On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:37:36 +0100, Liz Leyden wrote:

When you tell people you've been to Kenya, don't they ask you if you
saw "lions and tigers"? (Maybe Germans are better informed.)

Liz,

hehe, no, it hasn't happened to me yet, or maybe once in a long
time.

There may be something with being much closer to Africa in
Europe. Maybe that raises awareness. From Germany a flight to
Africa can be cheap, convenient, and relatively short. This year
Egypt Air had a flight from Munich, where I live, to Nairobi and
back for some ¤340. Only Tue to Fri, or some such, and overnight
with a stop in Cairo, but if you're on a budget, you can have a
really cheap vacation in Kenya from here. Getting into the
nature reserves makes it more expensive though, due to the
rapidly rising entrance fees and the requirement to go in a car.

By the way, a couple of thousand years ago, in stone age, lions
were all over the place, at least at mediterranean latitudes. Go
back another couple of 10,000 years and you had cave lions in
Europe. Those were bigger than today's tigers.

If you had some time to kill, you could read, "Clan of the Cave
Bear" and its sequels.

I'm not even sure whether there aren't a few isolated lions
still in India. Haven't heard of isolated tigers in Africa
though. (:-)

Hans-Georg
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