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| Erin's Journal for 10-17-02 Today we flew to Nairobi, my long-awaited African adventure. First thing in the morning, we got up and showered and packed as quietly as we could (I'm sure we still disturbed some of the 16 other people in there, though!). Then we walked quickly to the train station amid a gorgeous clear sunny morning (of course, on our last day!!!), and grabbed some groceries at the store in the station. We had some confusion as to which train to take, as the one supposed to stop at 13A, was actually parked at 13B - we waited almost until departure time to find this out, and barely made it on. Then it was so crowded we ended up standing in the passageway for the half hour journey. But we made it of course, and checked in with plenty of time to spare. We sat near the gate for only about 40 minutes before they started the strange, disorganized method of boarding - first they checked everyone's boarding pass and made us pass through to a second waiting area, where everyone milled around with not enough seating. Then we were suddenly told to go ahead and board with no particular order, so we all crammed onto the jetway and eventually got to our seats in the back! Then we were told that air traffic was backed up and had to wait another hour on the plane before takeoff, but our pilot assured us we'd make this up in the air. The 7 hour flight was mostly uneventful, except that at the end we hit some really nasty air pockets that scared the hell out of me and had the rest of the stupid passengers yelling 'whooooaaaaaooooh!', which only added to my stress. At that moment, I was contemplating how we could get to the rest of our destinations by land or ship...not a likely thing! But sure enough we landed ok, as you can see by this journal which was written afterward. We arrived at Nairobi around 9pm and didn't know where we were going to stay that first night. Our plan was to find a place, then spend the next day investigating various safari packages and bartering the prices down. Instead, we hooked up with a lady at the airport hotel booking service, who called us a taxi and walked us and our bags all the way to the curb, then referred us to a friend of hers who arranged safaris. This lady was to meet us the next morning at our hotel bright and early to take us to her office to discuss safaris. We agreed and settled on 9am, then took off for the Terminal Hotel. This place wasn't too bad, had hot water and even screens on the windows (remember, malaria mosquitos are a danger here). But it was in a loud neighborhood and a little scary that late at night. When we arrived the hotel clerk heard we wanted to go on safari and immediately referred us to a company called Savuca, whose director lived just nearby and he'd be happy to call for us. So he did, and she ended up coming over that very night. Joyce came up around 10pm and gave us a lot of options for safaris of varying duration and locations, and we were pretty pleased with the options. We settled on a 13-day tour, covering several main parks with lots of game drives and a few different physical activities too. The price was a bit expensive because we wanted to stay in lodges part of the time rather than just camping, but it was still less than $100 US per day which we'd heard we should expect to pay. So we thought we were getting a deal and agreed to the safari, which would depart early the next morning! We hurried to pack our essentials into one big backpack so we could leave one pack behind, then went to bed so we could arise early and head out to the bush! |
| A Kenyan cloudburst - everything is big and dramatic here! |