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Published: August 16th 2010
In September 2009 my fiancée and I decided to go to Africa, it was my first time visiting Africa so I didn’t know what to expect, my fiancée loves animals, me I love to eat them but I’m one for trying new things so thought a safari is just for me. We flew to Nairobi and spent a night there before starting the safari in the Masai Mara, I wondered why we had to spend a night in Nairobi before the safari but after the long flight it was a welcome rest, especially after it took hours to drive through Nairobi due to rush hour.
We arrived and checked in early afternoon, after lunch we went straight to sleep waking up after nearly 8 hours sleep in the evening, our body clocks were messed up and we had to be up early in the morning. We heard that there was a show in the hotel where you could eat, we turned up and it was a buffet meal but not one of those where the meat is under a heater for hours on end, this buffet was people coming to your table with an assortment of freshly cooked meats ranging
from ostrich to crocodile. This was probably one of the nicest meals I have ever had and when the show started I can only describe it as an African twist to Cirque du Soleil, it was fantastic, after dinner we went back to the room expecting to be awake all night but managed to have another 6 hours sleep, we must have been tired, lol.
In the morning we all met at our hotel reception and were split into two groups, our group were going to the Masai Mara first, we were introduced to the rest of the group and started the drive to our hotel in a rickety van that we all thought was going to break down several times. I didn’t realise how far we would be driving over the course of the next week, it was roughly a 4 hour drive to our hotel in the Masai Mara, most of the drive was just dusty roads but we did get to look down at the Rift Valley along the way.
When we arrived it was madness with coaches upon coaches of people all trying to check in at the same time, we went for lunch
and that was when we caught our first glimpse of the view from our hotel looking out over the Masai Mara, it was breath taking. We had lunch and before we had any time to relax we were on our first game drive of the trip, we saw elephants, impala, giraffe, lions, zebras, wildebeast and cheetahs, to name a few.
After the drive we all had dinner and everybody was so exhausted that we all went to sleep almost immediately, it was another early start again in the morning so we didn’t mind, we woke up at about 4am so we could drive to our hot air balloon for an early morning flight over the Masai Mara. It was freezing at that time of day, we were all so cold in the hot air balloon until the sun came up, but as the sun came up so too did the animals, words cannot describe the views, the herds of animals running, lions looking up at us, truly amazing. When we landed we had a champagne breakfast, although we had to eat fast as the baboons were eyeing up our food, then our morning game drive started, a quick lunch
before going to see a Masai tribe, this was one of the highlights of the trip. We learned about how they live and saw a courting dance which involves jumping as high as possible, the higher you jump the better your chances are of getting a wife, then back out for the afternoon game drive, the drives last around 2-3 hours each.
We had one more game drive in the Masai Mara the following morning before heading to Lake Nakuru, by the time we left Masai Mara we had seen 4 of the big five, lion, elephant, buffalo & leopard only a rhino to go, we drove to Nakuru, which took about 5-6 hours, we had to have lunch whilst travelling to Nakuru.
When we got to Nakuru we went straight on the game drive and when we got to the lake we saw thousands of pink flamingos, they are pink because of the algae they eat, we also got to complete the big five, we saw rhinos at Nakuru lots of them, woohoo. After the game drive we had a bit of time to relax around the pool before heading back to the room to get changed
for dinner. When we were in the room I could hear the mosquitoes buzzing around, I used a whole tin of repellent as I’d been eaten to pieces so far this holiday and didn’t want any more, there are good points and bad points to mosquito nets, they good at keeping them out but if they are already in the net, you’re dinner, this was what happened to me!
Now for the 7 hour journey to Amboseli National park, Amboseli is Swahili for dry, dusty place and you can see why, global warming has hit this place hard. We broke up the journey with a stop at Lake Naivasha, I got the most amazing picture of an Eagle diving for fish here, driving through the gate into the National park we saw some children playing and decided to give them our packed lunch. Our driver called them over, there were three kids, their faces were covered in dust, he gave the little boy a banana and the little girl a sandwich as the boy peeled the banana it snapped at the bottom and fell into the dirt, the little girl picked it up and tried to blow the dust
off, I have never seen poverty like it before. We had to give them all of the food we had in order for the little girl to throw the banana away.
As we drove further through Amboseli we could see the effects of global warming even more, dry parched land animal carcasses everywhere, even in the marsh lands where there was water there were dead animals, I’m told this is because the animals drink too much of the water when trying to eat the vegetation and give themselves diarrhoea which leads to them dying of dehydration. You could actually smell death, not the nicest place on earth but really makes you think about the planet and what we are doing to it, scavenger animals like hyena’s thrive here, we saw two licking each other’s private parts, which I found amusing not sure if the older couple in the group did though, lol.
After a week of driving I was ready for my beach holiday and a week relaxing and diving in Zanzibar, when we got to the hotel it was all open air and right on the beach, I could see why people went here as a honeymoon destination.
We had a villa on the white sandy beach, we organised to meet with someone to go diving, I’m in heaven.....or so I thought. There were two guys that swept the leaves from the sand and when they saw us on day one I heard “Hey, where you from?”, “England” I replied “Manchester United, Chelsea, David Beckham” I laughed and shouted out “No, I support Arsenal”, that was the biggest mistake I made all holiday. From that point on every time the two guys saw me they would shout “Arsenal” it was funny at first but got a bit annoying and when Arsenal played Man City and lost 4-1 whilst I was there they started to shout “Arsenal, not good” every time they saw me, I tried not to be rude and acknowledged them but by the end of the week I just ignored them. We went into the restaurant in the hotel early one morning and saw a huge bird eating the food, one of the waiters ran over to scare it off and the food it had in its mouth was now mixed with the rest of the food put out for everyone, I thought someone would clean
it up but they just looked at me, smiled, shrugged their shoulders and said “birds”. At that point I became vegetarian for the rest of the week, eating things that didn’t look like they had been in a bird’s mouth.
The mosquitoes were terrible here every night we had to plug in mosquito repellent and spray it everywhere, one night we went for dinner but forgot something and had to go back to the room, we saw one of the maids in our room with all of the windows and doors open and all of the lights on, now we knew why we had so many in our room.
At least I had diving to look forward to, we went for our first dive and as soon as we were in the water I noticed my regulator was letting in water, I swapped so I was using my second stage for the dive but did not enjoy it, no fish, no wrecks, poor visibility, rubbish. As we were coming up my fiancée had some trouble with a reverse block and had a bad nose bleed, we decided not to dive for the rest of the holiday after that,
the diving wasn’t that good anyway.
One night there was a barbeque on the beach with traditional singing and dancing which was cool but after bad food, bad diving, being bitten to death a million times by mosquitoes and the staff at the hotel not being very helpful either the night was merely a consolation after a bad week, at least we enjoyed the safari.
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Shreya
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Cool, I’ve never used a Mosquito net before but I will be using one a lot over the next few months. Now I know what to look out for. Cheers