I managed to lock myself out of my house this morning, without my phone. After a moment’s panic, I decided to try breaking in to the house via the dog door. It worked frighteningly well — took about 10 seconds — which triggered a new panic that led to some last-minute home “improvements”. I just have to shake my head at myself.

Now I’m feeling very sleepy, hoping to remain so once we get onboard. Would make the flight go more quickly, at least.

Still lifes of strange vegetables delight me.

As do portraits.

Vermeer delights everyone.

Van Gogh delights Susan.

This piece, called “Two Mothers,” made my heart squeeze. Puppies!

...to here...

...to here.

Once there, we learned our guide had car trouble and would be late, but we enjoyed sitting outside at the airport, watching birds. Eventually we were on our way again.

I don’t know what I expected, but it was not the day we had. We knew we would be driven to the lodge. The fact that this was a game drive through Lake Manyara National Park had escaped us.

We made a stop at a Maasai village first and were treated first to a welcome dance and then to a display of crafts where we were enthusiastically urged to try on and buy dozens of items of jewelry.

It was market day and our guide drove us around it so we could have a look.

Afterward we headed to the park. We had amazing luck. An elephant walked right next to our Jeep. We found zebras and giraffe and Cape buffalo. We even saw a leopard — not at all common.

Back at the lodge, our butler had drawn a bath, which Susan enjoyed. I had a shower in the bamboo-walled stall on the porch. I washed to the sound of bush babies calling as the sun went down.

We were walked to dinner by lodge security — a necessary measure after dark since the camp is not fenced and elephants, lions, and leopards roam freely. Dinner in the lantern-lit boma was amazing. We are full and exhausted and will wake early for breakfast and another day of roaming the park. Can’t wait!

We were so close to her it almost felt like we could reach out and touch her paws.

Nearby was a larger group of lionesses further from the road, and a male lion on the ground under some bushes. Maybe he was just too lazy to climb.

We can back to a beautiful lunch, and when we returned to our room, there was a group of elephants browsing right behind our porch.

We went for a swim and when we came back, we found the elephants quite close — between our cabin and the next. It was thrilling and slightly intimidating. I think they were less than 50 feet from us.

We got ready for our night game drive, and on the way back to the main lodge, our butler (I still can’t get over the fact that we have a butler) appeared about thirty feet ahead and silently waved us into a different trail. The elephants were moving through the camp and it was too dangerous to approach. We could hear them rumbling and rustling, so close, but despite their size all we could see was the screen of foliage.

Our night drive took us back to the lake shore, and then up to check on the lions again. The lionesses has gone but the big male was lying in the road, getting ready for the night’s activities. We watched him for twenty minutes or more as he called out to the other lions and made his way slowly down the road.

The highlight of the evening came after night fell and we scanned the sides of the road with a spotlight. Unbelievably, we found a second leopard, and this one was quite unafraid of the vehicle. She lay down in front of us and washed and stretched before finally moving off into the underbrush.

Such an amazing day! Today we’ll make our way back to the Lake Manyara airport and then drive up to Ngorongoro.

Somewhere along the way our Jeep lost one of the front shock absorbers and so we rattled all the way to the airport. Later, we learned we’d also sprung a leak from one of the tires and made it just far enough to park and get out of the car before it went flat.

At the Lake Manyara airstrip, we said goodbye to Malley and Joseph and met our guide for the next stage of the journey. It turns out Kitoi is just as into birds and birding as Malley was so by the end of the day I’d amassed a grand total of 124 unique species for the trip thus far.

We drove to the lodge and were greeted by a small herd of zebra grazing in the center of the compound — our own private safari. We had lunch and were escorted to our room, which is frankly unbelievable.

We just had time to freshen up a little before we set out for a game drive in the crater. It took almost an hour to reach the entrance gate and another half an hour to make our way down to the floor. We had to stop several times for bird sightings, including a gorgeous little bee-eater actually eating a bee.

We had to be out of the park by 6:00 pm, so it was a race to make it to the ascent road. On the way we saw hundreds of wildebeest and gazelle, hyenas, jackals, and warthogs. Toward the end we actually got to see a black rhinoceros, though from too far away to photograph.

At one point we saw a Thompson’s gazelle running, and then hot on her heels came a jackal, slowly gaining ground. They ran right past our car and disappeared over the crest of a small hill. Did the gazelle make it? No way to know.

The road up the side of the crater was even steeper and more full of switchbacks than the way down had been. Susan closed her eyes and looked white during most of it.

She’ll have to endure the trip at least one more time, though, since we’re leaving the lodge at 6:00 am for a long morning drive. I’d better get to bed!

We followed them with the car and then I spotted a hyena carrying a chunk of a kill. It was walking slowly toward the road.

We could see the exact moment when it noticed the lions. Its ears came up and it froze for a second or two before abruptly changing direction and loping off toward the crater rim. I looked back and the lions looked just like housecats who’ve spotted a bird—intent, bodies slightly lowered, tail tips twitching.

We continued our journey around the crater floor and watched the sun rise over the rim. The light was incredible

We stopped for awhile at the hippo pool and in addition to seeing hippos up close for the first time, there was very good birding. The purple swamphen made a glorious appearance, and I was able to add red bishop, common waxbill, and red-knobbed coot to my list as well.

We saw many more lions as we meandered around the crater floor. There was a lone lioness, very large, resting and scenting the air.

A group of six lions, young males and adult females, walked through a terrified herd of zebra and wildebeest to a small pool of water, where they stopped to drink.

Later a group of lionesses and cubs stalked a herd of zebra near a marshy pond that clearly serves as a major watering hole. The hunt was spoiled, though, when the cubs were spotted by the zebra. In a flash, every head came up, and then everyone was trotting away along the edge of the marsh.

We stopped for breakfast at a picnic site near the water, and Kitoi made coffee and set out a small table and folding stools. As we ate, we saw that there were still more lions nearby, sleeping on the rocks overlooking the pond.

Breakfast was so late it was nearly lunch, so we made our way fairly quickly toward the ascent road. On the way, though, we stopped to watch an augur falcon catching frogs by the side of the road. Susan and Kitoi both groaned to watch it pulling the little thing apart.

We had just an hour at the lodge before we set out again, this time to Olduvai gorge. The road was deep washboard most of the way and Kitoi drove it so fast it rattled our teeth and we could barely hear one another speak. On the way we saw several Maasai villages and many, many giraffe. The further we went the dryer the terrain became and there were giraffe-browsed acacia as far as the eye could see. We saw a small herd eating a different kind of acacia low to the ground and Kitoi told us that those acacia form galls that house ants. When the giraffe browse them, the ants come out and bite, so they don’t spend much time browsing any individual plant.

At Olduvai, we enjoyed the museum and had a short talk from one of the docents explaining the site. Two groups were there digging, one from Rutgers and one from Indiana University, and we could see Maasai women working, sifting material though large screens.

Kitoi and I did some more birding on the museum grounds before we finally set out again down the rocky, rattling road back to the lodge.

We arrived dusty and exhausted, but back at our room our butler had left us a chilled bottle of sauvignon blanc. I sat on the porch and watched the birds for awhile before drawing what will certainly be one of the most epic baths of my lifetime. Quite a way to end an amazing day.

Once we arrived at the camp, we ate a quick lunch and got just a brief visit to our rooms, as we agreed on meeting for an evening game drive at 5:30 pm.

When we met our guides, they told us two cheetahs had been spotted nearby, and so we would drive straight there without stopping to look at the common animals. It took about twenty minutes to reach the spot, and when we did, we were not disappointed.

We were able to get very close to the cats — brothers estimated to be about six years old. We waited for awhile to see if they would go off to hunt, but at last we drove off uphill to have some drinks and watch the sun go down.

As we waited, we saw a hyena making its way through the scattered wildebeest. It seemed to be heading straight for the cheetahs, but eventually it veered off.

When the sun was down, we started back toward the lodge, and we had very good luck, spotting a genet, some scrub hares, a spring hare, several jackals, and most exciting of all, a serval.

We followed it along the road for some time before we were able to stop the Jeep and watch the cat hunt in the long grass.

It’s an early morning tomorrow, and another game drive. Who knows what surprises lie in store?

We also saw some baboons, which prompted our guide Alpha to mention that baboons are known to be thieves, even stealing things from cars and carrying them off. This seemed to bode ill for our chances of finding a small dark gray bag in the middle of a scrubby plain.

Shortly after the lion sighting above, however, the lodge called on the radio to say that Susan’s bag had been found in the room. It had fallen between the bed and the night table. This obviously brightened our mood and we drove on to a site where the guides parked to cook our breakfast.

While the scene was lovely, I was feeling increasingly ill. I had little appetite, but decided it would be a good idea to try to eat at least something. On about the second bite, however, a piece broke off from one of my teeth.

I don’t remember a whole lot from the rest of the drive back to the lodge. We skipped lunch and went back to the room where I fell immediately asleep on the bed for a couple of hours.

When I woke, Susan was reading on the porch and a herd of five elephants were browsing on the slope below.

It was a relaxing afternoon and I was refreshed enough to go for an evening game drive. We met up with the lion pairs again and got to see one pair mating (or rather making efforts in that direction — the male and female seemed to alternate in their degree of interest). On the way back to the lodge we came across a young hyena (or “coyote” as Tom inexplicably insisted on calling them).

We were exhausted and went straight to dinner, and from there to bed.

We came across a wildebeest that had been killed — but not eaten—by the lions. They had pulled it down and gnawed a bit in the chest, but it was otherwise mostly intact. An opportunistic kill, our guide explained.

We stopped for breakfast near the same spot as yesterday and then drove around the back side of the hill. We found a surprise — a very young wildebeest calf with its mother. It was no more than a couple of weeks old and nearly seven months out of season. I’m not sure how it will fare on the great migration, with no other young ones around to draw the predators’ attention.

We were heading up the hill opposite the camp when Franko pointed excitedly at the ground.

“Snake!” he said. A six foot rock python was sliding toward a shrub, and we hopped down to have a look. Neither Alpha nor Frank seemed to share our previous guides’ disgust with reptiles, and so we got a very close look at the snake. It was as thick as my calf and beautifully marked.

Later in the drive we saw a flock of vultures and a lone marabou stork feeding in a dead zebra. This one had likely died on its own, rather than having been killed, since the birds seemed to be having trouble getting through the hide. They were greedily making an entry through the anus instead, since they could get their beaks into the softer tissues inside. Alpha explained that these vultures — mostly Rüppell’s griffon vultures, with a few African white-backed — were not strong enough to get through the hide. For that, they need the help of the lappet-faced vultures, which hadn’t yet found the carcass.

We headed back to the lodge for lunch and a rest, and watched the clouds move down the valley. Around 4:30 the rains came, drenching everything but passing quickly.

After, I went to meet Alpha for a bird walk around the camp. It seems he may have misunderstood, my request because he showed up with a rifle slung over his shoulder. We cleared up that confusion and just as we were about to set off (sans rifle), Franko came hurrying up with a pair of binoculars around his neck and a big smile. “I will come too!” he said. I think he wanted the practice. I’m continually amazed by how hard the guides work and how eager they are to learn more. This company, &beyond, requires additional training over and above the months at the wildlife college, and it shows.

When I returned from the bird walk, there was a surprise waiting.

We had dinner on our porch, lit by lanterns and watched over by a very stoic member of security. He speaks very little English, so there was a moment of great awkwardness when he showed up around 7:30. He appeared suddenly on our porch and greeted us with a smile. And then stood there looking at us. Since we had no idea why he was there, we didn’t know what to say either but fortunately our butler Hussein showed up before the moment stretched out too far.

Dinner was lovely, an excellent way to end our last full day at Klein’s camp.

We boarded and the plane was almost completely full and approximately 700° inside. Thankfully it was just a short trip to Senonera for our refuel stop. A few people got off there and fewer got on, so by the time we left for Kilimanjaro I no longer felt quite so much like I was in a tin can someone had tossed into a fire.

The flight lasted about an hour and we passed over Oldoinyo Lengai, an active volcano that last erupted in 2006. As we passed it, I looked out and was startled to see how close we were to it. I was thinking how I would have liked to have my camera when the plane banked steeply and I got an even closer look at the caldera. The pilot proceeded to make a complete circuit of the crater before we flew on. It was beautiful and disconcerting in equal measure.

Once at Kili, everything was a bit of a blur. We walked across the tarmac and with the help of a couple of airport staff navigated a seemingly endless series of checkpoints.

And now we wait. Our flight doesn’t board for a few more hours, so I predict we’ll get to know this gate area very, very well.