Farewell Bilila Lodge

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Up before dawn, bags ready at 545am. We left the Bilila Lodge for the Serous Airport. As dawn broke, we hopped aboard our chartered planes to fly over the Serengeti to Arusha, where we boarded our game drive Range Rovers for the bumpy ride to the border. Seth told us not to get unnerved, and good thing he said that, or I would have been very much so! Like the "mosquitoes" on the beach in Mexico, we were surrounded by colorfully dressed Masai women & men hawking all sorts of trinkets. They were very aggressive even after you said NO, asante sana. We didn't buy anything but many people did, just to contribute to the local economy. We will visit a Masai village tomorrow, so I will wait for my purchases until after that excursion. The border was chaotic. First one has to leave Tanzania, wait in lines to fingerprint yourself out of the country. Then we boarded our Kenya safari vehicles, with Kenya guides and drivers, head up a few hundred yards to the Kenya customs where we waited in another line to show passports and visas. We were never asked for our Yellow Fever vaccine cards, but I"m sure if we didn't have them, the authorities would have asked. The vendors again surrounded our vehicles shouting for our attention. This border crossing was organized chaos, trucks everywhere, people milling about, and then remembered Seth telling us not to worry, he was there. Those words were calming amid chaos. After the worst toilets yet, yes, we learned to use the hole-in-the-ground toilets, we headed out for a two hour drive on rough roads to the Serena Amboseli Lodge, a jungle oasis full of black faced monkeys.

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