The Last Day of Safari...and Back to Nairobi

Today We Meet Moraa

We are up REALLY early today and ready for the drive by 6:00 am. We are out on the Serengetti plains long before the sun rises and we see the balloons in the distant warming up for their sunrise launch. Noella is there and we wish her a successful game drive from afar. We watch them slowly rise into the crisp morning air as the first rays of sun strike against the colourfully patterned material. It looks like something out of National Geographic….

We are back for breakfast by 9:00am and have a quick breakfast. Then back to our rooms, we pack and haul our bags down to the launch point. Today is our last day and we leave at 10:00 for the airstrip to take us back to Nairobi on the 11:00 am flight.

On our ride to the airstrip we spot the two male lions just off the jeep track. They are sitting in the tall grass munching carelessly on the last remains of a wildebeest. They hardly pay any attention to our presence. Further up the road, we spy two more cheetahs who are sitting 20 feet apart from one another, both eying a small herd of gazelle who graze cautiously ahead of them on the edge of the brush 40 feet away. We watch quietly for 10 minutes or more, not knowing if they will suddenly explode from their silent pose and rocket themselves at the nervous gazelles. We are short on time, though, and must move on to make it to the airstrip on time. We pass more elephant and a small herd of giraffe, some topi, zebra, and waterbuck.

We arrive at the airstrip and the airplane soon arrives to gather us up. This time the plane is smaller, a Twin Otter, and Heather is nervous. She white-knuckled her way back to Nairobi as we lifted over the tanned grasslands and skipped along the air currents over the Great Rift Valley.

We stopped at the Yaya Center in Nairobi, which was a large “western” shopping mall complex in Nairobi. We picked up some last supplies, cashed a few more Traveller’s Cheques, and made our way back to the Boulevard Hotel.

We cleaned up and went down to the lobby to meet with Moraa, and old friend of ours. We had a wonderful meeting and ate a late afternoon lunch together. After a few goodbyes, and a promise to meet again later in the week for more business, we went back to our rooms to pack for tomorrow trip to Embu. Heather and I are travelling north of Nairobi tomorrow to visit her foster child which she has had for 5 years now through Plan Canada (formerly Foster Parent Plan).

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