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Published: August 6th 2007
Jambo!
Well we are truly underway! We're already covered a lot of ground on some of the worst roads we'll ever get to drive along and have already seen 3 of the "Big 5" already. Woo hoo!
So from the beginning...
Day 0 - Nairobi
After an uneventful flight on Virgin, we were singing their praises. However this quickly changed when neither of our bags arrived in Nairobi. So que a long wait in line with all the others to fill out the necessary forms. We can't even blame it on being in Africa, since the bags never left Heathrow Terminal 3. Good start.
So we just chilled at our hotel and made a few calls to get them sent on the next flight. No worries....
Except that after 6 days, we still only have 1 bag. Nic's bag is still sitting in London somewhere. Incompetent doesn't even begin to describe the Virgin baggage system. But enough about that - at least we have one bag and Nic is looking super hot rocking around in my boardies and t-shirts!!!
Day 1 - Nairobi to Mt Kenya
I was up early to get a cab to the airport to pick up our bag to make it back for an 8am departure. This quickly became 10am as "African Time" kicked in. But eventually we were off, stopping only at a Megastore to buy food and the necessary essentials for Nic until her bag (hopefully!) arrives. Then the bumpy fun began!
Kenya is the 3rd most corrupt country in Africa and despite getting plenty of money from "road fines" (read: bribes), it appears only the Minster of Transport sees any of it. The roads are on the whole, terrible. So we spent 6 interesting hours bumping along, meeting out co-travellers.
Still, it was worth it. The views in the Rift Valleys were amazing. As we got further away from sea level the rain started, so by the time we got to our first camp, we got our tent lesson in light rain. No worries!
The Africa night is not quiet, so we drifted off after a few local brews at the camp bar to the "killer frogs" chirping away.
Day 2 - Mt Kenya to Samburu National Park
In started the day with our first wild game - a small troupe of Baboons checking us out over brekkie.
Nic taking over blog typing now:
So day 2 was a large driving day as we headed off after breakfast to Samburu National Park. Our pimping bright yellow "Absolute Africa " truck looks like something out of the A Team - very cool! We are also really lucky at the moment as there is only 13 people but we do increase to the full 28 in a couple of days. So with a mixture of Antips, Brits, Swiss German, French and Basque Country people we had a great time bouncing around the roads with the Ipod blaring and taking in the sunshine and scenery.
On the way we stopped at an orphanage to see and play with the kids. It breaks your heart looking at all these little kids with huge smiles and the stats are something like more than half of them have HIV, so sad.
We then continued on to the National Park where we set up camp and went and checked out the Samburu Village people and there houses and way of life. It was quite an experience and we even saw some of the warriors (who are about 12 years old) actually make real fire with sticks - it doesn't just happen on TV. The craziest was hearing about how the boys and girls are both circumcised between the ages of 14 - 18 owwww!
Day 3 - Samburu National Park
Today was the first day of really getting into it. We were up at 5.30AM and headed out for our first game drive. It was truly fantastic. We saw elephants, giraffe, grants gazelle, jackals, warthogs, impalla, the list goes on. The elephants were amazing - we were only about 10 metres away in the open truck and it was almost like they were posing for us.
After the 4 hour drive we set up camp and were surrounded by baboons (like 5 metres away). I thought I was quite brave at that point but the funniest was when I was helping to set up for lunch and there were a bunch of bananas on the table and this cheeky little vervet monkey ran right in front of me, jumped on the table an stole the bananas - almost peed my pants.
We did a second game drive that evening and saw much of the same game until for some reason we tackled the most diabolical road ever. This was worth it though when we spotted a leopard sitting perfectly in a clearing 2 metres from the truck posing for us (this photoless blog will be updated with photos later when we get a better connection).
Al was stoked - seeing a leopard is super rare.
Right this is taking forever so we will change to highlights from now on.
Signing out
Nic & Al
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Angie Pangie
non-member comment
Blooming airports and flight companies!!
Sounds like you are having an amazing time!! To reassure you, all flight/plane companies are useless. I was delayed coming back from Italy, and had to sit and watch an empty carrosel (can't spell) go round for an hour, before easy jet decided to give us our bags back. I was not a happy bunny after we had already had a 3 hour delay!!