Safari time!

I probably violated some Kenyan law by going two weeks without seeing a game park. This was quickly rectified Sunday with a visit to Lake Nakuru National Park, two hours and 200,000 potholes northwest of Nairobi. The impetus for the trip was Veronica, a friend from Boston, who was in town for 36 hours and wanted the full Nairobi experience.

Veronica arrived a little weary. She had spent the previous three weeks in Mali visiting her sister, who works for a Canadian NGO in Bamako, the capital. On Friday night she went to the Bamako airport, ticket to Nairobi in hand, and was informed that the flight was full. You see, Veronica had not called to confirm her reservation, which the good people at Kenya Airways apparently felt was tantamount to flushing her ticket down the toilet. “Welcome to Africa,” Veronica said.

So she took the next day’s flight and, after a day-long layover in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, landed in Nairobi at 5:30 am Sunday, when I picked her up. We got back to my apartment to find our safari guide waiting. Welcome to Nairobi. We set off a half-hour later, the only two passengers in a 9-seater van.

The park is one of the most popular in Kenya, probably because of its proximity to Nairobi and the presence of pretty much every wild animal indigenous to the region. Just about all of them have been brought to the park from other places, but Nakuru isn’t a zoo; there’s virtually no human intervention and the animals roam freely as they would in the wild. We asked our guide Justice (his real name) whether we could step out of the van for a closer look; he told us that, by law, anyone walking on foot in the park can be shot on the spot. Fair enough.

From the safety of the van, then, we saw across zebras, rhinos, gazelles, impalas, flamingos, baboons, monkeys, German tourists and -- best of all -- giraffes that came within spitting distance of the van. I was most impressed by the giraffes, which are even odder looking in person than you’d expect, with weird prehistoric faces and spindly legs, while Veronica insisted we stop for every baby animal no matter the species. She was especially taken with a nuclear family of rhinos, mom and dad with baby, out for a Sunday walk.

When not gawking at the animals, we discussed whether zebras have truly fat asses or whether it’s the unflattering effect of the horizontal stripes; which country produces the most difficult tourists (Justice says it’s France); why baboons are so damn ugly; and which is the most popular animal (Justice says the giraffe). Justice was a cool guide, apart from getting annoyed that V and I decided to skip lunch in the park (a $20 tourist-trap buffet), and when he dropped us back at home we left him with a nice tip. We might be frugal, but we’re not French.


Why I should have gone into broadcast journalism

Due at the airport early Sunday anyway, I woke up a little earlier to catch the Internet radio broadcast of the USC-Oregon football game (anyone who thinks this is insane, Bhargavi, may be right). After a typical slow start on the road, my boys found their mojo and ended up burying the Ducks. Almost as entertaining as the Trojans’ offensive fireworks was the cheerfully inarticulate commentary of the USC radio broadcasters. My three favorite quotes:

1. “Bush running behind David Kirtman as he always does some of the time.”
2. “The USC faithful starting to make some noise down in our far leftern end zone.”
3. “Leinart trying to audibleize…”