The Journal:
  Pages 1-2
  Pages 3-4
  Pages 5-6
  Pages 7-8
  Pages 9-10
  Pages 11-12
  Pages 13-14
  Pages 15-16
  Pages 17-18
  Pages 19-20
  Pages 21-22
  Pages 23-24
  Pages 25-26
  Pages 27-28
  Pages 29-30
  Pages 31-32
  Pages 33-34
  Pages 35-36
  Pages 37-38
  Pages 39-40
  Pages 41-42
  Pages 43-44
  Pages 45-46

Waza National Park

The question most frequently asked about our trip is definitely "did you go on a safari?".  The simple answer to that is "yes."

Waza National Park is about two hours north of Maroua, so besides Mt. Cameroon, this was one of the other "anchor" events that we had planned on.  The five of us (one of Kari and Andy's friends from the hospital joined us) hired a guide and packed a picnic lunch and a few rolls of film and spent the day in the park.

There's really not too much to say other than the pictures -- as "non-wildlife" people, Trish and I didn't necessarily know all of what we were looking at, but the elephants and giraffes definitely were eye candy.  The park is very large, but we had a good guide who took us to all of the hot spots, so we don't feel like we missed too much.

At the entrance to the park.

Posing in front of giraffes. We saw a number of different groups of giraffes during the day.

Here is a picture of a giraffe eating and another drinking. The poor drinking fellow was just about to start
his daily drink when we drove up and scared him off. It took him over a half-hour to decide to trust
us and wander back to the watering hole again. As you can see, drinking if very awkward for
giraffes and they are very vulnerable in that position. Kari had been to the park
three previous times and said that getting to see a giraffe drinking was very rare.

We turned the corner and came across a "nuclear" family of elephants (father, mother, adolescent
and baby) literally 15 yards in front of us. While the father didn't look too pleased to see us,
he didn't try to charge us (although he did wave his ears at us and walk across the road
a couple of times to show us who was boss). We sat and watched them for about a half-hour
before they finally decided to wander off.

Just a few of the many birds inhabiting the park. The little blue one looks like a picture that
could be taken in North Dakota!

One of Kari and Andy's friends from the hospital accompanied us to the park. Even though he lived two
hours away his whole life, this was his first trip to the park. Also a picture of our driver and our truck.

Kari and Andy's friend and our guide stand on an elephant carcass we found. It was unknown whether poachers had killed
it or it was a natural death, but it was not a recent kill. We came across some lion tracks but we didn't
see a lion (they are uncommon during the dry season).