Airports, Return to Abduls, and Tanzania

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The vacation part of my African adventure have been on a week now, and I'm loving it. Liam arrived a little after midnight on the 24th, and it was unreal getting to see him again. We spent several minutes at the airport just grinning at each other.

We stayed in Mombasa for 3 days to help Liam get over jet lag and to see the sights. Our hotel was right down the road from the old Portuguese stronghold, Fort Jesus, so we walked down to check it out. It was built in 1593 by the Portuguese, and it its long history it has also been held by the Arabs and the British. The fort was turned into a museum and national monument soon after Kenyan independence, so now people can go and look around it. We took a tour with a university student who was working there for the summer, and we heard all about the history of the area. Apart from that and exploring Mombasa I took Liam up to Haller Park to look around and see the animals.

Liam got his first taste of long distance matatu travel when we went down to Shimoni. Luckily we had front seats so there was more leg room. That first day I showed him around Mordor, and finally got to take him to Abduls to eat there. He enjoyed himself very much! The next day we went out on a tourist boat to the Kisite marine park. We had a quick sighting of three dolphins, and got to have an amazing hour of snorkeling. We had lunch at the restaurant Coral Spirit on Wasini Island, which was delicious, but not quite as good as Abduls.

After one day back in Mombasa to pack we took a bus to Arusha Tanzania. It was good by bus standards, and after stories I've heard from people I know ours was tame. It took five hours to get to Taveta, the border town, and the process at the two immigrations was painless. We pulled into Arusha at 4pm, and caught a cab to our hotel, after getting offered safari tours by three different people.

Our hotel was close to the bus station, and a nice looking place. The room we had kind of resembled a prison cell with no windows, but on the plus side it was super quiet every night.

We mostly just explored the town in the one full day we had in Arusha. On New Years we bought some food to celebrate but were both asleep by 9:30pm.

Today we packed and stored most of our bags at our hotel and got a cab to the hotel where the safari is starting: the Karama Lodge. It's a beautiful place. Each room is an individual cabin overlooking the hills and valleys. We meet our guides tomorrow morning, and go from there. Our itinerary included the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, and the Olduvai Gorge. We're both super excited, and will probably take hundreds of picture between the two of us.

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