Apologies for the delay in my first post - we have been on the road and wifi is hard to come by in many of the remote places we've been!

Week one - 
Firstly - what an absolutely amazing country! The people are beautiful, the landscape is breathtaking and the wild life is incredible! 
I arrived in Nairobi, kenya in the afternoon of the 30th after 24 hours traveling. Although I had had some sleep, I was still feeling delirious coming out of security. I had pre organized and pre paid for a transfer to my hotel; just my luck the bloke never turned up! I eventually gave in to catching a cab and one of the first things I found hard to believe was the huge number of people strolling through the streets. The airport is a good 20km from the city with not much in between yet everywhere I looked there were several people walking to somewhere. 
the city reminded me a lot of Sri Lanka and India - slums mixed in amongst beautiful buildings. The city is commonly referred to as 'nairobbery' and although I hadn't witnessed anything myself, i can see how it gets it's name. Reception gave me strict instructions not to step outside the hotel after dark, and entering the hotel carpark you were met by armed security doing full checks of each vehicle.
I wasn't very productive for the rest of the afternoon - in fact i passed out cold at 1845. 

The next morning I dragged myself down to the national museum. I was hesitant to walk there myself, but insisted that i needed to be brave! Turns out the museum was literally behind my hotel (I could see the building's gardens from my room) but the walk to the entrance was about 10 minutes. I ended up spending over three hours at the museum - it also included a 'snake and reptile park' and botanical gardens. The museum itself was fascinating, and to really add to the sense of culture, I was accompanied by (literally) hundreds of local school children! You can imagine the stares I got through the morning being the only blonde in the place.. I had several kids come up and ask questions about me and they were absolutely amazed by the fact I was all the way from Australia. I even got an offer by one little girl to come back to her school to play games with her for the afternoon! That was definitely a highlight of the day. 
I really didn't do much else for the day - partly as I was still extremely jet lagged and also because I didn't have the energy to face all the locals trying to sell me stuff! 

The g-adventures 'ultimate Africa' tour began on the 1st. I'm on the entire 54 days, while the majority of people of jumping on and off at different areas (usually doing 2-3 weeks at a time). The tour group at the moment has 17 people aging from 24-60, from all ends of the earth. 4 of us are Aussies - and one guy is even from Patterson lakes! At the moment there are about 5 'singles' and the girl I'm tenting with is English. She's with us in Africa for about 3 weeks before heading off the south America - and what a small world, we will be meeting up in Bolivia doing the exact same tour in mid January! 
After a 'meet and greet' we made tracks towards lake Nakuru national park. We spent the afternoon accompanied by wild flamingos, zebras, baboons, giraffes, white rhinos and we were lucky enough to see a mother and baby black rhino (endangered). Just our luck though, as we were making our way to the campsite for our first night in tents, it began to pour. We ended up setting up our tents (none of us with any idea as We hadn't been shown before) in the pouring muddy rain!

The next morning was a REAL adventure.. As there had been such a big down pour the night before, the track from the lake back to the main road but extremely muddy. So muddy that our truck was slipping and sliding and got bogged three times! Twice, it was only inches away from toppling right over! A 10 min ride turned into an hour adventure! 
Mid morning, we had a short stop over in the rift valley, which is a pretty descent sized town in Kenya. Again, full of slums amongst fancy hotels. We then kept moving on towards our next camp sites in eldoret. It wasn't a very exciting day - a group of us sat at the back of the truck playing card games and waving out to the locals (mainly kids) as we passed through small, remote villages. The scenery, however, was never tiring. 

By day three we had crossed the Kenya-Uganda border. This was a slow, seemingly unorganised effort.  A few of us had cracked open 'Tuskers' (local kenyan beer) by 10am on this day, which kept us entertained for much of the day. I found that I could tell the difference between the countries, mainly as Uganda is much more greener, less city-like, and full of tiny villages. the weather was also much warmer, particularly at night - which was a warm welcome after the unexpected freezing nights we had had in Kenya. 

Day 7 was, once again, an early start (5am) as we headed towards queen elisabeth national park at Kasese where we would be camping for two nights.The highlight of today was probably our lunch break where we stopped off at the sides of the road in the middle of nowhere. Within 10-15 minutes we had about 15 local villagers surrounding us. They were fascinated by us and although they were so poverty-stricken, they were the most amazing people. One of the young ladies (my guess would be 18years) called me over to show off her gorgeous little girl. She was so excited to have me come over that she threw her baby into my arms - i felt so honored to have her trust me so much to hold her baby. Over the past few days, many of us on the tour hAd felt a little hostility from some locals - but today, this was definitely not the case! The tour guide handed one little boy a banana, and he literally pulled it apart and gulped it down - it was heartbreaking to see these young families so desperate. 
We arrived into kasese in the early evening. 

So far I am absolutely loving the continent. The people, in particular, are just fascinating - and they obviously feel the same way about us. The landscapes are breathtaking and although I have spent days on the truck, I have had no need to pull out a book, or movie because the scenery never gets tiring. 
Will post week two shortly! 

Xxxx