We had a great family holiday to Loisaba over the kids' midterm break. This time we were able to convince the Fischer family to join us. Their 3 kids are the same ages as our three (plus they all get along!), so it worked out really well. It's still a long drive up there; nine hours of drive time plus border, lunch, and car trouble stops (there's always at least one). A long day, but soooo worth it.
Blown hose...temporarily fixed roadside to get us on our way
(We had Magnus with us for a couple of days before the rest of his family arrived. )
We made it!
Requisite excited pool jump shot upon arrival
Our amazing guide, Brown, took care of us as always. We spent the mornings doing walks, horseback rides, & camel rides while it was still a bit cooler which left our afternoons for pool time, games, reading, and game drives.
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| Brown and Lucky kept us safe and downwind from the elephants |
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| 50 year old leopard tortoise |
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We went horseback riding a couple of times, but the day we went early and (some) were surprised by a fabulous bush breakfast was really special. We even had to go a bit out of the way to avoid the big herd of elephant in our way.
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Of course there were sundowners. The kids even did a well-rehearsed Do-Re-Mi performance in exchange for Stefano serenading us with some opera.
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| Elephant rock with Brown. Can you see how it looks like an elephant? |
One night the girls went with Carolynn and Patrick to spend a night at the Starbeds. All kids agreed that it was then fair that since the girls got to sleep under the stars the boys got to ride (fly) down to Lewa to pick up Matt (where he was for a board meeting).
Anderson and Magnus were very happy to see six white rhino from the air. Dale must have been a very good pilot because both boys had to be woken up to see the landing back at Loisaba.
We spent most late afternoons on game-drives that ended in sundowners.
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| Gerenuk |
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| Super cool to see these monitor lizards fighting |
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| Hartebeest |
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| Dik-dik |
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| Grevvy's zebra |
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| Hippos...out of the water! |
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| Lots of young males around that liked to show off a bit. Much less intimidating from a car than it was from horseback or on foot |
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| Elephant tooth |
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| Brown picking some prickly pear so the kids could eat the fruit (sort of like a mild kiwi or pear taste) |
This cute little cub was safely in the middle of a pride of 12 lions. So cute.
We still had plenty of time around the beautiful camp...
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| This cat brought us birds and mice at dinner time. Wasn't that nice? |
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| Very curious kudu that liked to occasionally come check out camp |
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| Mt. Kenya at sunrise from our tent |
"Snake walk"....adults weren't too disappointed that Ollie didn't find any for us
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| Sundowners are served by these two beautiful ladies |
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| Completely normal to find an impala horn and elephant tooth on the kids' nightstand, right? |
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| Last sunrise from our tent |
Time to start the long drive back to Arusha, but still plenty of adventure to be had.
And then we got very, very lucky as we glanced this fellow trot across the road with a friend. We had tried to find dogs all week, but it wasn't until we had already left Loisaba and were driving through a neighboring research center did we spot some.
Then we hit some Nairobi traffic. Seriously this is a main highway going through Nairobi.
Finally back in Tanzania just in time for sunset. It was a long day, but an amazing trip.
