We've been in Africa for just over a week now and are absolutely loving it!
We arrived in Nairobi a week ago and were picked up by Cailin's friend, Jamshed. It was such a treat staying with Jamshed in his very cozy apartment. He gave us a quick tour of Nairobi on the way to his place. We arrived at the airport first thing so on the drive the whole city was waking up and heading to work. It wasn't as crazy as the streets of Marrakech in Morocco, but it had the same feel.
Jamshed treated us like royalty! He took us to his place, showed us around, let us sleep in his bed, brought us take out lunch, and a heap of movies to watch. As he was leaving for an afternoon meeting at work he handed us the keys in case we wanted to go out, but in the next sentence he said "don't go out, it's too dangerous". That was also just after he told us about being held up at gun point a few months ago in downtown Nairobi. Bow and I didn't mind one bit having a day in a very cozy apartment to watch movies and hang out.
Jamshed came home in the late afternoon and took us out to a beautiful restaurant for dinner. It was the last day of Ramadan, which we celebrated with him as well. All he could dream about was having chocolate cake during daylight for the days to come. It was so interesting staying with him because he is an economist working for the Treasury Board and he was able to give us great insight into the history and economic situation of Kenya. He also loved movies as much or more than us so we had good fun discussing all of our favourites.
On Wednesday, Jamshed dropped us off at our big overland truck. From Nairobi, our driver took us about four hours north west to a farm campsite where we met up with our group. We are travelling for five weeks together from Nairobi (Kenya) down to Victoria Falls (Zambia). There are 22 of us in total - most people are from England, but there are two other Canadians, one person from Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, and Belgium. Most of us are in our twenties but there are a few who are older than us. Dominique and Pirette from Toronto are in their late fifties and make us feel like we have parents with us - they are great fun! Our guides, Markus and Vanessa, are a couple and are absolutely amazing! They are totally up for off roading and bush camping and they give us lots of options of neat things to do. We are extremely happy with them! We are camping most of the way; however, at certain spots we have the option to upgrade to a hotel room, for a little extra fee. We also all take turns cooking meals. We are in cook groups, which means that you cook lunch-dinner-breakfast once a week for the entire group. It works out quite well.
The first day of our tour they took us to Nakuru Game Park and we spent 12 hours around the park seeing zebras, giraffes, rhinos, buffalo, gazelles, many birds, and a leopard. Our truck broke down that day, which meant a day to relax in the farm campsite - a truly beautiful spot to breakdown. During that day we went on a farm tour, which took us through the village where all of the locals who worked at the farm lived. Women were knitting in the grassy streets and kids were playing everywhere as the men worked on the farm. We walked through the fields and chased down birds. Our guide was so happy that someone (Bow) was finally genuinely interested in birds that he took the two of us out for an extra hour to see as many as he could possibly find. That night before dinner the two kids of the campsite owners took us on a chamelian (small lizard) safari in the dark around the campsite. They were so cute and so informative!
From there, we travelled through Kenya to Tanzania on Saturday. We stopped at Lake Victoria, then in a few small villages, before getting to the Serengeti on Sunday. We spent that afternoon in the famous game park on the look out for all of the animals. The Serengeti is a set of plains that are filled with most of the African animals that you would imagine. We saw many birds, zebras, giraffes, gazelles, etc, etc. Almost right away we came across two giraffes fighting and it was the craziest thing. They would swat at each other with their long necks and the sound was so painful. They were literally fighting right beside our truck.
That night we camped in an open campsite in the park. We got into camp just as the sun was setting. The campsite was quite rugged and was not gated off to any of the animals, which meant that we had to got to the toilets in twos and put up all of our tents in a semi circle. Our guides gave us some instruction as to what to do if we faced a large animal (ie lion) in the middle of the night. We cooked and ate and then just as we were all heading to bed, Bow and Pirette, sighted a lion passing about 200 metres from our tents. As you can imagine, this got everyone a little excited before bedtime.
We continued to explore the Serengeti the next day. It was a great day of game driving because we came across about four different prides of lions. We also saw hippos and hyenas. From the Serengeti we carried onto the Ngorongo Crater the next day for one last day of game viewing. Our big overland truck couldn't get down into the crater so the group was split up and we went into land rovers down to see more animals. In the crater we saw many of the same animals but they were in much larger groups. There were zebras absolutely everywhere. We also enjoyed watching the hippos lounge around in the hippo pool. The best sighting of the day was when we came across three elephants in a swampy area. It was the most beautiful setting to see the elephants - it felt as though we were looking at them through a storybook or a movie setting. They came right beside our land rovers.
That was the end of our game viewing for a little while. Apparently the next time we go into a Game Park will be on Christmas Day. It will definitely be a unique Christmas this year!