The Long Road to Safari

So after a down day at our beach house, we headed out Friday morning and flew back to Nairobi. These are a couple more scenes on the way to the airport. This woman is rooting through the garbage, I can't imagine that there is anything of worth left. Also, we decided that the invention of plastic has been even more detrimental to third world countries than in developed countries. Open dumps + mounds of plastic = nastiness and dirty plastic bags blowing everywhere.

Here the goats are feeding on the garbage. There are basically goats everywhere. Kevin named them the walking meat lockers. They don't really prefer eating goat meat, but when the crops fail and there is nothing else, they can fall back on the goats. Very few have enough nutrition to provide milk as they are basically scavengers.

We flew into Nairobi and this time headed out to the Mennonite Guest House to stay. Kevin's second cousin and her husband are the general managers there, so it was fun to connect with them for the evening. I didn't take pictures that evening, I guess we were just so tired and it was so fun to talk and share our stories. I took some after our safari, so I'll post them at the end..

Meanwhile, Saturday morning we headed out for our 3 day safari to the Masai Mara National Reserve. It was a very, very long and dusty and bumpy and hot ride out to the park. Ken, our driver and guide was an insane driver and at first we weren't sure what to think of him. His first words to us were "it's going to be a long and hot trip, we'll probably have to stop and do some major repairs because the roads are bad" as he shoved some extra parts - you know, simple things like a control arm - out of the way to put our bags in. Looking back, it's pretty funny. At the time, Kevin and I kept giving each other 'the look'.

Our first stop was just out of Nairobi, a lookout over the Great Rift Valley of Kenya. It is a huge geographic trench that is approximately 6000km long, stretching from Syria down to Mozambique.

Amazing views, we could literally see over into Tanzania.

We descended and drove down through the valley to the Masai Mara National Reserve.

Our first wildlife sightings! Zebras! We were so excited!!

By the next day I didn't hardly bother to take pictures of zebras because the park is just teaming with them.

Along the way we saw some interesting loads...

A loaded motorcycle and another safari van. That's basically the same as the one we were riding in... an old Toyota van with a top that lifts for viewing animals on safari.

Ok, the point of this picture isn't so much the gazelle as it is the roads. Now imagine that little Toyota van slamming down this road at 80km/hr swerving and often hitting the giant potholes. I never even had a chance to take pictures or videos of the worst parts because I was literally holding on for dear life. And I was in the front seat! Poor Kevin was riding in the back with the boys, literally getting beat up. We used the entire road, including the dirt on the sides. Ken was crazy and at the same time amazingly expert at careening down these terrible roads at breakneck speeds.

We weren't technically on an 'animal drive' and weren't even in the park, but we saw some great animals on our way in.

Giraffes!

hey, big fella. I wish there were some trees nearby to gain the relative size of these giraffes. This one was huge.

and they're off...

We saw some packs of wildebeests, but again, we weren't on an animal drive, meaning Ken wasn't going to drive off the road and go over to get a closer view, so this is just what we saw from the road on our way into the park.

A Masai man with his sheep.

The boys taking a much-needed break. I was watching for predators! And wishing I was male (this was about 4 -5 hours in..)

More zebras...

And elephants!

Cute baby elephants! Isn't it amazing that all animal babies are cute, even if they literally weigh a ton?!

The African elephant can eat up to 300 lbs of forage in a day. So they basically eat non-stop. These were the types of things that Ken, our driver and guide, told us along the way. He really did know his animals. Where to find them and lots of information about them. Our confidence in him rose as we spent some time finding and viewing animals with him.

A Masai meeting under a tree. You can also see the dirt road we were on for the second half of our journey. This was the best it looked. Mostly it was rutted with huge holes and rocks. Good times.

And after only about 6 hours of being completely beat up and throw around in our little Toyota van, we arrived at the Kichakani Camp, a tented camp in the Masai Mara National Reserve. I'm pretty sure that if we do this again, we'll fly in... or opt for the upgrade to a vehicle with a little height and some bigger tires! Kevin couldn't get over the fact that they just didn't bother with the expense of bigger tires and instead just barely keep the Toyota vans running after getting completely beat up day in and day out (not to mention the passengers!).

This is the main entrance and we were greeted with warm towels to wash the dust off and a cool drink. They also had a Masai guide there, who was great to have along for our animal drives.

This is our little tent with beds. It was comfortable and quiet as we were the only guests there at the time! This is definitely the way to camp if you're not a camper!

This is our tent from the outside. I don't have a good picture of it, back at the back of the tent was a bathroom complete with shower with hot water. Not roughing it at all, but still a bit of the 'tenting it on the safari' experience.

Our little patio. From here we could look over the Talek River and see wildlife. The camp was surrounded by fences to keep the predators out, so it was safe to walk around at night. We did see a couple monkeys running around inside the site, but no pictures.

Two of the workers at the Kichakani Camp. The woman served us our food and the man was the cook. He taught me how to make the cooked cabbage that we had at many meals throughout our stay in Kenya. We were a little sad to find out the secret ingredient was MSG! But it sure did taste good!

Kevin and boys with the entire Kichakani staff, including the Masai guide and the manager. We highly recommend the Kichakani camp. While it was not fancy, they were very kind and attentive and waited on us hand and foot! There was also a pool, but we decided after one bad pool experience that we weren't taking any more chances with another public pool! We just never took the boys over to look at it so they didn't know what they were missing. And, really, we didn't really have much down time at the camp.

Many more safari pictures to come...