The morning dawned cool and slightly cloudy - a delightful change after 3 weeks of Middle East heat! We chowed down on breakfast at the hotel restaurant and then headed to the Gametrackers Office for our 3 day safari to Maasai Mara! By 9:45 am, 5 of us (ourselves and Meghan, a woman from Baltimore) were on our way through Nairobi, passing through a bustling, modern metropolis to rundown neighbourhoods and finally leaving city limits through a series of shantytowns. Once we hit the countryside, we enjoyed the sights of coffee fields, corn fields and people tending great flats of maize being dried for sale to the government. We passed many stands where locals were selling Kenyan sculptures, jewellery and art work. We stopped at one that overlooked the Great Rift Valley and bought a hat and a mask. We'll see if either makes it back to Canada intact.

Our second stop was a lot of fun. As we waited for the other 7 people who were going to join us for our safari, we chatted with staff from a store and joked about how managers and workers are the same all over the world. One young man, John, was a volunteer teacher at the school down the road and was very interesting and witty. We exchanged contact information with John and Margaret is hopeful that she can get her school to do some fundraising for a project with Kenya. What is great about Kenya is that almost everyone speaks English, so we are already learning a lot about Kenyan humour, politics and culture. Right now, Kenya is doing well economically and the current government is trying to pour the money back into schools, roads, and law and order. They've been in power for five years but there's an election coming up, so it will be interesting to see if the people appreciate the infrastructure or not.

Once we were on the road again, we headed for the Maasai Mara Natural Reserve. The trip was around 6 hours long, but worth it, for, as we got closer to our base camp, we saw elephants, giraffes, Thompson's gazelles, topi, zebras and lions. Not a bad start to the safari. At base camp, we enjoyed a hearty meal of potatoes, steak and vegetables. After a nice visit with our group, we headed for bed; ours in a cabin, far from the cookhouse and the outhouse. We were supposed to be in two cabins, but when the baboons and hyenas began filling the night with assorted sounds, the kids quickly accepted the parents' offer to bunk together.

October 6, 2007

6:30 am wake up; 7:00 breakfast! We slept well, despite the cacophony of sounds during the night and the early morning. After breakfast, we began our first game drive of the day and stopped a minute into our drive for photos of the baboons that had wandered into our camp.

Such a great start could only mean good things. Our day included seeing the "Circle of Life" without having to watch a Disney movie. We saw lion cubs with their mother, baby wart hogs who were almost cute, and great wildebeest herds. We witnessed lions with their kill, and a lion who, itself, had been killed during a hunt (probably kicked by a zebra). We saw hippos mating (beneath the water) and giraffes filled the sky, posing calmly for photographs. The shy Cape buffalo and eland made appearances. We saw wildebeest carcasses washed up in a bend of the river, so thick that at first it was impossible to distinguish what they were or how many. We knew when the stench hit us, though. Maribu storks had a picnic and vultures circled overhead.

Our guide, Sam, was outstanding, answering all of our questions in his soft-spoken way. When hippos and crocodiles had to be viewed on foot, a ranger from the reserve accompanied us with rifle in hand and some pretty funny lines:

"We like hippos; they keep the poacher population down"; and "What do you do if you come face-to-face with a crocodile in the water? Nothing. You're already dead."

Morning ended and we headed back for lunch. We could have visited a Maasai village after lunch, but just as we pulled into the camp, the skies opened up and we got a down pour, so we sat in the dinner hall, catching up on our journal writing and looking through our pictures taken that morning. At 4:00 pm, we went on another game drive and saw many of the same animals as before, including a large group of giraffes. The giraffes were cool because they got startled and began to run. We couldn't believe how much ground they could cover and we worried that they would fall, but they didn't, of course. Big, black clouds began to gather on the horizon and we knew we were in for another rainstorm. Oh well, we'd seen some lions and a hyena, so the drive had been a good one. We got into camp 30 minutes before supper and rain beat down on the tin roof, so some of us grabbed Tusker beers and sat around visiting. Our group was quite diverse; there was Isabel and Geoffrey from Belgium, Nina and Allan from New York, Lauren and Ivy from Boston (no accent) and Meghan from Baltimore. They all had great stories, interesting backgrounds and were very genuine people, so we enjoyed our time with them. Sam was a great guide and Charles, our cook, and, as well, Hussein, our driver, were awesome.

October 7, 2007

We were once again up early, this time to the sound of our Maasai guards chasing off multiple baboons. Our own resident baboon, Barry, was up at the crack of dawn, trying to catch an early morning photo. By 7:30 am, we were headed back for Nairobi, very happy with our adventure. We continued to see many animals and despite the cloudy skies that greeted us, the rains held off and it was a beautiful, though bumpy, ride back to Nairobi. Back in Nairobi, we all exchanged email addresses and said our goodbyes. It had been very nice meeting all these people and, as usual, we learned a lot from them. We continue to be amazed at how nice travellers are. The traveller circle is a very laid back culture, where people are eager to tell stories and share information. Ironically, after we all had left, we went looking for an open internet cafe but bumped into Sam, so he ended up "guiding" us to the Stanley Hotel, a very famous Nairobi landmark, while pointing out several other important landmarks along the way. He got us to an internet cafe and we said our goodbyes once more.

That night, we ate at the same restaurant as our first night in Nairobi, but the safari cook, Charles, had spoiled us and the meal wasn't quite as good as the first time we'd visited. We really ate well on safari! We had checked into the Terminal Hotel for the night, and though it wasn't The Stanley, it had hot water, clean beds and was right across from Gametrackers office. We showered, enjoying the luxurious hot water a bit too much as both our bathrooms flooded. Connor's Nintendo DS, which was charging on the floor, almost got fried. Oops! The staff wasn't mad because they said it happens all the time, and they helped clean up the water. We went to bed, safe beneath our mosquito netting and excited for the second safari to Amboseli / Tsavo East / Tsavo West which we would begin the next day.