At 4.45am our car to the airport arrived and we headed off to Heathrow for our 9.30am flight to Nairobi. On arrival in Nairobi we had a steamy wait in the arrivals hall for our luggage after which we got a taxi straight to Ole Sereni arriving at about 11pm Kenyan time (which is 3 hours ahead of the U.K.)
We had a nice hot latte in the bar before we headed to bed.
Christmas Day dawned and it was lovely to be greeted by great views over Nairobi National Park.
We had a slow leisurely morning which was necessary as I could only manage 3 hours sleep!
At 6.45 am I headed to the gym, after which we had breakfast and a snooze before our Xmas day treat - an afternoon trip to Nairobi National Park with Clements our guide, Nairobi is the only city with a National Park and it is definitely worth a visit. ( today's photo - wild animals and skyscrapers)
There were lots of people visiting the park entrance attractions i.e.
an orphanage and a safari walk. I did wonder what the park itself would be like but it was much quieter. Our first stop was the ivory burning site - they have now burnt impounded ivory twice so there were two big piles of ivory ash and debris and a monument.
The park had a great array of animals; we saw impala, hartebeest, eland, waterbuck, mountain reedbuck - of which there are only a few but we saw a family group of 4, giraffe, hippo and several rhino which were often lying down or if not soon where after noticing them and then they were very difficult to spot as they look like grey rocks. At the end of the day we also saw a male lion resting after consuming his christmas lunch the remains of the carcass were in a bush nearby.
We also saw plenty of birds - a widow bird- in full breeding plumage, egyptian geese and chicks, maribou storks, vultures sunning themselves, backsmiths plovers, egrets, common sandpiper, yellow necked spur fowl and a white bellied bustard.
Finally our jam packed afternoon was over and we left the park via another gate onto Mombasa Road near our hotel and just made it before it closed. We arrived before 1830 but as it was Xmas, the lady was in the car and leaving to go home -thankfully she returned and signed us out - otherwise we would have been regarded as still in the park and Clements would have had to pay for an overstay -which is not good for business!
Back at our hotel we had a relaxing snack meal - other guests were recovering from large christmas lunches and the staff were trying to get the hotel back to normal!
We returned to our room and started packing for our early flight to Kigali tomorrow. Then bless him John realised he had left his camera in the safari van.
Luckily I had the website details of the company and it had 2 mobile numbers on it - so off he went to ask the concierge to phone them - about 30 minutes later he came back smiling they had found the camera and Clements was going to return it. It would take him an hour to get to the hotel but luckily for John it was back in his hand by 9.30pm. He gave Clements a tip which he was reluctant to take but as John said the cost to us would have been far greater if he hadn't been so kind as to return it - phew with the camera back we both breathed a big sigh of relief!