by Mike Resnick
February 3, 1986: The safari did not begin auspiciously. In fact,
the moment we arrived at the airport fog set in and they shut
everything down, which sent me into a momentary panic since we had
purchased our New York-to-London and London-to-Nairobi fares at
huge but absolutely nonrefundable/nonchangeable discount rates --
and if we were more than a couple of hours late getting out of
Cincinnati, I was going to have to shell out an extra $5,000 or so
to buy brand-new non-discount tickets on later interconinental
flights. The fog finally lifted and the airport re-opened less
than five minutes before we were due to take off, and Carol poured
what was left of me into a seat.
Eleanor Wood, my literary agent, dropped by Kennedy Airport
to visit while we were waiting for the London flight to depart,
and also delivered some Italian and Japanese royalties which had
just arrived, which helped put me back on a more even emotional
keel. We talked about all the sights we were going to see, and
when my enthusiasm got out of hand, as it tends to do whenever I
discuss East Africa, she tactfully reminded me that I was also (I
think her word was _primarily_) going there to research IVORY, a
long novel I'm scheduled to write during the latter half of 1986.
I explained that we had hired a personal guide who had promised to
take us to all the places I had to see for the book, and to
introduce us to a number of old-time pioneers and hunters with
interesting stories to tell. She looked dubious; writers, after
all, are supposed to suffer, not go gallavanting off on luxury
safaris.
(Actually, writers are supposed to _write_, but sometimes
they just screw around codifying their vacations for _Lan's
Lantern_.)
The movie on the flight to London was a turkey entitled _The
Jagged Edge_, a film we were forced to sit through three more times
during the next 22 days before finally escaping from the
programming director of British Airways. Therefore, I might as
well take this opportunity to get even: Jeff Bridges is guilty
_guilty_ GUILTY!!!
(Ah. I feel much better about it now.)
February 4: Actually, I don't remember a hell of a lot about
February 4. We landed at London at 8:00 AM, immediately went to an
airport hotel, took a nap until our daughter, Laura, who is living
in London these days, dropped by to visit in the afternoon,
checked out at about 3:30, and climbed aboard the plane to Nairobi
at 6:30 PM.
February 5: We landed at the Nairobi airport, were met by Perry
Mason (our guide), and drove to the Norfolk Hotel, an elegant old
colonial establishment (and the second hotel in the interior of
East Africa, dating back to 1904) where such notables in the realm
of he-man heroics as Teddy Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway and Robert
Ruark had begun their safaris. The grounds were exquisitely
landscaped, with lovely gardens, a pair of aviaries, and a number
of historical remnants, such as the first tractor, rickshaw, and
automobile in Kenya. (I hadn't even realized that there _were_
rickshaws in Africa.) We soon discovered that breakfast and lunch
on the safari circuit, without exception, would consist of lavish
all-you-can-eat buffets, and had the first of quite a few belt-
loosening meals. While Carol unpacked, I paid a visit to the East
African Wildlife Society, where I autographed some copies of
_Adventures_ and sold an article to _Swara_, their official
publication.
After lunch, we had Perry drive us to the National Museum,
where we saw what are purported to be the world's largest
collections of sea shells and butterflies, some fascinating native
art and costumes, and the stuffed remains of Ahmed, a bull
elephant who carried the heaviest ivory of the past quarter-
century or so. Just across street of the museum is the Nairobi
Snake and Reptile Park, and we spent a few minutes there. A sign
within the enclosure housing a pair of 18-foot-long Nile
crocociles stated that anyone tossing food into the area would be
forced to retrieve it personally. (Not surprisingly, the enclosure
was spotless.)
Finally, we drove out to Karen Blixen's farmhouse, took a
tour of it, and wound up having dinner at the Carnivore, a
fabulous open-air restaurant specializing in Africa's wild game
meats. We had topi, hartebeest, Uganda kob, and a number of other
game animals, and were joined by Tessa Gross, a friend of Perry's
who had just finished working on _Out of Africa_, on which she
supplied and trained the horses and also tought Meryl Streep to
ride.
February 6: We drove north to Thika (where Elspeth Huxley planted
her Flame Trees), and spent about an hour hunting for, and finally
finding, an area called Fourteen Falls, where (obviously) fourteen
waterfalls converge. I'd seen a photo of it some years ago, and
had written to Perry that I wanted to visit it. He couldn't find
it on any maps, but he had been there some 20 years earlier and
knew the general area, and since he speaks fluent Swahili he
simply began questioning people in the Thika area until he came up
with three men in a row who agreed about where it was -- a longer
and more difficult task than you might think. (I might add that,
once we found it, it was quite lovely and well worth the effort.)
Then we went north past Nyeri into the Aberdare Mountains,
and on to the Ark, a game-viewing lodge in the Aberdare National
Park, where, from no more than 20 yards away, we saw buffalo,
giant forest hogs, hyenas, bushbuck, about 200 different species
of birds, and the only rhino we were to see on the entire safari.
Perry also introduced us to Ian Hardy, a charming gentleman who
had been a white hunter back in the 1930s and spent the evening
regaling us with stories of the good old days.
February 7: We left the Ark after breakfast and drove about 20
miles to the Aberdare Country Club, which looks like a clone of
Karen Blixen's house. We were given a 5-room cottage for the three
of us, left our bags there, and drove into the practically empty
park (we were one of only two cars to enter all day). We drove up
to a hidden waterfall Perry knew of at 11,000 feet altitude (well,
it wasn't _quite_ hidden; there was a sign warning us that a
female tourist had been eaten by a lion there a month earlier).
Anyway, we had lunch, then ascended via 4-wheel-drive to the
Queen's Cave waterfall at 13,000 feet. Surprisingly, the altitude
didn't affect us at all, at least not while we drove or walked
downhill. We did notice that we started panting heavily when we
walked up even the slightest incline. We saw some elephants and
buffalo, as well as some rare colobus monkeys, and finally
returned to our cottage, where we ran into Ian Hardy again. I had
asked him some questions about John Boyes, a turn-of-the-century
Kenya pioneer and general scalawag whose career I have
appropriated, in bits and pieces, in a number of my novels (and
about whom I would like, someday, to write a biography) and Ian
had evidently spent the entire day hunting up my answers for me.
February 8: We drove through Nanyuki to Mount Kenya, and checked
into the Mount Kenya Safari Club, where we were given a private
two-bedroom cottage, with oversized sunken showers and tubs and a
pair of fireplaces, that was equal to any suite we've ever stayed
in at the Plaza in New York or the Ritz in London -- and the food
was better. We were entertained at lunchtime by two dozen Chuka
dancers, and we spent most of the afternoon loafing and wandering
around the grounds, which include a putting green, a pool, a
bowling green, a number of ponds for waterbirds, and an animal
orphanage. I also interviewed a couple of Perry's friends who
happened to be at the club, and Carol and I began putting together
some notions for a new novel based on various aspects of Kenyan
history. (By halfway through the trip I had filled more than 100
pages of my notebook, and had the book, which will be published in
hardcover and paperback by Tor under the title _Paradise_, totally
plotted out.)
I ought to say a little something about Perry while I'm
thinking about it. He came to Kenya in 1952, a beardless youth of
19, to fight the Mau Mau. He was given a squad of a dozen Samburu
and Wanderobo warriors and a gun, driven to the Aberdare Mountains
(90% of the Mau Maus were holed up in the Aberdares and at Mount
Kenya), and told to proceed with anti-terrorist activities. He
knew neither the language nor the geography nor the tactics, but
he picked them up pretty quickly, and became, from all written
accounts, one of the most feared anti-terrorists around. In 1956,
when the Mau Mau were virtually disbanded, he became a successful
white hunter. Then, when hunting was outlawed in 1977, he went to
his second love, horses, and was the leading steeplechase jockey
in Kenya in 1978 and 1979, and when he got too heavy to ride, he
was the leading trainer of steeplechase winners in 1980. He also
represented Kenya in the All-Africa pistol-shooting championships
on three different occasions. Finally, in 1980, he began a
photographic safari business, specializing in ushering individuals
and couples through rather idiosyncratic personalized itineraries.
(I was his first writer, but he'd been out with two professional
photographers, a butterfly collector, and a professor of
ornithology within the past year.) We got along famously -- in
fact, I'm dedicating a book to him -- and I soon discovered that
he was far better-read than I had expected. All in all, he was an
excellent guide and companion (and we've already made a down
payment for our next safari, which we'll be taking in September of
1987.)
February 9: We drove north through Isiolo to the Northern Frontier
District, the harsh, savage desert country that covers the
northern half of Kenya, and wound up at the Buffalo Springs tented
camp. (The tents -- thank heaven! -- weren't the ones I remember
from my scouting days; while small, they each had two beds with
inner-spring mattresses, a dressing area, and bathrooms with hot
and cold running water, flush toilets, and showers.) It was hot --
perhaps 105 degrees, and it felt even hotter after three very cool
days in the mountains -- and we were at the end of the dry season.
We took an afternoon game run, and I was amazed to find a herd of
more than 100 oryx grazing off a section of ground that I wouldn't
have believed could feed a single cow. We ran across gerunuk,
reticulated giraffe, and Grevy's zebra, three of the rarest
mammels in Africa, and also spent some time observing a huge tribe
of baboons and a delightful family of warthogs. It was our first
real game run after three days of observing scenery and birds, and
we were overwhelmed by the abundance of wildlife Perry was able to
find in what is essentially a desert. When we returned to the
camp, we found half a dozen elephants placidly grazing some 50
yards away from our tent.
February 10: This is the day we met Jumbo, who will probably
remain my favorite African animal. Carol woke me at about 5:30 in
the morning to say that there was an enormous bull elephant lying
on his side about ten yards from the front of our tent. Elephants
don't sleep lying down, I explained while pulling the covers over
my head; it would crush their lungs. See for yourself, she replied
-- and sure enough, there was this mountain of elephant on its
side right outside our tent flap. Nothing was moving but his tail,
and I spent the better part of an hour standing at the front of
the tent, my video camera trained on him, waiting for him to get
up and do something. Perry wandered over from his own tent at
about 6:30, and explained that the elephant was probably dying,
since elephants never lie down once they're fully grown. We were
scheduled to spend another night at the camp, and visions of
hyenas and vultures fighting over an increasingly odoriferous
carcass flashed through my mind (and nose) as we toddled off to
breakfast, being careful not to step on old Jumbo as we went.
When we returned about half an hour later he was on his feet,
placidly grazing about fifty yards away from our tent and
obviously unaware of the fact that he was on the brink of death.
While eating breakfast, we queried a number of the other
guests about when they had seen. Most were quite negative; except
for the half-dozen elephants around the camp, they'd run into a
few oryx and a couple of ostrich and that was it. This was the
morning we discovered the difference between going out with a
white hunter as opposed to a social director. We left on our game
run, and just as I was about to express the opinion that even
Perry wasn't likely to scare up any animals in this barren
environment, he pointed out the window and we saw a herd of about
80 elephants not half a mile away. Perry pulled off the road and
began approaching them obliquely, never seeming to be getting any
nearer to them, yet within seven or eight minutes we were
literally in the middle of them, totally surrounded by some 400
tons of elephant. They paid us scant attention, we got some
fabulous footage of the babies playing and nursing -- and I never
again doubted Perry's ability to find game where none was supposed
to exist. In fact, we found about 50 other species on the morning
run, and returned, hot but content, for lunch -- where we ran into
Jumbo again.
He had finished grazing around our tent, and had moved his
base of operations over to the restaurant -- which, like all
Kenyan game lodge bars and restaurants, was an open-air affair. It
had a roof to protect us from the sun and rain, but there were no
walls, just a two-foot-high stone barrier and a row of shrubs and
flowers to outline the area. They were very lovely shrubs and
flowers, and they must have smelled as good as they looked,
because Jumbo suddenly ambled over and began eating them, not ten
feet from where a number of guests were eating their own meals.
Now, as friendly as he looked, he was still a large, wild
bull elephant, and it was a potentially hazardous situation, so
the kitchen staff and the waiters decided to drive him away. They
began picking up rocks and hurling them at him from point-blank
range. (I have the entire episode on videotape, and you can hear
those rocks slamming noisily off his carcass.) Now, Jumbo was no
more than eight or ten yards from his tormenters; it would have
been no effort for him to take two quick steps and turn them all
into jelly. But all he did was eat more and more rapidly, finally
ambling off amid a hail of rocks with the very last flower
clutched firmly in his trunk. We gave him a standing ovation.
Having thoughtfully elected not to play people-pong, he
walked over to the waterhole (almost all lodges are built on or
near waterholes, so guests can observe the fauna while both they
and the animals are busy drinking), and decided to play a game of
chicken with a pair of crocodiles who were sunning themselves. The
smart money went on Jumbo, and he won in a walk.
That morning Carol had forgotten the first rule of the
African wild and drank some tap water, and became violently sick
to her stomach. This necessitated her missing the afternoon game
run. (We considered dragging her outside and leaving her for the
hyenas in traditional African fashion, but since there weren't any
hyenas around, we medicated her instead. She recovered eventually,
but she was sick on and off for the next 10 days.)
After lunch, while Carol lay in the tent and tried to
decide who to cut out of her will, Perry and I drove over to the
Samburu River Lodge to fill up the safari car with gas, gas
stations not being all that plentiful in the desert. (The lodge is
really quite luxurious. We had originally been slated to stay
there, and I was a little upset at winding up at Buffalo Springs
-- but, as always, Perry knew what he was doing. The river that
flows by the lodge was totally dry, and all the wildlife was now
in the Buffalo Springs area. In fact, one of my great missed photo
opportunities centered around a foppish-looking Italian gentleman,
dressed in his gold chains and his bikini, standing on the dry
river bed and wondering where the hell he could go for a swim.)
February 11: We spent about 4 hours driving from Buffalo Springs
to Maralal, which was back at a reasonable altitude -- 7,000 feet,
which meant a temperature in the low 80's -- passing through some
beautiful if stark landscape as we did so. Maralal is owned by a
friend of Perry's, a former hunter, who was a very gracious host
and spent quite some time answering my questions. Maralal is not a
national park, but a rather private lodge, and we were the only
guests there. We sat out on the deck of the lodge for a few hours,
drinking Tusker beers (the only kind you can get in most Kenyan
locations) and watching hundreds of impala, zebra, warthogs,
elands, and vervet monkeys drinking from an artificial water hole
that was no more than 20 feet away. Then we carted our bags to our
private cabin, a beautiful wooden lodge with a fireplace and even
a reading loft, unpacked, and followed the owner's ancient
gunbearer out to a blind near a tree that he had baited for
leopard. There was half a goat hanging down from a platform in the
tree, and within twenty minutes a lovely female leopard appeared
from nowhere, leaped up to the platform in a single bound, and
began eating the goat. We stayed there, taking pictures until the
light ran out, and finally returned to the lodge to hear more
stories about the days when Kenya was still a frontier, men were
men, and good cigars cost a nickel.
February 12: We left Maralal and drove about three hours to the
Rift Valley, which in its entirety extends from Asian Russia to
Botswana, but is nowhere more impressive than in East Africa. We
stopped at Lake Baringo, hopped a boat, and went off to Island
Camp, a tented camp at the southern tip of Baringo's largest
island. (Also, I might add, its hilliest island; I don't recall
any other portion of the trip, even the mountains, wearing me out
as much as simply getting around Island Camp.)
When we reached our tent, I noticed a couple of lizards
hanging on the walls and was all set to chase them away when
Perry, who was in the next tent, explained that I would be very
unhappy if I did so, since they took care of the insects, and that
Lake Baringo, with its 100-degree temperatures, dense forests, and
high humidity, had more than its share of insects. And, as Perry
said, we went the entire day and night without so much as seeing
an insect, let alone being bitten. (We were blessed with lizards
the next six days, and when we finally came to a lodge that didn't
have them -- the luxurious Kilaguni Lodge in Tsavo National Park
-- I went right to the management and complained.)
Baringo was a bird-watcher's paradise, and we spent most of
the afternoon sitting in the open-air bar with our binoculars and
cameras, watching everything from tiny weaver birds to fish
eagles. The bar also contained, for reasons that were never
properly explained to me, a semi-tame waterbuck that begged for
beers and cleaned up most of the birdseed that was placed out for
the weavers. Finally, in late afternoon, Perry and I borrowed a
rather flimsy speedboat (Carol opted to remain behind, since she
is a devout and dedicated bird-watcher), and went out searching
for hippos and crocodiles. We found them, decided that our boat
was even more delicate than it looked, and decided not to approach
closer than about 40 yards, where we took a number of pictures and
felt somewhat relieved that none of the hippos had been too
curious about the boat.
February 13: We left Baringo and drove about 70 miles south to
Lake Nakuru, home of some 2 million flamingos. I hopped out of the
safari car and began carefully approaching them with my camera.
They started backing away, I followed them, and after a few
minutes I realized that something smelled _awful_. I finally took
the camera away from my eye and found that I was surrounded for
perhaps 50 yards in every direction by a 6-inch-deep patch of
flamingo droppings. Still, I got the video footage I wanted -- and
a few hours later I got the bath I needed.
We spent only an hour or so at Nakuru, and then drove south
another 50 miles to Lake Naivasha, the largest and prettiest of
the Rift lakes. There's not all that much game at any of the
lakes, but the birdlife is phenomenal, with up to 400 species at
each of them. It was at Naivasha that I found an animal that
rivaled Jumbo for my affections: he was a crested crane, and we
named him Clyde. (He _looked_ like a Clyde; if he could have worn
a fur coat, gold jewelry, and lambchop sideburns, he would have.)
Clyde lived on a lovely pond at our lodge, together with some
Egyptian geese, a black swan, a white swan, and two lady crested
cranes. Clyde was feeling the mating urge a little earlier than
his ladyfriends were, and he spent most of the afternoon prancing
and strutting his stuff for them. Anyway, there was a tortuously-
twisted log spanning one segment of the pond, and at one point
Clyde hopped onto the log, trilled a couple of times so that his
ladies-in-waiting would look at him, and then began fluttering his
wings and strutting like a professional wrestler for them -- and
slipped and fell head-first into the pond. He dragged himself to
his feet, turned to make sure no one had seen him, and slipped
again -- and spent the better part of 40 seconds flopping around
until he had finally regained his balance. Then, with more dignity
than I could have mustered under the same circumstances, he shook
himself off, gave us a look that said "I _meant_ to do that!", and
went right back to his fruitless courting of his ladyfriends. I
loved him.
February 14: We drove a couple of hours to the Masai Mara, which
is actually the northern third of the Serengeti Plains. There
wasn't much doubt of where we were when we arrived: less than a
mile into the park we'd already seen a herd of more than 1,000
wildebeest, about 400 zebra, smaller herds of topi and hartebeest,
a group of about 20 bachelor bull buffalo, and a herd of perhaps
40 elephants -- and the further into the park we went, the more
plentiful the game became. It was Hollywood's version of Africa:
no matter where you stood, it was a safe bet that you were within
200 yards of at least 50 animals. My own guess is that we passed
more than 5,000 Thomson's gazelle and 2,000 larger antelope on the
way to our campsight. There was a time, and not so long ago at
that, when all of East Africa looked like this; now only the Mara
and Serengeti possess game in this quantity. The land was lush,
green, dotted with thornbush and accacia trees, broken by narrow
ribbons of water, and covered by more animals per square foot than
anyone who hasn't been there can imagine. (Except rhinos. Poaching
has lowered the Mara's rhino population from 5,500 in 1973 to 24
in 1985. There was one baby born this year, but lions got him.)
We stayed at Cottar's Camp, owned and run by a former white
hunter named Glen Cottar. The manager was a young German named
Mike Merten, who had discovered an American card game named "Oh
Shit" -- Carol and I knew it as "Oh Hell" -- and who, once he
discovered we had a deck of cards with us, insisted that we join
him and his friends for a couple of hours of cards around the
campfire every evening. It turned out that he had worked on
_Sheena, Queen of the Jungle_ and a couple of other films, and he,
too, had a wealth of stories to share with us -- as well as some
money. (Sweet guy, lousy cardplayer.)
The accomodations were most interesting: papyrus structures
with concrete floors, kind of a cross between a tent and a cabin,
known as bandas. The camp, which is quite small, was filled with
fascinating people. (The typical tourists stayed at the more
famous and luxurious Keekorok Lodge, and the mavericks stayed here
-- and Perry figured, correctly, that a writer would find the
mavericks more interesting.) One friend we made was Bryan, another
card player, who was a gunsmith in Seattle and was making his
leisurely way down to Zimbabwe to visit some relatives. He had
planned to spend two days at Cottar's Camp and found the company
so congenial that he had been there three weeks when we arrived.
Bryan had been a Green Beret in Vietnam, and had been operating on
a small mountain behind enemy lines when his group was spotted by
a squad of Viet Cong. They killed all but one of the Cong, who
ducked into a cave, and left Bryan behind to take care of him.
Bryan decided that only a crazy man would go into a dark cave
after an enemy who was hiding from him, and since he was an
explosives expert, he tossed a pound of plastic explosive into the
cave, walked about 200 feet away, and hit the detonator -- and
blew up the whole damned mountain. Evidently the cave was a major
Viet Cong munitions dump -- experts later estimated that, based on
the explosion, it held 150 tons of rockets and other explosives --
and when Bryan woke up, his buddies, assuming he was dead, were
divvying up his possessions. He had dislocated every joint in his
body, and spent the next couple of years in the hospital.
February 15: We got up even earlier than usual -- usual was about
6:30 AM -- and drove over to Keekorok to take a hot air balloon
over the great herds of the Mara. We'd really been looking forward
to this, but it was a bit disappointing. The basket was right
under the butane pump which fueled the torch that heated the air,
which meant that we got to wake up to the warming (read:
_burning_) rays of butane on the back of our necks. Also, while
the animals paid no attention to the balloon when it was silently
drifting, they panicked every time the pilot hit the butane torch,
which was every couple of minutes.
Anyway, the balloon stayed aloft about 90 minutes, and then
started drifting over toward the Tanzania border, which was bad
news since there are still border problems between the two
countries. We soon passed the border, and suddenly the Sand River
was coming up fast, and if we crossed _that_ we were in big
trouble, since the vans that were following us to take us back
couldn't get across the river and we could expect a full day's
hassle with the Tanzanian police -- so our pilot decided to crash
land. There were ten of us in the basket, and while no one was
hurt it took us awhile to get untangled. On the other hand, we
made some new acquaintences. The guy who had landed on top of me
lives in Blue Ash, Ohio, not 5 miles from my house; while the
little old lady who landed on Carol lives in Findlay, Ohio, where
we've attended some science fiction conventions.
Once we got untangled, we were treated to an enormous
champagne breakfast, and then drove back to Keekorok, during which
time we realized just how much we appreciated both Perry and his
car: the minibus' ride was terribly bumpy; Carol and I, having
been trained by Perry, spotted all kinds of game that the driver
missed; and when we came across a pride of lions on the move, we
learned that minibus policy was to take a quick vote on whether to
stop and photograph them or not, by which time they were gone
anyway. As soon as we got back to Keekorok we hunted up Perry, who
had wisely elected to take a nap rather than ride the balloon. If
I point out a hill where we saw a herd of elephants from the
balloon three hours ago, I said, do you think you can find them
now? Silly question. Half an hour later we were right in the
middle of them, snapping away, while the minibuses were searching
fruitlessly for anything more exotic than gazelle and impala.
We returned to camp for lunch (and the inevitable card game),
then went out searching for lion -- and found them. There was a
large pride in the area of Cottar's Camp, ruled by a huge black-
maned lion affectionately known as Number One. We never did find
Number One, but we did find Numbers Two through Eighteen,
inclusive. And returned for more beer, stories, and cards around
the campfire.
February 16: Perry decided that we ought to see how the other half
lives, so he arranged for us to visit the inside of a Masai boma,
an interesting if distasteful experience. The second I entered it
(Carol, who is brighter than me, remained outside) I was totally
covered by tsetse flies, just like the Masai. The reason soon
became apparent: they bring their cattle into the boma for safe-
keeping every night, and what seemed like a dirt floor wasn't.
That done, we went out looking for Number One again. We still
didn't find him, but we got some of the best photographs and
footage we were to obtain on the safari. We came across a lioness
nursing her cubs, and subtle, devious Perry got us to within ten
yards of her without her ever knowing it. Then, perhaps a quarter
of a mile away, we came to a lion "nursery": while most of the
pride was out hunting, two lionesses had stayed behind with eleven
cubs which were from five or six different litters. Again, we
managed to get to within about ten yards of the closest of them,
and spent a couple of hours watching and photographing them as
they played and frolicked.
Perry left at noon to make the long drive over poor roads to
Nairobi, and we remained behind to play more cards, swap more
stories, drink more Tuskers, and go on a final game run with a
local game ranger Perry had asked to look after us. We saw still
more lions and elephant and buffalo and giraffe and antelope, and
we still couldn't find Number One. Win a few, lose a few.
February 17: We got up at dawn, couldn't escape yet another card
game, and had Mike Merten drive us to the local airstrip a couple
of miles away at 9:00. Where is it, I asked as we stopped on a
green plain in front of some 200 zebra. You're looking at it, he
answered, and about two minutes later a small 5-seater came into
view, buzzed the zebra until they dispersed, and then landed and
taxied right up to the car. We climbed aboard and the pilot took
off and flew us to Governor's Camp, on the far side of the Mara,
which had a tarmac landing strip that could accomodate a plane
large enough to fly to Nairobi.
It was a few minutes late -- elephants on the landing strip
-- but eventually it landed, and about 30 of us, who had been
flown there from all over the Mara, climbed aboard. The stewardess
handed out little mimeographed sheets giving the history of the
plane: it was a DC-3 that had been commissioned in 1944, had seen
action in the Berlin airlift, and had never missed a single day of
service. None of which made me feel any better as it reached its
cruising altitude of only 8,500 feet and let the wind play games
with it all the way to Nairobi, where, according to Perry (who was
there waiting for us) it bounced about 20 feet into the air after
first touching the ground before it finally decided to land.
We ate lunch at the Carnivore, where we met yet another of
Perry's friends with stories to tell, and then drove down to
Amboseli, perhaps the most famous and surely the most frequently-
visited of all Kenya's parks. We knew pretty much what to expect,
but the reality was even more depressing than we had anticipated.
Amboseli is a park that is, quite simply, used up. Not all parks
have to be as lush and green as the Mara; Buffalo Springs, for
example, was absolutely beautiful in its starkness. But Amboseli
is nothing more than a dust bowl. According to Perry, it was
_always_ a dust bowl...but it has become even worse since the
elephants began destroying their environment. Amboseli is home to
about 1,200 elephants, which is about 800 more than it should
hold. They have destroyed almost all the trees, most of the bushes
and shrubs, and half the grass. We saw zebras literally choking on
the dust they raised as they walked from one meagre clump of grass
to another. There's water, and there's game, but Amboseli
nevertheless gives the impression of a doomed ecosystem that's
simply running down.
February 18: We awoke before dawn, since Mt. Kilimanjaro was
covered by clouds when we arrived and Perry felt that dawn was the
one sure time we'd be able to see and photograph it. He was right,
as always. And, since we were up, we decided to take our game run
before breakfast in the hope of getting out ahead of the other
tourists and avoiding some of the dust their cars and buses
raised. Unfortunately, most of them had the same idea, and the
dust rising from the dirt roads was almost impenetrable in places.
We spent two hours looking for rhino (whose number in Kenya
have diminished from 20,000 to a mere 500 since 1973), but there
were none to be found -- at least, not in the area we covered. We
did see quite a few elephant, some hippo, and a couple of thousand
wildebeest. However, once it became apparent we weren't going to
turn up any rhino, we decided to eat and hit the road, since we
had no desire to spend any more time in Amboseli.
We drove to Tsavo West, and checked into the luxurious
Kilaguni Lodge, where we once again ran into Tessa Gross, the girl
who had trained horses for _Out of Africa_. She joined us for a
game run and a trip to Mzima Springs, where some 97 million
gallons a day of cold, fresh water flow down from Kilimanjaro. The
springs, which supply distant Mombasa with all of its fresh water,
are home to hundreds of hippos and crocs, and we got some lovely
footage there.
Then we returned to Kilaguni for dinner. While we were eating
(in the usual open-air restaurant overlooking the usual waterhole)
an old elephant lumbered out of the hills and came down to slake
his thirst just after dusk. Next came a pair of cow elephants and
their babies. Then four more cows and three babies. Then half a
dozen bachelor males. Then some teenagers. They kept coming, and
by 9:00 PM there must have been more than 200 elephants quietly
drinking, grazing and socializing (that's not an anthropomorphism;
elephants _do_ socialize). It was too dark to photograph them, but
since it was our last night on the veldt we were reluctant to go
to bed, and so we sat out on our balcony, simply watching them.
Just after midnight they began dispersing in utter silence,
heading off into the hills in twos and threes and fours. By one
o'clock the last of them was gone, and there was not a single sign
that they had ever been there at all. It was a memorable and
moving experience which we will carry with us forever.
February 19: We drove to Mombasa, which was about a zillion
degrees and a billion percent humidity (in the shade; it was
warmer in the sunlight). The drive was so long and hot that when
we got to our room at the newly-opened Inter-Continental Hotel
(the first air-conditioned quarters we'd experienced in Africa,
and the first telephone we'd seen since the Norfolk), we decided
to spend the rest of the day unwinding. We did a little gift-
shopping in the afternoon, had a lovely dinner at their outdoor
restaurant on the beach (it was also our first look at the Indian
Ocean), stuck around for the entertainment (an imported singer
from England), left a little money in their casino, and slept in a
delightful penthouse suite that, for a change, didn't require
lizards.
February 20: We got up very early, while the temperature was still
below 90, and drove into Mombasa, which has to be the most exotic
city I've ever seen. It's about 50% black, 20% Indian, 15% Arab,
5% Oriental, and 10% white. The streets wind and twist back upon
themselves, the odors are guaranteed to wake such dead as aren't
otherwise occupied at the time, most of the buildings are at least
a century old (and some were built prior to 1600), and you truly
expect to bump into Sydney Greenstreet or Peter Lorre around the
next corner. I had some research to do for IVORY, the novel I'll
be working on this autumn, and Perry dutifully led us to all the
sites I had to visit. We managed to wrap it up in about three
hours and got back to the hotel before the thermometer topped 110
degrees.
Carol, who was finally back in good health, decided not to
jeopardize it by going out again, but I wanted to go to a couple
of gift shops -- there was a particular book I was looking for --
so Perry and I went back out after lunch to check out the gift
shops at some nearby hotels. It proved fruitless: they may well
have had the book, but since I don't read German there was no way
to tell. (In fact, a tour of the local hotels could lead one to
conclude that the Third Reich won the war. So overwhelmingly
German were the patrons that all the books, signs, menus,
everything, were printed only in German.)
We decided that as long as we were out, we might as well
drive around a little, and before long we came to a tiny sign
pointing the way to the Jumba National Monument. I asked Perry
what it was, and he confessed that he had never heard of it, so we
decided to follow the sign's directions. We went down an
incredibly bumpy dirt road for three miles, past a chicken farm
and a couple of flower nurseries, and finally came to a little
cottage. We got out, paid a tiny admission fee (something like
seven cents apiece), followed a narrow path -- and came to a truly
remarkable set of ruins of an Arab village, Jumba La Mtwana
("House of the Male Slaves"), which dated back to 1350 A.D. There
were about 20 buildings, including a couple of large mosques. Many
of the walls were intact, and while ruins usually bore me to
tears, I found these fascinating.
We spent a couple of hours there, then returned to the hotel.
All during dinner I kept telling Carol about the ruins, and all
during the buffet dinner we kept fighting off the French guests,
who were indulging in a typical French feeding frenzy, and by
desert we had the plot for a science fiction novel. It is
tentatively titled REMAINS, and the voracious French tourists were
every bit as important to it as the Arab ruins. If any of those
luxury beach resorts had been frequented by the English or the
Americans, I'd have found the book I was looking for, we'd have
skipped visiting the ruins, and I'd have come home with material
for one less novel.
February 21: We left early to beat the heat, and drove the 300
miles back to Nairobi. And, since we left at dawn and I had been
up past midnight the past three nights, I fell asleep in the car
-- with my left arm hanging out the window the whole way. I'd been
in Africa for more than two weeks and had gotten a Stewart Granger
suntan; now, on my last full day there, I managed to get a 2nd-
degree sunburn on my arm.
We checked in at the Norfolk again, went into town to do a
little shopping, took another trip to Karen Blixen's house (we
hadn't had our cameras the first time and wanted some pictures),
and ate dinner in the famed Ibis Grill, from which Lord Delamere
used to pot elephants whenever he was drunk, which was almost
every night.
February 22: We ate breakfast in the Delamere Lounge (from which a
drunken Lord Delamore used to shoot elephants when he wasn't doing
it down the hall in the Ibis Grill), drove to the airport, and
caught the plane to London -- via Cyprus. I was at a loss to
understand this, since the flight to Nairobi was non-stop, no one
was getting on or off at Cyprus, and Cyprus isn't exactly the
safest place to be these days, especially if you're disguised as
an American. The co-pilot finally explained it to me: when we took
off from London, we were taking off at sea level, at which point
the engines were working at 100% efficiency, and could lift the
plane off the ground carrying all the fuel it required to reach
Nairobi. But Nairobi is at an altitude of 6,000 feet, and the
engines couldn't lift the fully-fueled plane at that altitude.
So we landed in Cyprus and were immediately surrounded by
half a dozen tanks and about 500 armed soldiers, who refused to
allow the plane to go anywhere near the terminal. We sat there for
a couple of hours while their military decided whether or not to
give us the fuel we needed. (It happens every day, and they give
the airplane the necessary fuel every day, but they always take
their time about it, which gives the passengers a final adventure
to relate when they arrive home.)
February 23: There's not a hell of a lot to do in London on a
Sunday, so we met my daughter, Laura, at the British Museum and
spent the afternoon there. Makes one admire the industry of the
Brits, while questioning their morals: if something wasn't nailed
down -- a mummy, a small temple, _anything_ -- they plundered it
and shipped it back to England. I am convinced the only reason
there are no pyramids in the museum is because they couldn't
figure out how to send one home.
February 24: Visited my British agent and a couple of editors,
spent the rest of the day with Carol and Laura shopping for books
that are unavailable in the States, and went off to see the
highly-lauded musical, _Les Miserables_. We see perhaps 12 to 15
plays a year in New York and England, and candidly, this was the
most boring piece of theater we've attended in well over a decade.
February 25: Landed in New York after a 7-hour trip, and gave
Barry Malzberg a call while we were waiting for the flight to
Cincinnati. He told me of the shocking number of deaths that had
occurred within the science fiction community while we were gone
-- L. Ron Hubbard, Frank Herbert, Judy-Lynn del Rey -- which
forcefully brought home the fact that there are a lot more
dangerous things to do than sneak up on lions and elephants, like
just trying to keep your machinery running. We got home at about
10:00 PM, said hello to our various and sundry animals, and fell
to work opening a 5-foot-high stack of mail. The very first letter
was from Eleanor Wood, informing me that _Santiago_ had made the
Waldenbooks general bestseller list in its first week of release.
It almost -- but not quite -- made me glad to be back.
-End-
