Posts From Kenya

Yesterday, Friday, the big day finally arrived and we were off to Africa. This trip has been in the planning since last year in Iran and Nina and I are both quite excited. But unfortunately as often happens with exciting vacations they start with a long spell of waiting in airports and sitting squished up in modern planes. Our Africa vacation started the same way. Hours at Berlin Airport waiting for a delayed plane, a packed plane of Egyptian families and their spoiled sons. More waiting in Cairo, a reasonably comfortable flight to Nairobi and finally a 4:00am landing and the inevitable paper work. But never the less we were in bed at our hotel by 5:00am and got some welcome catchup sleep.

Today was an animal day. With a driver and car to take us around we started with a visit to an Elephant orphanage, the Daphne / David Sheldrick Elephant Santuary. They collect young elephants from the wild that are in danger for what ever reason and raise them. Each day between 11:00 and 12:00 they open up a feeding session to the pubic. It is a popular session and today there were maybe a couple of hundred people (including us) in attendance. The feed that looks like milk in large white bottles is a vegetable concoction developed over many years of experimentation.

Today as a bit of a change of pace we went on a tour of the city of Nairobi, again with our own driver and car. It was more of a wander around than a specific tour and gave us a very brief exposure to the city, both the downtown area and the slum area Kibera (the second largest slum in Africa after Soweto).

We could say that today we suffered a bit from some political silliness or national rivalry, depending on your point of view. You see today our itinerary required that we change camps. The new camp we are going to, (Kicheche Bush Camp), is a little north of the Mara River maybe 50 km from Lemala. But to get there we first had to take a small plane from a rough airstrip near Lemala to a town called Tarime, then a car across the border from Tanzania into Kenya at a border town called Isebania, then another plane from another rough strip at Migori to an air strip in the Serengeti called Mara North and then an hours drive to the camp. Now there was once a border crossing between Kenya and Tanzania on the Mara River that would have enabled us to do this same journey by car in a couple of hours but that border crossing was closed to prevent tourists from doing day trips into the Tanzanian Serengeti from Kenya. As it is now if you want to visit the Tanzanian Serengeti you have to take accommodation in Tanzania.!!

After the Cheetah sighting last evening our group was eager to spend today looking for a Rhino, but alas our guide was adamant that this was not the area for them, but that he would keep his eye open. Our first good sighting of the day was a male lion happily munching on a kill by himself. The lion was, however being watched by a good many hyenas, jackals and vultures. It was an interesting spectacle as the hyenas tried to intimidate the lion into leaving the kill. Our guide pointed out that the hyenas had blood on their snouts and front legs and probably they made the kill but that the lion took it away from them. We watched for maybe 30 minutes, and a third jackal approached and then the lion casually got up and walked away. That started a bit of mayhem as the hyenas, jackals and vultures all scrurried for bits of meat and the ones that missed out chased the ones that got the food.

Way back in Arusha when we were briefed by Easy Travel about our trip there was a problem with one of our flights, namely todays; from Kigali to Nairobi. Somewhere along the line the booking got changed (we think by the airline) from a morning flight to an afternoon/evening flight which would have been entirely unsuitable for us as we had tonight booked at a very special place and wanted to get there early to get the full experience, you will see why below. Anyway eventually, and thankfully, we got put back on the morning flight having discussed among ourselves that we could even charter a plane if necessary. Well it seemed this morning that Kenya Airlines almost chartered one for us as our flight (in a Ebraier 190, which holds over 100 people) there were only 12 passengers, and we were 4 of them.