Day 15 - Back to Nairobi, again

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We headed out just after 6am for our final game drive. Again, it was just the three of us - Noreen went on a balloon ride to see the animals, and our married couple decided to sleep in again. On the agenda for the day were lions, the mother and baby rhino again, hippos and crocodiles. We started out with a lot of driving around, seeing the same usual animals. Looked for the rhinos for a few minutes before giving up. Came across a pile of vans, so we had to check it out - turns out it was two male lions, probably the same two brothers we saw on Monday, finishing up their breakfast. We were too far away, and the meal was too far done, to tell what it had been, but they looked pretty satisfied. Too bad we didn’t get to see the kill, but seeing them rip apart flesh was pretty blood chilling.

Some more driving around. We thought maybe we were going to the Hippo Point that’s along the Tanzanian border, but I thought it was too far to go out on a 2-hour drive. Anthony had said they usually do ½ day drives to visit that one. But that’s the general direction we were headed. Then, for some unknown reason, we turned and headed in a completely different direction. I guess we were looking for something else and Anthony changed his mind. We did come across an elephant herd, so it wasn’t a complete loss of time. Finally we made it to the northern edge of the park where there’s another hippo area. And there they were, all lounging in the water. There were about 20 of them, and they were quite active, not just sitting in one spot like the Calgary Zoo hippos do. There was snorting, spraying, splashing, they were standing up, laying down, going under, quite entertaining. The park is extremely dry, and the river is dried up in some spots, so they’re confined to a smaller area, but they seemed quite content. Sometimes crocodiles can be seen in this area, so we drive around a little, looking down the banks and we found a cape buffalo and two more female lions, but no crocs. Oh well, it was a pretty successful drive, and it was time to head back for breakfast and checkout.

The plane that we flew in on had around 50 seats, 4 engines, pretty nice ride. The plane that arrived to pick us up was much smaller - 2 engines and only 18 seats. And we filled every one of them. It was very squishy, hot, and quite a turbulent ride. Heather’s not a big fan of bumpy rides, but we made it back to Nairobi in 45 minutes and all was fine. A stop at a shopping centre to exchange some more travelers checks on the way to the hotel, and guess what, this Forex office decides they don’t cash travelers checks, so it was a trip to the ATM to get a wad of shillings, then back up the do a cash exchange. Finally back to the hotel. I’ve never checked into the same hotel so many times in my life. It’s almost like coming home. A little down time, and then we met up with Moraa around 2:30, a friend of Todd’s who was in the Kenyan parliament a few years back. She’s an exuberant lady who has helped us with One Child’s Village in the past. We had some lunch and Todd and her had a great catch-up session. I eventually excused myself, I didn’t really have anything to contribute, and although she’s a very enjoyable lady, I was finding myself getting bored. So I did some email, where I was half done posting my entries when they lost the connection, relaxed and had a little snooze before Heather knocked on my door just before 7 - Moraa had just left - they’d spent over 4 hours talking!! I’m glad I excused myself when I did - those seats weren’t comfortable enough to sit in for 4 hours.

A quiet supper and then we retired. Heather and Todd had to repack, again, as they’re heading to Embu (more on that to come later) while I just snuggled into bed and watched old American movies on semi-poor Kenyan cable.

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