The reference to the Toto song from 1982 will be explained shortly.

First though…sorry for no post since mid March…but I gotta good excuse.

After our trip to Jax for the symphony we had a Sarasota Orchestra concert the following Sunday…they played Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin as the main piece…the soloist was a local woman who originally trained on the violin with one of the orchestra members but then changed to piano. She was pretty good…but had a very annoying habit Neil noticed on both the Gershwin and her encore. Normally…when a piece ends the soloist pauses for a second or two to let the reverb of the sound die out before bowing. This woman however…waited approximately zero nanoseconds after the last note before literally exploding from the piano seat to the front of the stage…I guess she just couldn’t wait to be applauded. She was pretty good as I said…and would have gotten applause aplenty but for goodness sakes woman…take a chill pill for a second or two. Neil had never…ever…ever…seen a soloist so eager for adulation and it was literally quite distracting. 

Following the concert…he spent the rest of that week preparing for a trip…packing and organizing last minute things…and starting his malaria prevention medicine. On Saturday he drove over to Miami and stayed at the Sheraton, left the car parked there and took their shuttle to the airport around 0800 to begin his marathon 30something hour flight via JFK and Amsterdam with a 3 hour layover at each before arriving in Arusha, Tanzania (near Mount Kilimanjaro) for the beginning of his long awaited Serengeti photo workshop. Along with 5 of his new friends…they headed or the hotel an hour away…all completely toasted…then arose the next morning to meet our workshop guides Steve and Rose Perry for breakfast before heading off to the Arusha airport to catch their flight to the bush…where they met our drivers Ellison and Pokea from Unique Safaris who actually do all the arrangements. Because of the overnight flights and the cost of the trip…and not wanting to waste the first day or two with jet lag…he sprung for business class tickets…and while he can confirm that the food is better, the drinks are included, and the seats lay flat so one can kinda sorta sleep…it’s still a bus with wings and he was still pretty tired. All of the other participants except his friend Luanne flew coach…she was in biz as well so they hung out in the lounge and had a snack between flights. Longest flight of the trip was from Amsterdam to Arusha…about 9.5 hours…and they actually flew fairly close (300 miles or so) to where the Houthi’s are launching missiles at ships in the Red Sea. They were well out of range though…but were still in the general area.

On arrival they headed to their first camp in the central Serengeti…accommodations were in tents but man, it was the fanciest tent he’s ever been in and definitely doesn’t really meet his definition of a tent although technically it did have canvas sides so it was a tent. They spent 4 days there with a morning and afternoon game drive…arising at 0445 daily and getting to bed about 2200 after sunset, return to camp, dinner, and charging batteries and offloading images from the memory cards…and actually had one day that the game drive went all day for 13.5 hours…by the time Rose suggested they return for lunch it was 1300 with an hour plus drive back to camp then eat and leave for the afternoon drive at 1500…so they voted to just stay out and eat some granola bars and skip lunch…although that did make for a long day but not really any longer than it would have been anyway.

He can also confirm that the roads are pretty gnarly in the Serengeti…I’ve got a video I’ll put up showing that but I gotta put it on YouTube first before I can embed it in the blog posts.

He came home with about 32,000 photos…and they all need culling and processing…I’l post the actual photos when he does that but for now I’ll just give you a little taste of the ones on his phone.

Despite having well over $200,000 in equipment on the trip…and taking well over 200,000 images in total between the 6 clients and two guides…he can also confirm that the cutest photo of the trip was taken…with an iPhone in the other truck. This cheetah cub climbed up on the spare tires and was looking into the back of the vehicle with a sort of ‘Mom, look what I found” expression on his face. They also have a lioness literally close enough to have been petted by Neil through the open window if he wanted…she was with her 4 cubs and also seemed more curious than anything else. This cub was literally 3 feet from us.

His first tent…pretty darned nice I say.

The lion cubs…and believe it or not the hyena cubs were actually cuter but he got regular camera images of them rather than iPhone…these are about 3-4 months old according to his driver Ellison.

Double rainbow taken the 2nd or 3rd morning…can’t remember which…looking the opposite direction from where they got the best lion portrait of the trip…at least it will be once it gets processed. That’s the other vehicle…driven by Pokea 

Another of the many lion prides they saw, a dozen strong with 1 male, 2 female and 9 younger offspring of assorted ages…somewhere over 50 lions total…this is about 1/2 a mile or so from the first camp.

Sunset on one of the drives.

Their ride to the bush.

The group on the bush plane…Andy (his roomie), Steve (hidden behind Andy), Rose and Steve in the back, David, his friend Luanne, and Amanda. David and Amanda were in his truck and the other three in the other truck with Rose and Steve alternating days so each truck got the benefit of Steve’s help and guidance on best shots. They rotated among the 3 rows of seats in the truck daily with the rear seat being the most uncomfortable. Despite that…Amanda took the rear row more than her share. She is too short to see over the roof when it was open and was able to stand on the rear seat and cooler to get a view from topside.

This is one of the better roads.

All that remains of a baby Thompson’s Gazelle after it became a meal for one of the predators (Amanda’s foot for size reference).

A couple of Acacia trees at sunset…these are the quintessential Africa trees but there are actually 30 or 40 different kinds of them.

As I said…he’s got 32,000 images or so and it will take him some time (weeks probably) to get them all processed but I’ll put up more posts as he finishes doing each day’s worth.

Cyas.