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Published: August 19th 2008
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We had to get up very very early this morning. 3:45am to be precise. Mr Lazy from the day before wasn’t feeling so chipper when we had to get up at that time in the morning. I actually forgot to mention yesterday that Dave was wearing his Mr Lazy t-shirt and for some reason everybody and I do mean EVERYBODY in Zanzibar just loved it. He had soooooo many people comment on the shirt that it was really quite silly.
Anyway Mr Lazy and I had to get out of bed very very early this morning to make the drive along the road with the pot holes that can swallow you whole so we could get to the airport in time to get out 6:25am flight. It actually wasn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be and we managed to get to the airport in plenty of time and the plane itself was actually on time as well. Quelle Surprise.
The plane was a new plane (an ATR) and we had a lovely little flight all the way to Nairobi. We even had a most pleasant surprise of getting a wee view out of the
window of Mt Kilimanjaro.
When we arrived in Nairobi we were met by a rep of the travel agents firm who took us to our hotel. We thought that we were going to be staying at the Hilton but they took us to the Sarova Stanley instead which has been established here since 1908 (ish). Apparently this is one of the oldest hotels and buildings in the town and was built here when the railway to Uganda was being built. There is a lovely little café down in the courtyard of the hotel called the Thorn Tree and it seems that the café has quite a bit of history. There used to be a big acacia tree in the courtyard of the café and travellers started to use it to stick letters to for other travellers to pick up when they passed through, rather than using the postal system. Quite a neat little piece of history. We had the best lunch there. The food was amazing.
Before lunch today we had the pleasure of visiting the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Elephant Orphanage. This is an orphanage for baby elephants. The elephants come from lots of different places and
the rangers in the wild life parks bring them into the orphanage for them to rear for the next few years. When the elephants are old enough they are introduced back into the wild. There were about 10 elephants there when we visited and they really were jolly cute. There was a tiny little baby elephant who had attached itself to one of the older male elephants. Apparently that is quite normal, although it would usually attach itself to a female. Elephants are matriarchal and the female bulls run the pack and make all of the decisions. The orphanage also looks after a couple of rhinos. The first one was found when it was a baby and was looked after and then reintroduced back into the wild. This rhino is funny as if usually comes back to the orphanage every day just to say hi to the keepers and to check up on the elephants and then trots off into the game park again. There is another rhino there as well these days but this rhino is blind and was abandoned by its mother as it couldn’t keep up. So it will have to live in the orphanage fore the
rest of its life. But quite frankly I don’t think it will be a hard life for it as the animals seem to be very very well looked after there.
After the orphanage we went for a little walk around downtown Nairobi where our hotel is and were very surprised at how nice and neat and clean it is. Nairobi seems to be a lovely city and the people here are just so welcoming and friendly. Everybody seems friendly and happy to see you and says “Jambo” (Hi)
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