First full day in Nairobi

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You want to pet a Cheetah?

First full day in Nairobi, we hit the ground running. Heather and Jennifer were picked up by their driver Simon for the day, while I met with Rahul for the morning to sort out some business stuff. Foir me, it was all lawyers, bankers, and agents. For Jennifer and Heather, it was a morning full adventure as they first visited the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Elephant Orphanage, and then the Animal Orphanage in side Nairboi National Park.

The Elephant Orphanage was an opportunity for them to learn about the challenges that the elephants are having in today’s world. The next stop, however4, brought them face to face with Cheetahs who have been rescued from the wild. Their driver, Simon, knew an insider in the park and made it possible for them to gain personal access to the cheetahs and other of the wild animals there. Jennifer and Heather sat beside the cheetahs in the cage and petted them, while the cheetahs, looked them up and down as a potential meal. Heather says “they were purring” but I assume that for a wild animal, pleasure is measured in small bites - hence the purring. At any rate, they made it out of the cage in one piece and went on to have a heart to heart encounter with the monkey Barak (…it seems like everyone and everything in Kenya, these days, is named after Barak Obama). Barak took to Heather’s blonde hair and tried furiously to locate his favourite meal - lice - in her locks. As he tugged away at her hair, the accompanying group of school-aged children laughed with glee as the two tangoed in a furry of mutual dips and dodges. It was all good fun though, and they awent off to the Sarit Center (a large mall in Nairobi) to meet me. I finished my own business, with some success, and made my own way to the Sarit Center to meet with them.

This gave us time to cash some more traveller’s cheques and log in for some Internet time at the local Internet café.

Later in the afternoon, we returned to the hotel Boulevard, freshened up, and then made a visit to see him at his home for drinks and snacks, and met his father and mother (delightful people) and finalised some of our travel plans.

Back at the hotel by 8:30pm, we went to the hotel for some late snacks before turning in. We ate deep fried mushrroms with some sort of delicious sauce and shrimp with Avocado. The meals, so far, have been amazing and thre tastes of Africa are out fo this world. We chatted with our server, Samson, for what seemed like an hour. He filled us in on the various Kenyan brewing techniques, and took some photos with us. Samson made us definitely feel at home. We ended up turning in late, which was a bad idea considering that we had a 7:00am bus appointment the next morning…….

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