we went to Lake Nakuru of flamingo fame. 

There we came upon a very rare creature, the black rhino. There are estimated to be only 400 of them left in the world and two of them graced us with their presence just as we entered the park.

This was the first spotting for the 'great 5'. So named as the most difficult game to hunt in Africa. They are: Rhinos, lions, buffalos, leopards and elephants.  We were fortunate enough to see all of them.

The baboons were much more common and their babies could be spotted everywhere by their 'glowing' ears.

Giraffes of course try to blend in with the surroundings and have an uncanny ability to hide in the trees. This guy was convinced that we wouldn't spot him in the 'thicket'.

Below you can see a picture of me and Lake Nakuru.  The pink sliver on the water below are flamingos. Millions of them.  (If you click on the photo you can see it better).

There are two types of flamingos, greater and lesser flamingos. The lesser ones are pretty pink.

From Lake Nakuru we drove south to Tanzania where we spent a night at Lake Victoria.  Then we entered the most famous game park in the world; The Serengeti.

The Serengeti park and the surrounding conservation areas including Masain Mara (in Kenya) and the Ngorongoro crater are the size of Iceland.

And full of animals.

This leopard had selected a branch to nap on that almost crossed the road we were travelling.  It was maybe 10 m away from the truck.

Another one admired the view from the next tree.

Usually in our game drives we didn't see many other tourists, but an event like this of course drew a following.

Close by a lioness lay in the grass.  When she stood up and walked away we could hear the tourists in the Range Rover parked behind us swearing as she was too close to the car for them to photograph with their zoom lenses...

And then there were elephants, slowly grazing by the road. Didn't mind us at all.

The morning after we went on a balloon ride over the plains. The balloon took off at sunrise and the view was spectacular.

From the air we could see the heards of zebras as they are preparing to migrate up north where the rainy season has just ended and there is lush grass aplenty.

The Ngorongoro crater is a caldera like Askja but  more than 2 times bigger.  You can just imagine the forces that were at play when it was formed.

Before man it served as a natural conservation area because the animals that had somehow stumbled down there couldn't leave. Since there is enough water all year round there wasn't much reason to either.  Now there is one road down on the west side of the crater and another up on the east side. The drop is almost 1000 m from the edge so it can only be manouvered by 4x4 vehicles. 

The view from the campsite on the edge of the crater was magnificent. The campsite is 2500m above sea level and thus in many ways reminded us of camping in Iceland. Except for the elephants.

The Masai are allowed to live in the conservation area because they live in harmony with the wildlife with their cattle and goats. They never hunt for food and only kill if attacked. Their red woollen attire is a warning for lions to stay away.

The lions were up and wondering what was on the menu for breakfast. Usually they don't go for tourist. Or the Masaia. Must be the red colour.

Kilimanjaro is 5895m tall and rises majestically over the high planes.  The group walked up to first camp and down, above the cloud level.

(No, not me, I don't do up).

From Kilimanjaro we drove down to Dar es Salaam where we stayed one night and then sailed to Zanzibar.

There we stayed 2 nights in Stone Town (the main town on the island) and 2 nights on the beach up north.  There we stumbled upon a turtle aquarium but not much sun. We were there on the 17th of June and true to form it rained.

In Zanzibar the ocean is very important (being an island and all) and they build a lot of dhows (boats) for fishing and transport. This used to be a very important business center for the Indian ocean, mainly for spices and slaves.

This turtle aquarium is a natural lagoon and the conservationists pay the fishermen for bringin in turtles that get caught in their nets. Then they nurture the turtles and most importantly their young ones as soon as they are born.  A turtle can lay up to 250 eggs but in real life only about 5% of them survive.  At the aquarium they have a much better success rate and they let the turtles free when they're old enough to fend for themselves.

2007 (c) Hjalmar Gislason & Margret Dora Ragnarsdottir