Carol and I took the nature walk up the hill, rising perhaps 100 feet above the level of the base. The view was spectacular of the plains rolling off into the distance with the dirt and gravel road heading north-northwest toward Kenya as far as we could see. We took a picture of a lizard on a rock before heading back to the car.

After Mrosso paid for our entrance into the park, we loaded back into the land cruiser and headed toward the equator (remember, the equator was now North of us). The road was dry and therefore dusty. This was not a problem when we were driving along until a vehicle came past from the opposite direction and billows of dust drifted into our car through the open windows and roof. We found that closing the windows just before the dust cloud hit us helped some, so the phrase "Dirt alert!" was coined and spoken loudly when someone noticed an approaching vehicle. At that call we would all slide our windows shut until we passed the cloud, then slide them open again to keep air circulating. It was moderately hot with direct sun, but as long as the air was moving it didn't feel oppressive.

The plains appeared to be fairly featureless in the Southern part with few trees. After about 30 minutes we approached a small copse of trees on the left of the road. As we passed them Mrosso slammed on the brakes, stopped and backed up. There, shaded from the sun and taking a nap were 5 lions! After watching them for a while, Mrosso concluded that it was a mother and four juveniles (probably teenagers, figuratively). Soon they tired of being ogled by tourists and moved off into the sun, giving us a good photo opportunity (results below!) A few miles farther along we approached another lone tree right beside the road. I jokingly commented, "Another lion tree." As we neared the tree, Mrosso slowed to look and unbelievably there were two lions lying in its shade. These scrambled up as soon as we stopped and moved into the tall grass, allowing us only one good picture of one of them. We joked for the rest of the afternoon about finding another "lion tree," but there were no more.

Directly across the road from the second lion tree was our first look at a sausage tree. Yes, that's actually what they are called. In the pictures below you can see why. The seed pods hanging from branches all over the tree look like link sausages. Mrosso told us that the locals use the seeds from these big pods to make a homemade beer.

After driving a long time in a mostly northerly direction, we finally turned right off the highway onto a smaller side road. "The way to the camp," Mrosso informed us. Ahead we could see some scattered trees, and then a line of trees obviously following a stream or river. As we began to pass through the trees we were introduced to the next form of wildlife Carol and I had never before encountered. Unfortunately Les, Linda and Mrosso were all very familiar with them. Tsetse flies! (The locals pronounce it "TET-see".) These horrid creatures are between a house fly and a horse fly in size, and they bite (suck blood, actually) very hard!

We quickly learned that although they were fairly easy to swat with a hand or even a hard object, they were almost impossible to kill or even injure. These insects seemed to be made of rubber. You could hit one hard with the palm of your hand, catching it between your hand and your leg. It would drop to the floor of the vehicle, but if you didn't stomp on it immediately it would simply fly away. Soon all five of us were slapping ourselves, stomping on the floor and muttering unprintable words. Even Mrosso was getting attacked. All attempts at game spotting came to a halt while we fought the flies. Linda had a paperback book she had been reading (actually a mystery, but Les called it "Linda's dirty book.") which became her weapon of choice against the flies. Occasionally she would catch a fly between the book and a window and actually crush it, but even when hit by the book as a swatter they would frequently just fly off! We only encountered them in the trees; once we regained open country the flies disappeared. Phew!

The sun was nearing the horizon as we drove on towards the elusive "camp." We slowed to pass through a low spot where the road crossed a stream bed and spotted a tiny deer-like animal called a dik-dik. Even full grown these little critters never grow taller than about 18 inches at the shoulder, so they all look like a newborn Bambi. Usually they are quite shy and won't linger when disturbed by a safari vehicle, but this one posed for us nicely, standing like a statue while we clicked away with the cameras. That spot was dubbed "dik-dik hollow," but although we traversed it every trip into and out of the camp, we never saw another dik-dik there.