The Prodigal Daughter

 

The Swahili word for zebra means "donkey with stripes" so of course whenever we saw an actual donkey we'd refer to it as a "stripeless zebra".  This is from the Ngorongoro Crater, the largest unbroken volcanic caldera in the world that is not entirely a lake.  That's quite a qualifier, isn't it?  Oh, and the crater is one of Africa's seven wonders of the natural world.

 

 

In the crater we happened upon this big boy mainly by noticing the five safari vehicles lined up with tourists snapping photos.  He's probably under five years old as his mane is still pretty sparse and decidedly un-bouffant.  The animals must be able to just ignore the safari vehicles rumbling around every day from sunrise until 6pm.

 

 

This is an adult female lion standing over a fresh kill of wildebeast.  We couldn't figure out why she was all alone.  Usually, other lions will appear for lunch when one of them makes a kill.  There weren't even any hyenas scavenging about.  Weird.  We got this picture on extreme zoom.

 

 

We spied these two male lions making their rounds at the entrance to Tarangire National Park in front of a massive and ancient Baobab tree that Tarangire is so famous for.

 

 

Do these stipes make me look fat?  The donkey with stripes on the right is very pregnant.

 

 

Here's Mark attempting to capture bird songs on his I-Phone.  He asked us to be quiet and we were but I'm pretty sure he also got the Japanese tourists next to us on his recording.

 

 

Look who appeared at our door today as if she stepped off the 68 bus.  Makiko has returned!  Actually, her BFF Jennah dropped her off.  We went for some Don Pablos Texican food last night.

 

 

Makiko's has been staying with Jennah since last Sunday.  I'll drop her off at the airport on Thursday.  We challenged Makiko to identify things, anythings that are different in our house since she left in June of 2010.  She immediately pointed out our two Paris paintings.  She remembers Mr. Wheel and promptly engaged him in play with his fishing wand.

 

 

She's staying in "Makiko's Room" also known as the guest room. In April she'll be starting her third year of college--it sounds like she's studying communications.