Thank heaven for Raza Visram! He is
the planning and operations
director for AfricanMecca, a firm specializing in African safaris,
tours and adventure travel. To call this an award-winning company is
an understatement. For example, National Geographic named them Best
Adventure Travel Company for 2009. I stumbled across their enormously
helpful and impressive website by accident. I sent an inquiry
about balloon safaris, then crossed my fingers that someone would
take pity on me and
respond. A few hours later I got my very first message from Raza. A
detailed and enormously helpful answer to my question. Turns out,is
he's a Kenyan native himself, so his knowledge of the country is
comprehensive.
Over the two years it
took me to finish
the manuscript, Raza and I became regular e-mail correspondents. Most
recently, he's gone out of his way to promote my upcoming book
through some international Kenya-related websites. Here is a link
to one fun site that is highlighting Adventure
at
Simba
Hill along with some great Kenya related videos.
And here's the
punchline: the two of us
have never met! Raza, if you're out there, I am forever in your
debt.
Visit the sites for yourself
to see some great photos and imagine your own someday African
adventure.
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When Kari and Lucas go on safari
in Adventure at Simba Hill, the first animals they see are a
pair of
black rhinos, rare in the Masai Mara game park almost to the point of
extinction. As I understand it, there
are fewer than forty of the animals left.
Well, one of the great joys of
my own safari experience was
seeing just such a pair of black rhinos on my very first day at the
Masai
Mara! Mind you, they were so far away
that even with my telephoto lens, the image of them in my photo is tiny.
But they were there. They're
not
actually
black,
and
their
distinguished
from the white rhinos largely by their size, which is
much
smaller than the white variety, and the shape of their upper lip, which
I
certainly could not see at that distance. They're
also much more likely to be solitary
than the white rhinos, who
tend to be party animals.
So above are two pictures.
The rhinos in the distance are the black
variety, the closer in are
white. I love the photo of the white
rhinos. Didn't they pose well for me?
Again, you can see more of my
safari
photos by clicking on any of the photos on this page.
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