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Published: December 23rd 2007
Pat the kitty
When the guy asked did we want to come in and pat the cheetah's we thought he was joking!! Oh no he wasn't, and we were in there before he changed his mind. Meet Simon's family, Allan, Sue, Louise, Si & RachWell as you may have guessed we have been fairly busy finding a house and jobs here in the UK, we have settled in Maidenhead in Berkshire, which is just outside London in the West. Maidenhead is an average sized town with 'Royal Windsor' 5 miles down the road and many pretty little villages in between. We are on a 'fast link' into Paddington (20 minutes during peak time), which is great for my work (I am based near Oxford Street), and great for Rachel and shopping!! Anyway, finally we are doing a bit of a catch up on our blog entries, one reason it has taken so long is because between us and my family there were about 3,000 photos to go through!! So we will do a few entries to cover our trip and include lots of photos ... enjoy!
You may remember we left Africa on my birthday to spend about 6 weeks back in the UK - relaxing and not doing too much after a challenging and memorable 6 months - before returning to Africa in mid August to meet up with my family from Australia. We were really looking forward to being back in Africa,
Our private taxi in Nairobi
We left the comfort of Nairobi's best and most famous Hotel, The Stanley, to spend a day looking round Nairobi. Our transport, an old London Cab for the day. as we had missed many aspects of it and were excited about seeing some more of Africa and having a nice holiday!
We had a rather optimistic travel plan to get from Nairobi in Kenya to Arusha in Tanzania, then fly to Dar es Salaam to catch the train from Dar to Mbeya on the Tanzania / Malawi border. We were then going to travel by public transport down to Lake Malawi and then pick up a private safari trip that would take us from Malawi into Zambia via South Luangwa National Park, through Lusaka and then down to Victoria Falls on the Zambia Botswana border. Here we would separate and Rachel & I would travel overland into Botswana and my family would fly back to Kenya for a week or so, safari in Kenya before starting their trip back to Oz. In all we would cover nearly 4,000kms in just under 3 weeks which is tough going in any country, in Africa it was almost madness - but we had things we wanted to see and restrictions on when we could do them as the train only goes one day a week, so everything had to fit around
David Sheldrick Elephant Orphange
The baby elephants are rescued from the wild, raised for a couple of years and then released back into the wild. A must see in Nairobi that!! Obviously our plans would change along the way, but we'll get to that later.
So on the 16th August we all met up at the Stanley Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya and it not a bad way to start your African adventure. We spent one day having a look around in our private hired London Taxi (picked him up cheap on the street), visiting Nairobi animal rescue centre, (basically a small zoo), a fantastic baby elephant orphanage and then getting up close and personal with some long necked beauties at the giraffe centre. It was my family first full day in Africa (although Allan had travelled extensively through Africa about 30 years before), and it was great to see them after being away now for over a year.
The next morning we took the shuttle bus (big mini bus really) down into Arusha in Tanzania, where Rachel and I had spent 6 months with the wonderful children and teachers at the school. The ride down from Nairobi to Arusha is really a nice trip with 5-6 hours of great scenery and plenty of chances to see the locals in action on the side of the road and
maybe even some animals along the way.
We spent about a week in Arusha and caught up with lots of old friends, visited the orphanage which Rachel and I visited regularly during our time in Arusha; and my family went on safari into the beautiful game parks of Tanzania.
Next was a flight from Arusha to Dar es Salaam which although was sort of cheating on an overland trip, was a necessity as it saved us 10 hours on hot and cramped buses, a subsequent need to stay over night in Dar before getting the afternoon train, and therefore basically wasting 2 days. So we caught a flight in the morning and were on the train that afternoon, and cost wise it was almost breakeven.
To this point things had gone quite well and all looked good for our first and last African train adventure.
Don't miss the photos on the next pages!!
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