Friday; to Lake Victoria

I think the idea was that Cyprian (first I got the name wrong, then I got it right but misspelled it) would drive us through the western part of the park slowly and that we'd get to Lake Victoria late in the day, but I mentioned my desire to end my days early-ish and so we raced here. Shortly after departure, we crossed a bridge with fast rushing water beneath it from last nights rains, and when I looked down into the current, a dead baby hippo was pinned against a tree. Tears on my iPad.

That said, we saw nothing we hadn't seen often on our pan-Serengeti joy ride. There were lots more giraffes, sanglier, wildebeests, impalas and hippos. Imagine being rather blasé about hippos and giraffes! But again, the landscape knocks you out. You pass through a new micro climate every 20 minutes. For over an hour, I just stared stared the curb of the dirt road looking at ll the grasses. A lot are seeding, and so in the endless landscape of grasses you can see lakes of a kind with blue seed heads, or feathery, fern-like seed heads, or seed heads like Irises at home, tall grass, short grass, grass with seed pods that look like explosions at the top, grasses that grow seeds in clumps on their stalk, beautiful grasses with dense deep-brown seed heads, grasses that bend, grasses that are stiff...you get the idea.

Things seen today: flock of green love birds, lilac-crested rollers, snake eagles, a tree with bleached white animal skulls on it, Grant gazelles and several indigo birds with white eye liner. The Grant gazelles are lighter coloured and like all the gazelles, impalas and bucks, they are living perfect sculptures.

When I think about all this stunning endless beauty I see in the flowers, plants and animals, my science loving brain takes it all in as part of evolutionary theory—what I see is nothing more than the apotheosis of adaptation for locomotion, protection or function. But I see it as beauty, and beauty is what my life has always been about; hence my various professions. Beauty: in fabric, in nature, on human faces, in human souls, in human behavior, in math, in science—I can see beauty anywhere and it thrills me. And I wonder.... Why do I respond so to beauty?

All the animals have symmetrical decoration; it is not random. At least half of them, on land or in the sea, become much more colorful when mating. Genetalia is often coloured. Patterns dominate, and so response to colour and design is built into us. But I add this incredible emotional element into the formula that has become a reason to live. Imagine that. What's that about? It makes me wish there were a God whom I could thank for all that I see and for my capacity to enjoy it.

At one point, we were driving through an area of verdant lush grasslands with large mature acacia trees with wide-spreading shade-making canopies, and then we basically turned a corner and entered a landscape of much lower dark green grass and scattered through it were shorter young acacia trees that were not green but a glistening showy mass of silver—their thorns and bark created the colour by reflecting the sunlight and there was no visible foliage. (This photo does not do justice to the impression in nature.)

Speke Bay Lodge is right on the beach. The following is from the visitors information booklet: "We advise you not to swim in Lake Victoria because of bilharzias (a parasite) risk, and the presence of leeches and hippopotami. Walking on the beach is safe."

There are huge ciso (seisel?) plants, poinsettia trees, and lots and lots of birds. I am going on a guided bird walk tomorrow morning at 7:00. Oh, and I am the only person here. I have the whole place to myself! It is weird at dinner, so I read.

And speaking of reading GET THIS!!!! All my life I have been embarrassed by (well many things about myself. One of them is my propensity to eat one food at a time. Several people have noticed mat habit and told me about it (as if I didn't know). But I new that what they were really saying s that I was weird. Well.... From the New Yorker's anthology "Meals Worth the Trip," from an article entitled, "Pilgrim's Progress," these words: "They like their tastes one by one. Try going to a Chinese restaurant with a Fenchman, or an Italian; he will order separately, guard his plate and refuse to share his lemon chicken in exchange for a helping of your Hunan Beef. One Frenchman I know even cleans his fork with an alcohol wile between courses..." Now, what once embarrassed me, is a source of pride! How about that! Further proof that I was once Guy Francois Lorranger.

OK, I think what I understood Cryspian to cal ciso, may be sisal. This one is a two-and-a-half meters high!

Speke Bay Lodge....