Roughing It
Great writers have always been willing to bear great hardship in the service of their readers.
Stanley mounted an expedition through uncharted Africa to find Livingstone.
George Plimpton suffered through Detroit Lions training camp so he could lead one play in regulation time.
Billy Crystal managed to get one at bat with the New York Yankees.
And I’m stuck here in a luxury resort, with cooks and butlers and housemaids and a driver and a tracker, but the slowest internet in the universe, just to bring you pictures of animals you could go to the zoo to see up close.
Ain’t life a bitch?
We were incredibly lucky to run into this leopard.
Okay, so I’m trying very hard to make it sound like this is work, but it’s really the life of Riley. We are staying in what was once a private house, with 5 bedrooms, just for the 8 of us. Every morning the cooks come in and make hot tea and coffee and small snacks so we can be ready to brave the elements at 6:30, sitting in the back of a Toyota Land Cruiser while driver/guide and tracker take us gallivanting all over the veldt in the search for game big and small. After a couple of hours, we pull over and the crew erects a table and puts out more goodies. A bit later, we arrive back at the manor house, and eat lunch.
Did you know the collective noun for a group of zebras is a “dazzle”?
Take a nap, have a snack, and it’s back out on the trail for another 3 hours of big game hunting, winding up at sunset with another high class snack out in the open, with wine and aperitifs. Then home, where we are met with warm washcloths to wipe the dust from a hard days safari-ing off our fevered brows.
The rare white rhino, hunted almost to extinction by poachers who only want the horns–which are worth more than their weight in gold.
Dinner is outside (which is colder than one would like it, al fresco not being ideal in winter), cooked over an open fire. Still with tablecloths, crystal, silver and fine service, of course. All that fresh air and good food is exhausting, so it’s early to bed so we can do it all again tomorrow.
Another rhino photo just for Susan Rowley, who has a fixation on them.
I’ve taken a couple of thousand photos, and have many more than four I want to show you, but am prevented from doing so by the lack of bandwidth. I told you I was roughing it.
Totally Unauthorized 
Do you know the “type” of Zebra you shot?
There are others, in Samburu with different stripes.
Please be more specific–
Also, is the Manor working out? You made me feel really bad.
And here I thought “roughing it” was a hotel without room seevice!
Sent from my iPhone 5S
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The shot of the leopard is outstanding. My son and his wife went to Victoria Falls and then on to a photo safari last July. He got some pretty amazing shots too.
Your pictures are incredibly good, Chris!
Love reading about everything!
Just FYI: Dazzle camouflage is a type that uses bold stripe designs that look like….zebras! Which word came from which?? Look it up when you get home and have real bandwidth.