Kenya

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Hello All;
Since you last heard from us, we flew from Zanzibar Island, Tanzania to Nairobi, Kenya. When we were ready to leave our hotel in Stone Town and head to the airport, we walked over to the taxi stand which is located in front of a Muslim Mosque. It just so happened that when we got there, the call to prayer had just gone out over the loud speaker. As I told you in our last posting, 90% of Zanzibar is Muslim, so almost all the men were in the mosque praying. There were 2 guys in the taxi stand parking lot and one of them asked if we needed a taxi. We said yes, so he loaded our backpacks into the trunk of a nice Toyota Camry. We thought it was strange that he had to search for the car keys, but he found them pretty quickly and off we went. Come to find out, he knew the guy that owned the taxi, but it wasn't actually his car. He just thought he'd make a few bucks while the guy was at prayer. By the time we got to the airport we were questioning how many times this guy had actually driven a car. It was strange, but he got us there. Hopefully he didn't wreck his buddies car on the way back.
Nairobi is a huge city. We stayed at a backpackers for our first 3 nights. We took a taxi to a big mall one day, spent most of the day wandering around there. Then on the third night we went to this restaurant called "The Carnivore". It's rated as one of the top 50 restaurants in the world. It was so much fun. It's huge and really beautiful. The service is excellent and so is the food. Their speciality is game meat. They have all the domestic meats; beef, pork, chicken, turkey, lamb, plus 2 game meats. The night we were there is was Ostrich and Crocodile. All the meat is cooked over wood coals and skewered onto 4 ft. long swords. They put a flag on your table and they keep bringing you meat until you lay your flag down. They bring by a sword of meat and cut slices off of it onto your plate. You also get soup, salad, veggies, baked potato, fresh bread, and dessert. It is really a cool place and it was so delicious!
On our 4th day in Nairobi we moved to a big hotel for one night. Here, we met up with an overland truck tour group that we're traveling to Uganda with. It's a long, long way from here to where we're going in Uganda and this seemed the easiest way to travel.
The tour leaders/truck driver & cook, are a married South African couple named Frik & Sonja, (can you believe his name is Frik!). As soon as we met them we knew we were going to have fun. They are such a cool couple and have amazing stories from all the years the worked in game parks. We were a little apprehensive about how many other people would be on the tour and what they would be like. But they're all awesome and a lot of fun. There's another married couple from New Zealand, but they've been on Madagascar for a few months, a couple from Austrailia, a young Austrailian woman, 3 young women from Canada, and 3 young men from London.
On an overland truck tour, you get a tent and a sleeping pad, you bring your bag. You set up and tear down your own tent everyday and we're all seperated into teams that rotate between, cooking, washing up, and truck clean up. So we have to do a little bit of work, but it's easy. We left Nairobi at 7 am on our 5th day there and headed for Lake Nakuru National Park. Passed through the 3rd biggest city in Kenya, Nakuru, on our way. Got to the campground, set up and headed into the park. We saw alot of wildlife, Rhino, Zebra, Buffalo, various Antelope. The big thing here is Flamingos. They flock to this lake and you can see thousands of pink dots gathered all across the lake. Really pretty. We also encountered the Olive Baboon here. This is the big, long haired Baboon. They really are pretty, but they are big and aggressive. They are not really scared of humans. We stopped in the park to have some lunch at a picnic site and within 5 minutes a lookout came by and scoped us out. He calls out to the rest of the troop and before you know it your pretty much surrounded. They left us alone because we have a big group. Just over from us was a group of 3 people having lunch and this big male Baboon just walked up to the picnic table, jumped on top of it, grabbed their loaf of bread and sat there and ate the whole thing. He was not going to be ran off, not by those 3 anyway. When you get out of your vehicle you have to make sure your windows are rolled up and your doors are locked. If you don't lock your door, they'll open your car and get in, you really don't want that!
Our next stop was a really cool campground in Eldoret called Naiberi River Campsite. Besides having a nice camping area, they had beautiful rooms, nice restaurant, internet cafe, pool, sports bar. It's run by a really nice guy named Raj. He has a huge home right outside the grounds and owns textile factories all across Kenya. The Kenyan countryside is absolutely beautiful. We still have a long way to go and a lot more to see, so until next time, let us hear from you!
Carolyn & Aaron

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Photos

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Downtown Nairobi

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Traffic-African Style

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Our Acacia Safari Truck

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Zebra-Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya

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Black & White Colobus Monkeys-Lake Nakuru

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Old Buffalo-Lake Nakuru

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Lesser Flamingos-Lake Nakuru

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Lake Nakuru

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Lake Nakuru from Baboon Point

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Crossing into the northern hemisphere in Kenya

Comments

[rick barnett]

kenya
The pictures are gorgeous! Thanks for keeping in touch. Retirement is good so far. hope to hear from you soon. Rick

[Danny Spillane]

Good to hear from you!
Hi you two. Great to hear that your trip is going so well! You both also look pretty fit and healthy. I miss all of those early morning safari walks. Too much sitting around is not good for the waistline. Late summer over here in Australia and the bushfire season is coming to a close thankfully. Back at work after a long Christmas break. Need to pay for my next trip overseas! Keep up the great blogs. It's fantastic reading! Take care, Danny.