by Mike Resnick

Except for a two-day stopover on the way to Tanzania, I
hadn't been to Kenya since 1987 -- yet Kenya was the country I had
become most associated with through my writings. My allegorical
history of it, PARADISE, had appeared in 1989, and my Kirinyaga
stories, based on Kenya's Kikuyu people, had begun appearing in
1988 and had won me a pair of Hugos and a batch of Hugo and Nebula
nominations. So, in 1992, it seemed to me that it was time to
return to Kenya once again, since it had proven the most fertile
source of story ideas for me.

Once again we made arrangements to go with our private guide,
former white hunter Perry Mason, who over the years had become a
close friend, and Pat and Roger Sims, who had accompanied us to
Egypt and Tanzania, decided to come along as well.

Thursday, September 17: We took off on Wednesday night and
landed in London Thursday morning. Since Carol and Pat both suffer
from jet lag, we decided to spend a day in London letting them
move their internal clocks ahead. As readers of these safari
diaries know by now, we do not fare very well in a) London airport
hotels, or b) bathrooms. The Skyline Sheraton was no exception.
The moment we were shown to our room, Carol entered the bathroom
to wash her hands and face...and found that though the latch
worked, there was no handle, and hence no way to open the door. So
she called through the door and asked me to open it from my side
-- which was when I found that there was no handle or knob on my
side of the door either. I called the front desk, they scouted
around for a maintenance man, he came up and disassembled the
door, and we moved to a new room. It later occurred to me that had
a single party taken the room, s/he might well have had to wait
for the maid to come by the next morning before getting released.

An inauspicious, if typical, beginning.

September 18: We hung around the hotel until midafternoon,
then went over to Heathrow to catch our 5:00 PM flight.

September 19: British Airways, in its infinite wisdom, has
revamped its schedule, and for reasons best known to itself now
releases 500 tourists and businessmen in Nairobi at 3:30 AM every
morning. Carol, Pat and Roger were exhausted; I felt fine. (I am
so big and airplane seats are so small and uncomfortable that my
consciousness invariably says, "No way am I putting up with this;
I'll see you when we land," and I'm usually asleep before the
plane takes off and Carol wakes me when we touch down.)

Perry, poor soul, was there to meet us and take us to the
Norfolk, where we had reserved a two-bedroom cottage which had
been home to Kermit Roosevelt, Bror Blixen and Robert Ruark, among
others. Everyone else went right to sleep, and I wandered around
looking for people with stories to tell. (You'd be surprised how
rare they are at 4:45 AM on a Saturday morning.)

Perry had just bought a lovely house in the Ngong Hills on
the aptly-named Windy Ridge Road, and he and his Significant
Other, Vivian Prince, author of _Kenya: The Years of Change_,
invited the four of us out to lunch there. It's a beautiful piece
of property, with gorgeous gardens, and enough room for them to
keep their horses, and except for occasional evening visits by the
local leopard, it is in every way idyllic.

In the afternoon we drove by Karen Blixen's house, and then
about a mile down the road to her first home, Sweda House, which
was eventually used to house her farm managers. Since Pat had an
upset stomach, we cancelled our dinner reservations at the
Carnivore and instead ordered about a trillion appetizers from the
Ibis Grill, which was perhaps 75 feet from the door of our
cottage, and had them delivered to our veranda. Except for the
lack of booze, Hemingway would have been proud.

September 20: We breakfasted early and drove north to Thika,
where we stopped at the historic Blue Posts Hotel. I am a
waterfall junkie, and on my last trip to Kenya, I had seen the
Chania Falls there (if you remember the old Tarzan television
series, this was the waterfall Ron Ely swung across every week
during the title credits). I had since found out that there was a
second waterfall there, totally hidden from view...and sure
enough, after trapsing through a forest and climbing down a couple
of hundred winding stone stairs, I came to it. Absolutely
beautiful, an experience spoiled only by the fact that I then had
to climb _up_ a couple of hundred winding stone stairs.

After we left Thika we drove into the Aberdares National
Park, and unpacked the box lunches the Norfolk had prepared for us
when we found a lovely site at about 11,000 feet, overlooking a
lush green valley. While we were eating, a small herd of elephants
began crossing the valley -- eight or nine matronly sorts with
their teenagers and their babies. And then Jumbo appeared. He
stood a good three feet higher at the shoulder than any of the
others, and was carrying the most magnificent ivory I've ever seen
on a living elephant. Perry estimated it at 80 to 100 pounds a
side. How he managed to stay unpoached long enough to grow those
molars is a mystery, but manage he did. He made a striking
picture, towering above all the others as he grazed his way across
the valley. I could have captured him on videotape with my
telephoto lens, but I decided not to. If no one else sees that
ivory and no one can tell from the picture's background where to
find him, maybe he'll still be around on my next trip to Kenya.

We left the park in midafternoon and drove a few miles over
to Sangare Ranch, which is owned by Mike and Jane Prettijon. They
have a truly luxurious home situated on some two thousand acres,
and Mike raises prize cattle while Jane (who also runs the gift
shop at the Aberdares Country Club) has imported a son of Olden
Times, a fine racehorse who won stakes races here from 6 to 14
furlongs, and breeds both flat racers and steeplchasers. (And
occasionally things that don't race at all, such as the zebroid we
saw that was sired by her stallion out of a Grevy's zebra. I
learned another fascinating and useless fact that afternoon: a
Grevy's zebra -- that's the pin-striped variety -- can conceive
when bred to a horse, but not when bred to a Burchell's, or
common, zebra. Go mull on that one for awhile.)

After we had been given a tour of the immediate grounds and
enjoyed tea on the house's hundred-foot-long veranda, we climbed
back into the car and drove another couple of miles to a totally
private, secluded lake that the Prettijons own. They had built a
two-bedroom cottage there (which we shared with Pat and Roger,
while Perry slept in a nearby tent). There is also a
kitchen/dining cabin, and they graciously allow their old friends
(of whom Perry is one) to stay there while on safari. Jane also
loaned us her chef, and somehow or other, with no electrical
power, so far from the nearest human beings that if you were to
fire a shotgun no one would hear it, we ate an exquisite dinner
topped off with individual chocolate souffles. Not bad fare for
the bush, and it more than made up for the fact that about a
thousand sacred ibis living on the lake screamed all night long.

September 21: This morning we went to another private ranch
that is not open to tourists, but where Perry was able to call
upon some old friendships to get us in: the Solio Ranch, which
along with raising cattle has a 15,000-acre game reserve in which
they raise rhinos for eventual release in the game parks. They've
been doing it for about 15 years, since the rhino crisis reached
critical levels, and haven't lost a single rhino to poachers yet,
probably because they hired a dozen of the most notorious poachers
in the country and paid them to guard the reserve.

(When Perry tried to impress the owner by stating one of his
clients was a writer, he almost blew it. The last writer they
allowed in was a journalist who caused them untold problems. It
seems that the day before he arrived, one of the rhinos got into a
huge battle with a hippo and wound up drowning. The morning the
writer showed up they had just pulled the rhino's corpse out of
the pond and removed his horn, which would be sold to China to
help pay for the reserve's upkeep. The writer took one look at the
dead, hornless rhino and reported that Solio was poaching its own
rhinos.)

Anyway, we took a three-hour game run through Solio, saw
ten rhinos and hundreds of other animals, then drove to Thomsen's
Falls and had a box lunch that the Sangare chef had prepared.
After that we drove down into the Rift Valley to Lake Baringo,
a bird-watcher's paradise, where we checked in at the very upscale
Lake Baringo Club.

September 22: We had breakfast with Hillary Garland, an old
friend of Perry's, who is the club's resident ornithologist and
leads daily bird walks. She told us that she had spotted more than
400 different species so far this month, and the migratory birds
hadn't started arriving yet.

Immediately after breakfast we drove to Lake Bogoria, about
30 miles away. It is the smallest, and probably the most unique,
of the Rift lakes, riddled with a number of hot-water geysers that
spout up from beneath the surface, and home to a sizeable number
of flamingos.

After lunch we took a boat trip around Lake Baringo, which
is loaded not only with birds but with hippos and crocodiles as
well. Carol, the bird-watcher in the family, was in seventh
heaven. (For those who are not as involved in birding, the Club
also offers camel safaris; they didn't look any more comfortable
here than they did in Egypt, and I elected not to take one.)
For dinner we were joined by David Markham, a great-nephew of
Beryl Markham's, who would be accompanying us for the next few
days in Perry's other safari vehicle, since I had insisted on
going to the newly-opened Matthews Range, more than a hundred
miles from the nearest source of auto parts, and Perry, who had
seen the roads up there, felt there was a fifty-fifty chance we'd
blow a couple of tires or break an axle and fully expected one
vehicle to wind up towing the other.

September 23: The first leg of the journey to the Matthews
Range took us through Samburu territory to the little frontier
town of Maralal, where we stopped at the Maralal Safari Lodge,
much upgraded since I was last there in 1986. We each had a two-
story wooden chalet overlooking a private park/preserve that was
filled with zebra, impala, eland, and warthog. One of the zebras
was limping, and we noticed she had managed to step into a tin
can, which she then could not remove from her foot; one of the
waiters told us that she'd been wearing it for two months, and it
hadn't stopped her from eating or getting pregnant.

Roger was becoming interested in spotting birds, but was
still having so much trouble with his "o'clocks" that I thought
Carol might kill him. ("Bird," Roger would say. "Where?" Carol
would ask. "Three o'clock," he would say. She would look to her
right. "There's nothing there," she would answer. "Nine o'clock,"
Roger would amend. She would look to her left. "There's nothing
there, either," she would say; "point to it." Roger would point
straight ahead. "That's twelve o'clock," she would explain; "now,
where is the bird?" "It flew away," Roger would answer, never
realizing how close to death he had just come.)

(Roger, despite being the 1959 worldcon chairman and the 1988
worldcon Fan Guest of Honor, has certain problems in the areas of
math and spontenaeity. Once, a few years back, at a Windycon,
Lynne Aronson was explaining some mathematical trick whereby you
did a lot of things to a number -- multiplied it by such-and-so,
subtracted such-and-so, etc. -- and no matter what number you
chose, when you finished the process you always came up with the
same total. Roger wanted to try it, so Lynne told him to choose a
number between one and ten to work with. Roger spent about half a
minute considering his selection; when he still hadn't come up
with a number, I took him aside and explained that this was the
_easy_ part.)

Perry was worried about running out of fuel in the trackless
wastes of the Matthews Range, so he and David drove into Maralal
in the afternoon to top off the vehicles -- and found that there
was no deisel fuel to be had. Ever resourceful, he discovered that
the Lodge had a private cache of 30 gallons, and managed to buy it
before anyone else knew it was there.

September 24: Perry had written me that the last part of the
journey to Kitich Camp in the Matthews Range was "adventure
motoring", but I don't think I truly understood what he meant.
When we left Maralal at eight in the morning (he took Pat and
Roger, while Carol and I followed with David), he estimated that
we'd get there at about noon. At 10:30, we came to a sign saying
that we were only 29 kilometers (about 20 miles) from the camp,
and David suggested that Perry had been overly cautious in his
estimate and that we'd be in camp by eleven.

We got there at 12:40, after going up and down a bunch of the
worst _luggas_ (dry river beds) I'd ever seen on a winding
mountain path that was a road by definition only. Toby, the camp
manager, was a few hours late greeting us; he had gone to
(relatively) nearby Wamba for supplies and had _six_ blow-outs on
the way back.

Still, once we were there, we had to admit it was worth the
effort. Or at least Carol and I had to; Pat and Roger aren't as
heavily into what can best be termed Primitive Camping. Just
beyond the back of our tent was a bucket shower; it consisted of a
canvas bag that could be filled with hot water. The procedure was
this: you stepped under it, pulled a cord that started the water
coming down, got wet, pulled another cord that shut off the flow
of water, soaped yourself down, then pulled the first cord and
rinsed yourself off with the remaining water.

The toilet was just as primitive and just as efficient. It
consisted of a modern toilet seat atop a wooden box that was
perhaps two feet high and 30 inches on a side. When you opened it,
you looked down a thirty-foot pit. (Yes, water is at a premium in
the Matthews Range.)

The tents -- there were ten of them -- were situated on the
bank of a river, though since this was the dry season the river
had become a swamp. Nonetheless, there was still water there, and
an endless string of buffalo, waterbuck and elephant came by to
drink. And every evening, regular as clockwork, a leopard came by
at 7:00 to feed on the bait that had been tied to a tree just
across the river. Our dinner was never served until he was through
with his.

September 25: One of the problems with a newly-established
camp in a newly-opened territory is that there isn't much to do.
Although the area was filled with game -- we heard lions coughing
all night long -- there were no tracks the cars could follow for a
game run. So what Kitich did was offer three different walks, all
escorted by Samburu warriors armed with spears. The tough one was
a 6-hour walk up the entire mountain. The intermediate one was a
four-hour walk straight up to something called Baboon Rock, which
we could see hovering a few thousand forested feet above us. The
easy one, so they said, was an hour's hike to a secret swimming
hole in the depths of the forest. Since Carol, still a couple of
months away from 50, was the youngest and fittest of our little
party, we chose the easy one.

We were victims of false doctrine. It should have been called
the Minimally Less Excruciating One.

We started walking in the heat of the day -- and despite
being at altitude, it was _hot_ -- and followed this two-foot-wide
winding path that was studded with unseen tree roots, up and down
very steep hills, through thornbush that seemed to have a taste
for human flesh, jumping over the first column of safari ants
("marabunta", for you Lynangen fans) I'd ever seen, at just enough
altitude that oxygen was difficult to come by. Perry, who used to
scamper up and down mountains in pursuit of game without drawing a
deep breath, had broken his pelvis a couple of years ago, and was
in as much discomfort as the rest of us, as was David, who was
just along to help out his friend.

After an hour and a half, we finally reached the old swimming
hole (after passing four others of almost identical proportions).
No one swam. Mostly what we did was lean against some near
perpendicular rocks (there was no place to sit), tried not to fall
in, and spent the next thirty minutes trying to catch our breaths
and rub a little life back into our legs. (Well, I shouldn't say
that no one swam; our two Samburu guides, who assured us they had
slowed the pace down to half their normal speed, frolicked like a
couple of dolphins.)

The walk back was even worse. I kept watching Pat and Perry,
and saying to myself that I wouldn't collapse first, but the
second they did, the shortest measurable segment of time would be
the interval between that and my collapsing on top of them. (They
later told me that they were waiting for me to sit down first,
after which they would have gone on strike and joined me.) We
staggered into camp (everyone but Carol, who takes 15 hours of
aerobics and power walks every week; in other words, she cheats),
emptied the bar of warm beer, and trudged off to our tents, where
we all slept the afternoon away. Toby, the camp manager, upon
seeing our condition, thoughtfully had one of the Samburu fill all
the shower bags with hot water; by the time I woke up and took
mine, it was night in the mountains and ice wouldn't have melted
in that damned bag. I stepped under it, immediately hit J above
high Q, and scared off all the lions.

September 26: We left Kitich right after an early breakfast,
sped through the first 20 miles in a mere 90 minutes, and drove
two more hours to Buffalo Springs, Carol's favorite African
location, where we transferred ourselves and our luggage back into
Perry's safari car and bid David farewell.

The camp hadn't changed much since our last visit there in
1987, except that a number of the tents had been replaced by more
permanent bandas (primitive cottages). Carol prefers tents, so
while Perry and the Simses moved into bandas, we were given a
tent. Unfortunately, it was right next to the open-air dining
room, and some wildlife society was holding a banquet there, and
it was so loud that we decided to move farther away into a banda
as well.

We'd been out of touch with the world for a few days, and we
started catching up on news. Though Ross Perot's re-entry into the
presidential race hadn't made the Kenya papers, we did find out
that the Cincinnati Reds' outfielder Bip Roberts had tied a record
by getting ten hits in a row, which will give you some notion of
Perot's appeal outside the borders of the United States. We also
found that Robin Hurt, a friend of Perry's who I had met in 1989,
had been pretty badly ripped up going into the Tanzanian bush
after a leopard one of his clients had wounded. (Robin is the star
of _In The Blood_, the wonderful documentary film about the recent
safari taken by Theodore Roosevelt IV and V.)

We took an afternoon game run through Buffalo Springs, but
while we saw Reticulated giraffe, Grevy's zebra, gerunuk, and a
number of the animals common to the Northern Frontier, there
wasn't much quantity. Most of them were by the Oaso Nyiro River in
the adjacent Samburu reserve, and we decided to go there in the
morning.

September 27: This morning we took the best game run we've
ever had in the Buffalo Springs/Samburu reserves. We saw a few
small herds of elephant, a lot of oryx, Grevy's zebra, giraffe,
impala, warthogs, Grant's gazelles, even a pair of Greater Kudu,
plus crocs, hippos, and a truly enormous monitor lizard.

Roger had his usual problems with avian identification.
(Roger: "Look over there!" Mike: "Where?" Roger [without
indicating a direction]: "There. It's got a yellow bottom." Mike:
"Let's start with the basics. Is it a bird?") We stopped for fuel
at the Samburu Lodge, and then Perry drove us over to Kenya's
premiere tented camp, Larsen's, on the banks of the Oaso Nyiro.
It's a beautiful place, on a lawn that looks rolled, and the tents
are so luxurious that your first inclination is to ask where the
private jacouzzi is -- but Carol remains adamant: she loves the
stark scenery at Buffalo Springs, and we'll be staying there again
on our next Kenyan safari.

Since the morning game run ran well over four hours, we took
a much briefer one in the afternoon, again sticking close to the
river. In between them, Roger and I stopped by to watch some
Samburu dancers strut their stuff, and visited the garbage dump
about half a mile from our camp, where we found some 200 baboons
busy making a living off our leavings.

September 28: We drove to Mount Kenya, where we checked in at
Adnan Khoshoggi's former estate, Ol Pejata (which means "The
Meeting Place" in Maa, the language of the Maasai.) Talk about
luxurious! He had a bed that would comfortably fit ten people, a
pair of swimming pools, an exercise room, a bathtub you could
practically swim in, and about two million dollars in exquisite
furnishings. We shared a two-bedroom guest cottage with Pat and
Roger; it was furnished identically to the main house, had a
fireplace, and private verandas off each bedroom.

Ol Pejata is a 110,000-acre estate, of which 75,000 acres are
ranched, and 35,000 acres are a private reserve filled with game,
quite large enough for Khoshoggi to blow away all the animals he
wanted. (Hunting is illegal in Kenya, but anyone can hunt on his
own property). We took a game run in the afternoon and saw
literally thousands of animals, including some rare bushbucks.
There are 17 rhino on the place; 16 are wild, and have enough
brains not to show their horns to strangers...but the 17th, named
Morani, is tame, and poses for photos with visitors. He also eats
hard candies, with a tongue that could take the skin off your
hand.

On the road to Ol Pejata, we had passed perhaps 75 relief
trucks going north to Somalia. One of their last stops in Kenya is
the outpost town of Wajir. (To show you how Africa works, there
was an item in the paper about Wajir, to the effect that a dead
camel was floating in the dam at Wajir and poisoning the water
supply. What's unusual about that? Nothing...except that he'd been
poisoning it for nine days, and no one had thought to remove the
carcass yet.)

September 29: After breakfast and a brief game run, we drove
an hour around the mountain and checked in at the Mt. Kenya Safari
Club. (About a mile from the entrance, we passed the uniquely-
named Our Lady of Mount Kenya church.) The club is under new
ownership -- Lonrho Corporation (for "_Lon_don and _Rho_desia) had
bought it, as well as Ol Pejata and the Norfolk, making them
Kenya's most upscale hotelier -- and they had poured about three
million dollars' worth of improvements into the place since we'd
been there last. We checked into a private two-bedroom cottage and
went over for lunch, which was the usual buffet spread over eight
long tables with enough selections to put you on tilt.

They've started an art gallery there, and I fell in love with
a bronze elephant herd rendered by former white hunter Tony
Matthews, which was going for a mere $55,000. Perry, who is a
friend of Tony's, told me if I really wanted it, he'd introduce me
to Tony, who would probably be happy to knock $5,000 off the
price. Perry thinks all American writers are in Stephen King's
income bracket; it broke my heart, but I had to enlighten him.
Perry is also a member of the Safari Club, so while 95% of
the guests went into the main dining room for the usual 5-star
meal, we accompanied him to the private Member's Dining Room for a
ten-course feast that began with spring rolls, then a fish
appetizer, then Eggs Florentine, then a salad, worked its way
through sliced duck in fruit sauce, and wound up with a pair of
desserts. I sure do like roughing it in Africa.

September 30: I have never been even mildly sick on safari,
but I woke up at about 4:30 in the morning, totally nauseous, with
severe pains in my stomach. When I didn't feel any better after
half an hour, I phoned the doctor (the club has one on call), an
Indian who told me that it sounded like a mild case of food
poisoning and he would send a nurse over with some pills at 9:00.
I was too sick to argue that I wanted them _now_.

So sure enough, at 9:00, in walks the nurse, and gives me a
packet of pills and tells me to take one every three hours. I took
one, and then next thing I knew, Carol was shaking me awake at
noon to give me another. I took it, promptly fell asleep again,
and was awakened at 3:00 for a third pill.

I don't remember a thing after that, but at 6:00 in the
evening Carol decided not to give me any more pills, since I was
just about comatose, and she made up her mind to find out what was
in them. Turns out that it was belladonna and hydrogen chloride --
exactly what you use for a Mickey Finn. Seems the doctor figured
my stomach was going to hurt for a day no matter what he gave me,
so he simply knocked me out until my system had righted itself.

Problem is, I don't react well to drugs -- or, put a
different way, I over-react to them. A codeine pill is enough to
knock me out for 24 hours; I'd be a cheap date for a junkie. So,
after Carol made me drink a bowl of soup, I went back to sleep for
another 14 hours. It became my Lost Safari Day.

October 1: Carol shook me awake at 9:00 and declared that I
should get dressed, walk around, and try to shake the effects of
my three Mickeys. I was too sleepy to curse her and too weak to
take a swing at her, so I did what she ordered.

We had planned to visit Lewa Downs, another private ranch
specializing in rhinos and some of the rarer antelopes, this day,
but it looked like it was going to rain, and it was a two-hour
drive each way, and I still needed some dust jacket photos of me
with the peak of Kirinyaga (Mt. Kenya) in the background, so we
decided to drive up the mountain instead.

We never did get the photos. The mountain was covered in
clouds and fog, and before we hit 12,000 feet in altitude it
started pouring, which gave us a slow but inadvertantly exciting
ride back down the dirt track to the Club, which is at 7,000 feet.
Once there I promptly fell asleep again for the rest of the
afternoon.

I didn't really feel like getting dressed up and eating in
the Member's Dining Room -- for one thing, I couldn't face another
10-course meal so soon -- so I opted for room service. Since it
was cold and raining, Carol, Pat and Roger did the same, leaving
Perry to dine in private splendor while we had Alfonse (yes, he's
Kikuyu, and yes, that's his real name) light a blaze in our
fireplace and bring us our dinner. (My only memory of it is
that I skipped the appetizers and main course, and had three bowls
of chocolate ice cream.)

Oh, yes -- one other thing. The doors expanded slightly due
to all the moisture in the air, and Carol, at whose consistency I
marvel, managed to trap herself in the bathroom again.

October 2: I was finally feeling undrugged again, and we
drove south to Nairobi, where Vivian took us to lunch at the
elegant Horseman restaurant in Karen, while Perry tended to his
vehicles. Then we drove to little Wilson Airport, hopped into a
plane, and flew out to the Maasai Mara game reserve.

The migration had been exceptionally good this year, and some
1.5 million wildebeest and half a million zebra were still there,
prior to returning to Serengeti when the rains came. On the way
from the landing strip to our camp, we passed close to a dozen
very fat lions, a couple of herds of elephant, and perhaps 100,000
wildebeest, easily the stupidest, ugliest, and most successful
animal in East Africa.

We love the Mara, but we hadn't been enamoured of the
previous camps we had stayed at. Cotter's, at the other end of the
reserve, had delightfully idiosyncratic guests, but was too far
from the game. Governor's was right next to the game, but too
damned large and impersonal. We had looked in on a couple of
others, including the luxurious Keekorok Lodge, and none of them
had appealed to us. But this time we found a camp we loved, Little
Governor's, about three miles up the Mara River from the larger
Governor's. We had to take a boat across the river to get there,
but there were only 15 tents, the food was excellent, and there
was game literally in front of our tent flaps. In fact, at one
point we had to make a dignified retreat from our breakfast table
when an elephant, smelling the citrus drinks, mosied over for a
taste; and on another occasion, when crossing the river on the way
back from a game run, we had to stay in a little banda on the
shore, which had been built for just this purpose, until they
cleared the buffalo from the path to the tents.

October 3: We had a pair of fabulous game runs, and saw all
of the Big Five (elephant, leopard, lion, rhino, and buffalo.) I
got some wonderful footage of all of them, plus a trio of lion
cubs playing (and a fat, dozing Papa Lion reprimanding one of them
for jumping on his stomach). I also photographed a line of milling
wildebeest that we estimated, conservatively, to be more than two
miles long; in fact, even with binoculars, we never did see the
end of it.) It was a beautiful day, with game everywhere, and
Perry able to find every last bit of it.

It clouded up and started raining this evening, which didn't
bode well for the next couple of days -- the rains aren't due
until late October -- but nothing could spoil the memories of
those two game runs.

This was also the day I learned that if you want your waiter
to take your not-quite-empty plate away, you place your knife and
fork, parallel to each other, on the plate. Took me fifty years to
learn that one.

October 4: We went out after a mild rain and managed to get
some footage of the rarest of African mammals, the aardwolf, a
totally-nocturnal insectivore who looks like a smallish striped
hyena and had been fooled by the cloud cover into thinking it was
still night out. (I have more than a thousand volumes in my
African library, many of them heavily illustrated; there are a
grand total of two photographs of aardwolves.) I also turned
animal pornographer and got some excellent footage of lions
mating. On the way back to camp for lunch, we passed a number of
stranded minibuses bogged down in the mud, all of them filled with
rather unhappy-looking package tourists -- one more reason why we
always go in a four-wheel-drive Land Cruiser.

It began raining in earnest right after lunch, and turned
quite chilly. Carol feels the cold more than I do, and elected to
skip the afternoon game run, and Roger had an upset stomach, so
our noble little group got a bit nobler and a bit littler, and
only Pat and I went out on the afternoon game run. A big storm was
coming from the west, so we tried to outrun it in the hope it
might veer off. It caught us 18 miles out from camp and
practically drowned us, but while the tracks were so submerged
that you literally couldn't see them, our Land Cruiser negotiated
the terrain with no (well, very little) difficulty.

Most of the carnivores had the brains to find shelter, but
not the grass-eaters, and especially not the wildebeest. We came
to one spot I've dubbed Wildebeest Valley, where literally half a
million of them were mulling about, looking wet and miserable, but
not making the slightest effort to stand under trees. The only
animals who looked happy were a family of bat-eared foxes, who
thrive on the flying ants that get flooded out of their nests in
the rain, and were catching up on their calories. A herd of
buffalo was waiting for us upon our return to camp, which
necessitated our circling them on a little-used path that bogged
us down ankle-deep in mud. Still, it was an interesting
experience, taking a game run in a tropical downpour; I wouldn't
want to make a habit of it, but I'm glad I did it once.

October 5: We took an early-morning game run before
breakfast, and I taped a fabulous little family drama. We saw a
trio of hyenas harrassing a quintet of warthogs. They didn't want
to eat them, but they seemed bound and determined to drive them
away, even to the point of using themselves as bait to elicit
charges. As the enraged and frustrated warthogs moved a couple of
hundred yards away, still chasing the hyenas, we pulled a little
closer and saw that the warthogs had been rooting around just a
few yards from the hyenas' den, which housed four cubs. Still, the
den seemed secure, and we couldn't figure out why the hyenas were
risking injury just to move the warthogs away -- and then, coming
from another direction, we saw a very pregnant hyena herding a
fifth cub back to the den. Evidently he had wandered out, where he
was fair game for lions, leopards, cheetahs, and some of the
larger raptors, and the hyenas realized that they couldn't safely
bring him back to the den until the warthogs were in a position
where they couldn't see him.

We ate breakfast, flew to Nairobi, and were turned over to
Vivian's care while Perry drove on to Mombasa, where he would meet
us the next morning. We had opted to take the Lunatic Express
(the Mombasa-Uganda train, so-called because it cost a thousand
pounds a mile to build it back in 1901, and as a member of
Parliament complained, only a lunatic would spend that much money
to build a railroad to nowhere). The train is a vital part of
Kenya's history -- there is a famous photo of Teddy Roosevelt and
F. C. Selous sitting above the cow-catcher on Roosevelt's 1909
safari, and it is also the line that attracted the notorious Man-
Eaters of Tsavo -- and it would be going through both the Nairobi
Game Park and Tsavo West National Park before dark. I'd been
looking forward to riding it for years, so we reserved a pair of
sleeping compartments and, after eating lunch at the Norfolk's
Delamere Terrace and doing a little shopping, we showed up at the
station, prepared for a new and wonderful experience.
Well, it was a new experience, anyway.

First of all, the compartments weren't the Pullman
compartments we all remembered from taking trains in our youth.
They were approximately three by six feet each, connected to each
other by a door.

The car we were assigned to hadn't been washed, or even
dusted, since Teddy Roosevelt's safari. There were ten
compartments; ours were the only ones in which the seats weren't
ripped. There was one toilet per car; you took one look into it
and prayed for constipation.

Our particular compartments were not without their problems
either. Each had an upper and a lower berth. The second I sat
down, the upper berth fell onto my head. The door between our
compartment and the Sims' was stuck. Carol checked out the sink:
it looked like an entire regiment of coal miners had washed in it
earlier in the day; the Sims' sink looked much the same, except
that their drain didn't work and it was filled with filthy water.

Carol gave me a look that said: This was all your idea; do
something or you are going to suffer the tortures of the damned
for the next 25 years, give or take an hour.

So I had Vivian get someone in authority, who then sent for
a repairman who looked at the door and the bed and said, yeah,
you sure do seem to have a problem here, and promptly vanished. It
was now 40 minutes before the train was due to begin its leisurely
15-hour journey to Mombasa, and about five minutes later another
repairman came and tried to fix the door. No one had given him any
tools, so he attempted to disassemble the door with his keys. They
didn't work, and he went off to find a screwdriver.

He came back about 10 minutes later, fixed the door, and
screwed the upper birth back into place, explaining that when it
was time to go to sleep all we had to do was find him somewhere on
the train and he would happily unscrew it for us. He then went off
to find a plumber -- and as he did so, the seat collapsed beneath
us.

"That's it," announced Carol, getting to her feet. "You do
what you want. I'm going to the Norfolk and flying to Mombasa in
the morning."

That sounded like a pretty good idea to the rest of us, so we
left the train and had Vivian try to get us on a morning flight.
Unfortunately, both morning flights were sold out, but she managed
to book us four seats on the plane that was leaving in four hours.
I volunteered to pay for all the tickets, since I was the one who
had put the train ride on our itinerary, and at 10:00 that evening
we piled into the Nyali Beach Hotel, turned on the air-
conditioning, ordered meals from room service (the restaurant had
already closed), and went to bed, while Vivian, back in Nairobi,
was trying to figure out where Perry would stop for dinner or to
spend the night so she could tell him not to meet us at the train
station.

That's another thing I like about private safaris: they're
_flexible_. Try hopping off the train and booking a plane if
you're with a package tour and see what happens.

On the other hand, what package tour would book you on the
Lunatic Express?

October 6: The message got through, and Perry got to the
Nyali Beach Hotel just as we were finishing breakfast. (He
mentioned that he hadn't seen any sign of the train on his way in
through Tsavo, which meant that it was its usual six hours late.
Just as well we didn't stay on it; had we done so, I figure the
divorce papers would be arriving just about the time I type this
paragraph.)

We got into the safari car and drove an hour and a half south
to the Shimba Hills Reserve, physically the loveliest of the Kenya
parks, set into some very impressive forested hills at enough
altitude so you could see the Indian Ocean thirty miles away.
The lodge there is built on stilts, not unlike Treetops but
much more modern and luxurious, and overlooks a large water hole.
The rooms are adequate, each with its own private balcony
overlooking the water, but without private bathrooms. There is one
huge bathroom, with shower stalls, for each sex on each of the
lodge's three levels.

They bait leopards in a tree across the water hole, and they
bait a few other animals as well, including a bull elephant with a
sweet tooth for whom they leave pieces of raw sugar cane. We took
a game run in the afternoon, found a herd of some 40 sable
antelope (while they are common in Zimbabwe, this is the only herd
of sable in all of Kenya), got back in time to watch a few dozen
elephants coming down to drink (and one teenager splash and swim
like there was no tomorrow), and hand-fed a bushbaby who visited
our table. Later I photographed a marsh mongoose swiping the
leopard bait. No one else had seen it except Roger and I, so while
the rest of the lodge waited up and watched the leopard tree for
hours, we went to bed, secure in the knowledge that the leopard
wouldn't be coming by to dine that evening.

October 7: We drove back to the Nyali Beach Hotel and checked
in for the next couple of days, then spent a few hours touring the
magnificently-landscaped grounds. The hotel, a 5-star hostelry,
was overflowing with American servicemen, who were stationed in
Mombasa to load our planes with food for Somalia, and spent their
spare time playing water polo in the Nyali Beach's Olympic-sized
swimming pool.

After lunch we went into Mombasa, where we drove through the
Old Town, stopped by Fort Jesus, found that our favorite huckster,
Big-Hearted Ali, had sold out and that his store now just carried
typical tourist junk instead of beautiful hand-carved trunks and
the like, and visited the Shree Cutch Satang Swami Naroyan Temple,
an Indian house of worship that is an art gallery in itself.

In the evening we went to the best seafood restaurant in
Africa, the Tamarind, which is housed in an old Zanzibar sultan's
harem building, had a couple of cold drinks, and then went onto
their elegant dhow for dinner. You have not experienced Romance
until you have danced to "Perfidia" and "The Blue Tango" on a dhow
on the Indian Ocean.

October 8: After breakfast we drove to the Bambouri Nature
Trail, a wonderful experiment in ecology. The Bambouri Cement
Company had raped about 40 acres of land outside Mombasa. Instead
of leaving it exposed, they not only put it back the way they had
found it; they actually improved it, putting in ponds, trees, and
stocking it with animals. It's reached the point now where it has
not only paid off its costs but shows an annual profit. They
charge tourists a modest fee to walk through it, and they've also
begun commercially breeding crocodiles for their skins and a
hybrid tilapia for the coastal restaurants. (There was one croc in
isolation from all the others. When we asked why, it turned out
that he was of a romantic nature and was thrashing the hell out of
all his masculine competition. They had named him "Saddam".)

After that, we went to Jumba La Mtwana, some seven-century-
old Arabic ruins about 15 miles north of Mombasa. In the
afternoon, we loafed around the pool, the first stage of a five-
day unwinding exercise.

October 9: We had breakfast and drove north to Watamu, about
three-quarters of the way to Malindi, where we spent an hour or so
looking at the Gedi Ruins (the best-preserved ruins in Kenya,
covering a good 300 acres; Gedi was a thriving city a century
before Columbus discovered America) and touring a Giriama village,
then checked into the Ocean Sports Lodge. Ocean Sports is rather
small, with 20 cottages, most of which could use a little
modernizing...but it was totally filled, mostly with Kenyans,
while the new, modern, elegant Hemingway's Lodge right next door
was almost empty. We couldn't figure out why until we sat down to
eat, and discovered what the Kenyans already knew: that in a
country of superb chefs, Ocean Sports had the best of them. I had
a whole cold lobster for lunch, lobster thermidore for dinner, a
chocolate mousse that surpasses any served up by Lutece or La
Caravelle, and repeated the whole thing again the next day, while
Carol's choice of dishes made a serious dent in Watamu's crab
population.

In the afternoon we took a glass-bottom boat out to the
Watamu Marine National Park, fed bread crumbs to a few million
zebra and Maasai fish, and watched through the glass while the
boat's "skipper" went underwater and played with them.

October 10: After breakfast we drove over to Mida Creek,
another bird-watcher's paradise, and hired a motorized dhow to
take us around for a few hours. The first thing it did was get two
miles from the dock; the second thing it did was get stuck on a
sandbar. Perry and the crew got out and pushed and pulled while we
and the Simses rocked it from side to side, and after about 20
minutes we were finally floating in the water again.

After lunch we decided to find Hell's Kitchen, the natural
formation that we had searched for fruitlessly in 1987. This time
we knew that it was half a mile out of Marafa, so all we had to do
was follow the road signs to Marafa, a tiny village about 20 miles
inland.

Simple, right?

Well, it gets a lot less simple when the road sign to Marafa
is now the roof or wall of some hut.

We drove, and we drove, and we drove some more. Hopelessly
mired in the back country, we pulled up to some local's hut to ask
directions. His entire family came out to stare at us like we were
Martians; most of them had never seen a white face. Before he was
through telling us where Marafa was, the whole damned
neighboorhood (in this case, the occupants of two other huts) had
come over to gape at the aliens. I think we gave them a whole
winter's worth of things to talk about.

Well, to make the story a few hours shorter than the drive,
we finally found Hell's Kitchen, which is a mini-Grand Canyon,
perhaps a mile on each side and a few of hundred feet deep. A
beautiful sight. Was it worth all the effort? As canyons go, no;
as five-year quests go, absolutely.

October 11: Equator Airlines, a small private carrier that
flies from Malindi to Lamu (there are no roads), doesn't have much
of a reputation. In fact, readers of these diaries will remember
that the last time we were on an Equator plane, the window blew
out. So Perry, who was driving back to Nairobi while the four of
us went on to Lamu, decided to charter us a 5-seater, just to
make sure nothing went wrong.

And nothing did, until we landed on the pothole-filled runway
of Manda Island. (There are no runways on Lamu Island, across the
channel. In fact, there are no cars on Lamu; the widest street
there won't accomodate one.) Anyway, we touched down, felt a bump,
and the pilot immediately pulled the plane off the runway with a
totally flat tire. So we unloaded our baggage and walked the final
mile of the runway to the deserted airport (deserted, because the
next scheduled plane, as opposed to chartered, wasn't due in for
hours; airport, because they had to call the tiny building
something), found no one there, and walked another quarter mile to
the pier. The dhow that was supposed to be waiting for us to ferry
us to Peponi Hotel on Lamu had decided we weren't coming and gone
home. (It takes quite a while to walk a mile in coastal heat while
carrying your luggage.) We hunted up a couple of local lads in
colorful shirts who obligingly stood at the end of the pier and
waved their shirts over their heads for about 20 minutes until
some dhow pilot in Lamu Harbor, perhaps a mile away, saw them and
came across the channel for us.

Tiny Peponi Hotel ("peponi" means "paradise" in Swahili) was
ranked among the world top 300 hotels back in 1987, and since then
they have doubled their size, adding eleven brand-new rooms, all
overlooking the bay. Ours (Room 25 if you ever go there) was
absolutely beautiful, brand spanking new, with elegant coastal
furniture, a king-sized bed with the only mosquito netting I've
ever encountered which neither feels constricting nor prevents the
breeze from coming through, and a private balcony, big enough to
accomodate two chairs, a table, and a chaise lounge, literally
hanging out over the water. It was so much like paradise that we
cancelled all plans for the afternoon and just loafed for the rest
of the day.

October 12: We spent the morning walking up Peponi's eight
miles of untouched white beach, doing a little swimming, gaping
(well, I gaped, anyway) at some nude lady sunbathers, and talking
with some of the locals. Then, after lunch, I hunted up my old
friend Omar Sultan (he and his brothers Ali, Mohammed, Achmed,
Hamed and Hassim are in the dhow biz; they owned five until
Christmas, when one capsized) and made arrangements for him to
take us over to the Takwa Ruins on Manda Island.

The ruins are about three centuries old. When the fresh water
in the cisterns turned salty, the whole village moved across the
bay and founded the little town of Shela, which is situated
directly behind Peponi's. We timed the trip so that we would
return right at sunset. Usually in Africa the sun doesn't just
set; it plummets. But on the coast, and especially at Lamu, it
sets a little more leisurely, and turns the whole sky a brilliant
red. Quite a memorable sight.

October 13: After breakfast Omar and some of his brethren
took us into Lamu Town, most of which has been standing since the
14th century (and some since the 10th), though they've only had
electricity since 1972. We visited a dhow-building plant, the Lamu
Museum, and a number of Omar's relations in the retail sector.

It's still a tremendously exotic city, with narrow twisting
streets and ancient buildings, and unlike our last trip there in
1987, it no longer smells like an open sewer. Everyone there seems
to be working, two new banks are being built, and the continent-
wide economic woes seem to have bypassed sleepy little Lamu Town.
We flew back to Nairobi in the afternoon and checked into a
cottage at the Norfolk, where I bumped into one of my heros, James
Earl Jones, who was there to make a documentary film for Dr.
Richard Leakey. I introduced myself, we talked a bit, and it turns
out that he loves science fiction and has read a couple of my
books. I promised to send him more, and told him that I had
insisted my producers offer him the role of Father William when
_Santiago_ finally starts shooting. (Not that writers have any
clout in Hollywood.) Anyway, if he gets it, I'll remind him that I
first told him about it half a world away.

We treated Perry and David Markham and their ladies to a
fabulous dinner at the Carnivore, where I had eland, hartebeest,
and Thomson gazelle while managing to say No to crocodile, and
then went back to the Norfolk. It was my last night in Africa, and
as with all my previous safaris, I found myself missing it
already.

October 14: Perry took us to the airport, saw us through
customs, and departed. As always, I gave him my extra shillings
(you can't take more than 200 out of the country) as a down
payment for our next safari. It came to $12.50.

On the plane home, they showed one of the more embarrassingly
bad big-budget films of recent years, "Far and Away", in which Tom
Cruise, sporting an Irish accent, gets beat upon with depressing
regularity until he triumphs, primarily by not dying, in the last
30 seconds.

October 15: After spending the night at the Gatwick Hilton,
we hopped a plane to Cincinnati for the final leg of our journey.
Guess what 140-minute turkey we got to watch? Right: "Far and
Away".

We got home to the usual 7-foot stack of mail. In it was an
offer for the kennel that I think we're going to accept; if we do,
it will make me a full-time free-lancer again for the first time
in 16 years. Since 1986 I have sold 18 novels, 5 collections, 14
anthologies, 53 short stories, 11 articles, and a movie script, to
say nothing of 5 safari diaries. Think of what I can do as a full-
timer!

-end-
Addendum #1:
Okay, birding fans. For the first time in five safaris,
Carol kept a list of those birds she saw. Here it is:
Long-tailed Cormorant
African Darter
White-Necked Cormorant
Little Grebe
Night Heron
Squacco Heron
Green-Backed Heron
Little Egret
Yellow-billed Egret
Cattle Egret
Hammerkop
Goliath Heron
Black-headed Heron
Grey Heron
Purple Heron
Sacred Ibis
Hadada Ibis
Yellow-billed Stork
African Spoonbill
Greater Flamingo
Lesser Flamingo
Abdim's Stork
Marabou Stork
Saddlebill Stork
Openbill Stork
Cape Teal
Maccoa Duck
African Pochard
Red-billed Duck
Yellow-billed Duck
Egyptian Goose
White-backed Vulture
White-headed Vulture
Ruppell's Vulture
Egyptian Vulture
Nubian Vulture
Secretary Bird
Tawny Eagle
African Fish Eagle
Augur Buzzard
Battleur Eagle
Long-Crested Eagle
Black Kite
Black-Shouldered Kite
Wahlberg's Eagle
Harrier Hawk
Black-Chested Harrier Eagle
Pigmy Falcon
Dark Chanting Goshawk
Pale Chanting Goshawk
Red-Necked Falcon
Grey Kestrel
Crested Francolin
Yellow-necked Spurfowl
Red-necked Spurfowl
Blue Quail
Vulturine Guineafowl
Helmeted Guineafowl
Purple Gallinule
Moorhen
Black Crake
Red-knobbed Coot
Black-bellied Bustard
White-bellied Bustard
Kori Bustard
Crowned Crane
Spur-winged Plover
Kittlitz's Plover
Three-banded Plover
Black-winged Plover
Senegal Plover
Crowned Plover
Crab Plover
Black-winged Stilt
Avocet
African Snipe
African Jacana
White-winged Black Tern
Whiskered Tern
Grey-headed Gull
Sooty Gull
African Skimmer
Chesnut-bellied Sandgrouse
Yellow-throated Sandgrouse
Namaqua Dove
Morning Dove
Red-eyed Dove
Dusky Turtle Dove
Speckled Pigeon
White-browed Coucal
African Hoopoe
Speckled Mousebird
African Scimitarbill
White-bellied Go-Away Bird
Hartlaub's Turaco
Fischer's Turaco
Ross's Turaco
Brown Parrot
Lilac-breated Roller
Giant Kingfisher
Pied Kingfisher
Malachite Kingfisher
Dwarf Kingfisher
Cinnamon-chested Bee-Eater
Little Bee-Eater
Silvery-cheeked Hornbill
Red-billed Hornbill
Yellow-billed Hornbill
Crowned Hornbill
Ground hornbill
Abyssinian Ground Hornbill
White-eared Barbet
Golden Pippit
Wells' Wagtail
African Pied Wagtail
Yellow-throated Longclaw
Stonechat
Olive Thrush
White-browned Robin Chat
Robin Chat
Spotted Morning Warbler
Paradise Flycatcher
White-eyed Slaty Flycatcher
Straight-crested Helmet Shrike
White-crowned Shrike
Fiscal Shrike
Long-tailed Fiscal
Tropical Boubou
Black-fronted Bush Shrike
Hunter's Sunbird
Amethyst Sunbird
Variable Sunbird
Copper Sunbird
Golden-Winged Sunbird
Bronze Sunbird
Collared Sunbird
Tacazze Sunbird
Streaky Seedeater
Brimstone Canary
Spotted Creeper
Bronze Mannikin
African Firefinch
Blue Capped Cordon-Bleu
Pin-Tailed Whydah
Indigo Bird
Common Waxbill
Grosbeak Weaver
Golden Weaver
Reichenow's Weaver
Taveta Golden Weaver
Golden Palm Weaver
Vitelline Masked Weaver
Layard's Black-headed Weaver
Black-headed Weaver
Red Bishop
Yellow Bishop
White-browed Sparrow Weaver
Red-billed Buffalo Weaver
White-headed Buffalo Weaver
Rufous Sparrow
Grey-headed Sparrow
Drongo
Red-billed Oxpecker
Yellow-billed Oxpecker
Golden-breasted Starling
Superb Starling
Magpie Starling
Hildebrandt's Starling
Fischer's Starling
Wattled Starling
Ruppell's Long-tailed Starling
Blue-eared Glossy Starling
Indian House Crow
Cape Rook
Fan-Tailed Raven
Pied Crow
White-necked Raven
Golden-breasted Bunting
Ostrich

Addendum #2:
Not to be outdone, I kept a list of animals seen, which
follows:
Aardwolf
Spectacled Elephant Shrew
Bushbaby
Vervet Monkey
Sykes Monkey
Colobus Monkey
Olive Baboon
Black-backed Jackal
Side-striped Jackal
Bat-eared Fox
African Civet Cat
Small-spotted Genet Cat
Banded Mongoose
Marsh Mongoose
Spotted Hyena
Serval Cat
Lion
Leopard
Rock Hyrax
Elephant
Black Rhinoceros
White Rhinoceros
Hippopotamus
Warthog
Bush Pig
Cape Buffalo
Maasai Giraffe
Reticulated Giraffe
Gerenuk
Wildebeest
Hartebeest
Topi
Dik-Dik
Defassa Waterbuck
Common Waterbuck
Grant's Gazelle
Thomson's Gazelle
Sable Antelope
Greater Kudu
Lesser Kudu
Eland
Striped Ground Squirrel
Spring Hare
Impala
Bongo
Burchell's Zebra
Grevy's Zebra
Bushbuck
Beisa Oryx
Fringe-eared Oryx
Crocodile
Monitor Lizard
Rock Python
Gecko Lizard
Ugama Lizard