Tsavo East, day 2, and back to Malindi

I woke up today at Voi Wildlife Lodge, ready to continue the safari and see more animals. This is the view I had as the sun was rising:

And here's a picture of the outside of where I was staying. The building closest to the mountain is the one I was sleeping in.

After breakfast, we continued our game driving and I continued my incessant picture-taking. Here are some of the things we saw:

Elephant

Giraffe. This guy was probably less than fifty feet away and seemed quite content posing for pictures for a few minutes. Then he (or she, I don't know) walked away, and I got pictures of that, too, which will be loaded up onto Facebook as soon as the internet decides to cooperate.



And this was what we saw as we left. This picture probably would have been better at the beginning, but I took it at the end, so it goes at the end.

All in all, a pretty good safari, even considering that I didn't speak the same language as my fellow safariers. We chatted a bit, but for the most part they were content talking amongst themselves in Italian, and I was okay with that. I think if I come back to Kenya at some point in my career, I'll probably go on a longer safari, and I'll definitely make sure that I have people with me who speak English.

I got back to my hotel in Malindi a bit after noon and went and grabbed something to eat, then I went to the hospital at two because I was supposed to be meeting with Dr. Katana about the waste incinerator. Someone, somewhere (yes, I know, I'm a fountain of information) is sponsoring an upgrade of their waste incinerator, so he was going to show me the current system and we were going to go over the information the sponsor needs. Well, he (Katana) was busy with something else, so I spent a couple of hours preparing for my presentation on Thursday, and then headed back to the hotel for my afternoon swim. I understand that people are busy and can't always entertain me, but I would have preferred it if he said, "well, I'm busy with x, why don't we just plan on doing this tomorrow?" I could have been just as productive, if not more so, working on my presentation in my hotel room. Oh, well. It's good to show some sort of accountability, I guess.

Tomorrow: ward rounds with the consultant in the medicine ward, then working with Dr. Katana on the waste incinerator and the jiggers patient (who has just been hanging out at the hospital, still infested. Standard of care differences, maybe?)