Didn't I Feed You Yesterday__ A Mother's Guide to Sanity in Stilettos - Laura Bennett [60]
It was a dream date from start to finish. We stayed at the Governors’ Camp in the Masai Mara, where we could hear lions roar as we lay in our luxury tent. One afternoon I was changing and heard someone enter. I turned around to see a wild elephant standing about ten feet from me. I grabbed my camera and got a priceless close-up of his face. Only after the camera flashed did I notice the panicked guard with the spear who shooed the powerful creature out.
“You will live a long life because you were not killed by that elephant,” the guard informed me. It hadn’t occurred to me that I wasn’t on an amusement park ride.
We then went to a camp called Borana, where the animators of The Lion King stayed for inspiration. One day our guide called us over to the edge of a precipice.
“Come see this.” He motioned. On a small cliff below were two sleeping leopards.
“This is very rare. Leopards are difficult to see because they hunt only at night and are well camouflaged. They are solitary animals; seeing two together is very rare. It only happens when they are mating.” When we turned around, there was a waiter holding a tray of champagne. Thank God my backpacking days through Europe with a Eurail Pass eurocard are over, I thought; this is travel.
That night, back at the camp, we dined with an Italian expat wearing a shoulder-holstered pistol who showed us his elephant gun with lion tooth marks in the butt. It occurred to me that he wasn’t on a photo safari like the rest of us.
“Let’s all have a drink to congratulate Peter and Laura,” our host said. “They are the first guests here at Borana ever to see all of the big five in one trip. We have guests who return year after year in the hopes of such an accomplishment.” The “big five” are the elephant, lion, water buffalo, rhino, and leopard. Unbeknownst to us, it is the goal of a safari to view these animals, or bag them if that’s your thing.
“Why not the giraffe, or the hippo?” I asked our host.
“The animals in the big five were determined by big-game hunters. These are the animals most difficult to shoot, because of their ferocity when cornered,” he said.
I still enjoyed seeing the giraffe the most, but it was our friends the mating leopards that gave us the edge. I love it when I win competitions I didn’t even know I was entered in.
After Borana, we stayed at Giraffe Manor in Nairobi, a 140-acre estate used as a refuge for giraffes. The giraffes roam free on the property and, like park squirrels, they stick their heads in through the dining room windows to beg for food.
Peter must have known this trip would be a hard act to follow, especially after we took our cue from the leopards. He had me at “safari,” and I never looked back. Oh, sure, we went to Europe a couple of times to visit my brother’s family, and I have been known to tag along on the occasional business trip, but once we had two three four five six kids, “vacation” became a four-letter word.
Once. We have gone on vacation all together, as a family of eight exactly once. I’m not really sure why we did it—perhaps because Peter had traveled a good deal as a child and wanted his children to do the same, or maybe because I was suffering from some form of wanderlust postpartum depression. We decided on Puerto Rico as it was a short, direct flight, and we could give the kids a taste of olde architecture without me needing to schlep them around for passport pictures while still sorting out Baby White Male’s paperwork. In a fit of “what to pack,” I went onto the L. L. Bean website and ordered a bunch of polo shirts and shorts in assorted sizes, some swim trunks, and flip-flops. When they arrived I opened the box and dumped the contents into a wheelie. Six hours later, the eight of us were in Old San Juan.
Remember when the Brady Bunch go to Hawaii and Bobby and Peter find some ugly idol at Dad Brady’s construction site and it turns out the trinket has an “evil taboo” and the next thing you know Bobby’s head almost gets bashed in by a hotel wall decoration, then Greg has a massive wipeout