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May 2nd In the morning we had the usual breakfast, some tea with milk and eggs before we started the day. Paul, Victor, Maria and I headed for the city center to make our way to Nairobi National Park. After arriving at the bus station we met up with Victor’s daughter Yunis and his girlfriend Gladys. Yunis and Maria get along very well and it was nice to see how the family got along, they made me feel so part of it as well which made it really nice.
After getting snacks and drinks for the day we got on a
matatu (a minibus transport) and headed for the park. The drive was nice, on the outskirts of the town from the look of it, and we passed by the stadium we had been at the day before.
The park was really nicely built up but it was difficult to find out where exactly to start, the directions and organization of it left me a bit frustrated. I just wanted to get on a safari type truck and see some animals. But alas this wasn’t the case and so we headed to the Animal Orphanage in the park.
It sounds like a really sad place but really it wasn’t, the animals that are there have been found injured or in some cases being trafficked to other countries. The Kenyan Wildlife Service takes care of them and gets them back to health and then releases them back into the wild.
We saw all sorts of animals there (check out the pics!) and it was as much a zoo as anything. Since the orphanage is right on the edge of the national park, wild baboons will come over to the cages of other animals and check things out. They get very close to the visitors and sometimes try and grab bags of food or anything that’s accessible really. You can check out a video of the baboon that got about 10 feet from me
here. It was pretty cool to see some of the animals in the sanctuary before beginning the African Trails trip to Cape Town (at the moment that I am writing this I am in a safari truck in Tanzania heading to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater to see the animals in their natural environment).
After checking out the animal orphanage we wanted to go
into the park and take a proper drive through the sanctuary, but time was not on our side (I had to get to Karen Camp at a decent time to rendezvous with African Trails and begin the 7 week trip to Cape Town the next day). So Victor, Maria, Yunis and I headed back to Umoja to get my bags and say our goodbyes.
It was sad to leave the family, I fell in love with them. They were so nice and caring and the perfect example of a Kenya family, it was hard to leave them. I hope to see them again some day, maybe when I have enough money to take them all around their amazing country.
I got into Karen Camp late on Sunday night and met a few of the tour guides for African Trails, really nice guys. We talked about the trip and what to expect and I met a couple of the people I would be traveling with over the next few weeks. I played some pool with a couple guys from Surrey, England who had come up from where my trip was going, and got some good tips and suggestions. Afterwards
I got a good nights sleep and dreamt of the journey to come.
Hope you like the pics! Until next time...
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Lerina
non-member comment
FINALLY....all the other ones are down right uglyyy!:)