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Published: February 17th 2010
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Our hostel
Gorgeous setting with luxury tents in the garden (we couldn't afford these!) How it all started..... Four months ago we took an exciting two week holiday to Egypt. This got the toes twitching and the feet itching. We had a taste for Africa and the seed had been planted. Little did we know that we would soon be chucking it all in for another adventure of a life time. With approximately 8 months worth of budget and a rough itinerary including Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rawanda, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique we had the roots of our adventure planned.
Narobi When we first arrived in Nairobi at 5am Sunday morning you could be mistaken for thinking it was a ghost town. The roads were entirely empty as our taxi hastily drove us along the long wide roads with the exception of a few other cars speeding along here or there. As we drew closer to the hostel, there was more movement and signs of life. People were out in the dark jogging along the main roads, making the most of the cool early morning before sunrise. I was surprised to see so many people out running in the dark but soon learned over the coming days that the Kenyan sun is
Doggie!
Our first animal spotted in africa... haha. relentless in its’ heat and running is a matter of national pride in Kenya and best done at dawn.
Nairobi city itself turned out somewhat different to my preconceptions. The common nickname being Nai-robbery I was half expecting to get robbed, which fortunately was never likely to happen. Between the two of us we’re pretty well travelled, somewhat cautious and we both have a bit of common sense (which goes a long way!) so we were fine. Overall I was surprised at how safe and unthreatened I felt in the 3 or 4 days we spent in town. My first impressions were that Kenyans are extremely friendly, good willed and proud of their home. Sometimes it did become a bit tiring trying to distinguish the people just saying hi and those who want to sell you something.
The centre of Nairobi is home to the central business district and is just like any other large city. There are big tall buildings with your usual big name businesses and then hundreds, possibly thousands of small businesses which occupy small rooms of communal buildings. We went exploring for a few quotes for safaris and were amazed at the labyrinth of
never ending stairways and corners to be turned in order to locate the named company on the big sign at the bottom of the building.
The interesting parts of town were down near the bus depot and train stations. People travel in from the sprawling suburbs by buses and matatus. Matatu’s deserve a whole blog entry to themselves, which I will do another time but just quickly they are funky little mini buses with crazy paint jobs, with all varieties of music blaring out from the pumped up speaker systems, and have dudes hanging out the side sliding door trying to drum up customers to jump in. With up to 3 million people relying on this for public transport, the city quickly becomes gridlocked during the day when everyone converges to the city centre to carry out their business, organise goods, deliver goods and go about their day to day lives. The area near the bus station is crazy and chaotic with hundreds of people walking with goods loaded on their heads and shoulders, or pushing carts of goods along from the trucks that have delivered to larger main roads towards the edge of town. It makes for interesting
Transporting goods
It's difficult to get into the small side streets so many items are hand delivered by cart or carried on top of peoples heads. people watching, both for us and for them as we soon learned we were somewhat of an interesting sight ourselves, we only saw one other white person (mzungu) one day when were down there.
Nearer to the hostel we stayed in was a different story. More like suburbs with a mix of rich and poor. We spent our first day wandering the local neighbourhood checking out the kibera markets and local areas, getting a feel for how many people live and what real prices cost as opposed to tourist prices. The markets are predominantly second hand clothes, small goods for the home etc. We had a funny surprise as Richard spotted a Caulfield Grammar School sports hat that belonged to a fellow student of his from high school being sold at the local market along with all the other donated goods from western countries, what are the chances huh!
I enjoyed those few days in Nairobi which I felt were more than enough. Good to get our bearings, organise our safari and get excited about seeing the country side.... as our next stop was Amboselli National Park for a 3 day safari.
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Kate Balcomb-Johns
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Hi and Mozambique info
Hi Jax. Sounds like you are having the most amazing time. Just wanted to let you know that I have travelled in Mozambique, and my cousin used to live there for round 6 years, so if you are in need of any ideas of lovely places to explore let me know before you get there. Enjoy the adventure!