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We arrived safely in Nairobi early on Saturday morning. We had a transfer to our hotel from the airport which took about 30 minutes and took us straight through the industrial part of the city. The culture shock hit almost immediately as we saw many people walking to work along the road side. The downtown was quite nice with lovely parks and a memorial to Kenyatta the first president of Kenya.
We arrived at our hotel which was surrounded by a locked gate. A bit nerve racking! I did venture out on foot that night with others into the city and found I didn’t have to be so afraid. We spent most of the first day recovering and meeting the group. The next morning we set off in a minibus (minivan with 9 seats) to the Masai Mara. The journey that was supposed to take 4 hours took more like 5.5 hours but was a fantastic way to see the Great Rift Valley! Lovely!! This is the widest portion of the rift valley and took nearly two hours to drive across. There are Masaai scattered everywhere with their herds. Taking a nap in the middle of the day under the
trees or simply walking for miles across the open plain. We sure will miss seeing them scattered throughout the landscape as we head south.
We got to our camp site with set tents complete with beds, toliets and showers! Wicked! Plus a camp cook! Much appreciated as we will be cooking our own meals most of the time from here to Cape Town. After lunch we had an afternoon game drive in the Mara where we saw elephants, gazelle, hyena and a beautiful African sunset!
The next day we headed back into the Mara bright and early for a whole day game drive! The morning was quite bland and the highlight was the van getting stuck in mud and the whole lot of us getting out to push (except Ev of course! ). Once out our spirits were higher and we continued the search. No luck until the driver called a toliet break and then over the next clearing we saw everything - buffalo (HUGE), gazelle, topi, impala, giraffe, hyena, warthogs - all in the same spot.
After our brief stop the fun continued with mongoose, hippos (over lunch--literally we ate lunch by the river with them
30 feet away!), a whole herd of elephants, a whole herd of 100+ buffalo and a male LION! Fantastic. We carried on to see more and more animals and topped it all off with a whole pride of lions. About 13 of them. Young males, grown females, and some cubs. We upset them with our talking and got the hint to move on and let them sleep after many great photos. We then headed back to Nairobi with a game drive on the way where we saw zebra, wildebeast, buffalo and more gazelle. Nice lunch stop of traditional Kenyan fare followed by our last view of the Great Rift Valley. We drove through some rougher areas of Nairobi before entering the posh bit on our way to our campsite. This was our first night of proper camping before heading to Tanzania…start of the roughing it holiday with cooking, washing up and camping.
The next day we crossed the border to Tanzania where I was shocked to find I had to pay double the cost for my visa due to my nationality- ouch! We got to our campsite at the Mesarani Snake Park (not Ev's favorite due to the scaly
creatures only a short walk from our tents). The following day I headed out on a Masaai village walk where we learned about the houses the Masaai build out of ash, dung, mud and straw, circumcision (a very tough subject for westerners), clothing at different stages of life, bush camps and tools and weapons the Masaai use daily. It was very good and the guide answered all of our questions no matter how blunt. We then continued our walk to a proper village. This village was home to a man and his 8 wives and 50+ children. He was 87 years old. It is traditional for the Masaai men to take on as many wives as they like and have children with each. Quite an expensive lifestyle as each wife costs 10 cows which are used as hard currency in this society. Also a bit hard for the Western women in the group but we got to ask all the questions we had to get an understanding of their culture. We continued our walk to a school (where we donated some stationary) and a free clinic that specializes in snake bites. The Snake Park supports both the school and clinic
in the area and gives most of its profit directly back to the community. A really nice place to stay as we knew we were contributing to those people around us.
The next day we awoke before dawn to head to the Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Crater along the way. The drive was really smooth for African roads and the time went quite quickly. We journeyed up the roads to the crater rim where we had lunch with marabou storks (the biggest birds I have ever seen) before continuing to the Serengeti Plain and the park. The Serengeti is so amazingly flat and was littered with gazelle. We also happened upon 3 cheetahs just lazing in the shade, hippos, lions, a whole herd of elephants (there must have been 40-50) and more. It is truly amazing to be with a few feet of these amazing animals.
That night we were staying at a bush camp which means no fences. Most of us spent the night looking over our shoulder as we ate dinner by lamplight before rushing off to our tents and praying we didn't need a middle of the night toliet break. Unfortunately the group
snoring was so loud that we didn't have an animal even close to our tents all night. Quite disappointing as that was the main purpose of the stay. We finished off the day with another game drive through the Serengeti and headed to the Oldapai Gorge. The gorge is well known for the discovery of early human footprints and many prehistoric fossils. From the gorge we headed for the rim of the crater and our campsite.
After setting up our tents over looking the crater. I realized there were a whole herd of zebra in our campsite simply browsing. Such a magical setting. During dinner another camper announced there was a bull elephant drinking out of the water butt in the carpark and that we should al have a look. I have never been so close to a wild animal on foot in all my life. It was an amazing experience. They reckon he is about 50 years old and boy was he huge! Needless to say I didn't take a photo as I didn't want it to be the last one I ever took! That night we had the sounds of browing zebra around us.. truly a fantastic
experience.
The next morning we had our last game drive into the crater itself. It was a guarantee to see animals as they are all contained within the crater walls and generally only leave to breed. We saw buffalo, flamingos, a jackal in hard pursuit of a hare which he didn't catch, elephants (only bulls live in the crater), a massive herd of zebra and wildebeest that surrounded the truck, 4 black rhino (very rare), a lioness with a zebra kill as big as she was, hyena, hippos and finished it off with a stately lion with a magnificent mane!
Through the last 3 game parks we have seen 4 of the Big 5 and many many other animals too numerous to list. The only one we missed out on was the elusive leopard.
After a short night we headed off from Arusha to Dar es Salaam. They said the drive usuallly takes 12 hours and 15.5 hours later we arrived. It was a long and tough day for us all. Needless to say we stuffed the tents and slept in the truck. Probably the most unrestful night so far. We got a couple of hours of
sleep before heading off to the ferry on our way to Zanzibar!
The island is beautiful and the waters are so blue. We are in Stone Town at the moment and will be heading to the North Beaches in the next few hours for some surf, sun and snorkeling! We headed off on the spice tour yesterday and saw the old fort in town, the old slave market, the ruins of a sultans palace for his 14 concubines and a spice plantation. The plantation tour was amazing and we saw many different spices and fruit in plant form and got to try them all. We also were shown a plant used by women for dying their lips (lipstick of sorts), I had a necklace made for me out of a leaf and we had coconut freshly picked for us and drank the milk from inside. After it all we got to taste all the fresh fruits grown there and some of the teas (lemongrass, masala and ginger). It has been a very exciting week and a half so far. Our journey continues through southern Tanzania and Malawi over the next week.
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Lauren
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Oooh you lucky buggers! Sounds like you are having a fab time. We miss you lots Alicia - keep expecting to see you walk into the office! Keep the blogs coming - just so I get REALLY jealous...xx