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Tsavo East National Park, Kenya

Pictures by Jo & David Spinney

March 4th 2018

When we went out on day one for our first game drive we were out from 7am until about 6pm. I was feeling awesome trying to spot things, David seeing something in the distance and when John spotted something just trying to find it lol. We saw a lion hiding in the grass but he was lying down and not moving much so it was very difficult to find him. But there were so many animals on day one and I knew we would have a great couple of weeks getting to see all the amazing animals.

The lions in this area are called “Man-eating Lions” because from March through December 1898 there was a pair of lions that were responsible for the deaths of a number of construction workers that worked on the Railway. These lions were stalking the workers which is not normal behaviour of lions. There were many attempts to try and hold the lions back from the campsites but they just jumped or crawled over the thorn fences that they made. The first lion was killed in December 1898 and the second was killed 20 days later. These lions started killing in theory because of a cattle plague which forced them to find different food or in a more recent argument that one of the lions had a dental problem and because they use their jaws to bring their meals down it was easier to attack an unexpecting human. It is important to note that there are NO more “man-eating lions” in the area.

We returned back to the resort and I just wanted a shower and get cleaned up before eating dinner, but as we went into our room I noticed something different. It only took a few seconds but it hit me that when they came to clean the room they noticed we didn’t have suitcases and cleaned out everything in our room. Well needless to say I was pretty upset. We still had no news about our luggage and now the few things we did buy the cleaners thought they should take them out. Straight down to reception we went and I told David he should talk to them because I’m pretty upset, but that’s not what happened at all. One word came out of the receptionist’s mouth and I just went crazy. We stayed in reception for about an hour before the head of the cleaners came to see us and brought us (most) of our stuff back. Knickknacks, clothes (David bought a few shirts, so he can feel clean). They had a bag of toothbrushes and toothpaste they had collected from various rooms, so we declined the offer of secondhand toothbrush and toothpaste and went to buy some more from the resorts store. It was insane that they weren’t communicating properly and didn’t realize we were still there.

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