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Day 0.0 - Friday 20th June
Well, after a 27 hour journey, we finally made it to Kenya!
The first flight from Melbourne to Doha was pretty decent, sat next to a nice girl our age and had a few good laughs, Jade wasn't too bad either ;)
Our flight from Doha to Nairobi however was a different story - managed to have kip AND watch a full movie before leaving the Tarmac! Few technical problems, and then a few false landings made for 2 grumpy travelers.
Our arrival into Nairobi Airport was interesting - The arrivals terminal is a spitting image of a underground carpark, with lax immigration officials, who just let people walk back and forth between 'no mans land' and arrivals. That being said, they did take our finger prints, so there was some sense of organization involved. Fairly sure we saw some dodgy Indians doing a Visa deal or two also. Our baggage took a while to come out, but of course no line at Customs anyway, which was fairly non existent. We were saying it would be fairly easy to smuggle stuff in, until we turned the corner and coped an eye full of military in full get up, and rifles to boot!
After the camouflage army, there were all the smiling faces and gummy white teeth, holding signboards looking for their passengers. Jade said she felt like she was selling herself on the black market! We found our driver (who had been waiting for us for 5 hours - oops), and headed into peak hour traffic. The traffic is not dissimilar to the chaos of Asia - cars weaving in and out of lane's, no indicating and pretty much no sense (or care?) of road rules. There are masses of people walking km's alongside the highway to get home, and lots of people selling their goods to cars who had come to a stop in the jam. Our favorite items available for roadside purchase were mandarins, framed paintings, tea towels, and desk lamps ... a real renovators delight!
Along the way we passed the Nairobi Stadium where we first noticed the most ginormous and haunting bird creatures - which I initially thought were statues, perched on the stadium guttering. Holy hell, these things were everywhere, and almost my height!!!!
Of course I cannot remember the name of them but for explanation sakes - imagine a Vulture crossed with a Cassowary - certainly not doing much for my fear of birds. Our driver, Sam, didn't seem too worried about them though - "Don't you have birds that big is Australia?" .... Ah no mate.
Arrived at our 'simple' hotel - Kili Mivimani. Quite a cute place surrounded with lush greenery, and set in the hills near all the embassies (safe much?). Everything's pretty basic and old, but the bed is comfy and the breakfast is free, score.
After a much needed shower and some clean clothes, we headed down to the hotel restaurant and got some dinner, which we pretty much fell asleep in.
Back to the room and I was out like a light.
Day 1 - Saturday 21st June
Woke up about 5am, not a bad effort considering we went to bed at 830pm.
Poor Jade was kept awake by the outside noises, mainly the old elevator nearby, which we have aptly named the Dinosaur, as it sounds like T-Rex cutting sick J. Park style.
Lazed around a bit before getting organised to make our way into the land of the living. Decided to take T-Rex down to breaky, and were having a laugh that it's so old that there is no emergency help button, when the buttons jammed and the elevator stopped moving. Oh the irony.
We booked ourselves onto a day tour and headed out after breaky with a few others who are on our tour.
First stop was the David Sheldricks Elephant Orphange. It's set in a small National Park outside of the city, and only open to public for a hour, to keep the animals less 'humanised' I guess. I was pretty skeptical at first, thinking it would be a bit of a show, but I didn't mind it. They rescue baby elephants - most who have been either abandoned by their mother, or whose mothers have been victims of poaching for the Ivory Trade. Their aim is to rehabilitate those that are hurt and eventually put them back into the wild.
We then went to Giraffe Manor, which is this amazing colonial house/hotel and they have Giraffes on premises that you can feed. The Giraffes were super cool and totally slobbery. Loved it.
Last stop was the Karen Blixen Museum, who was a Danish artist who came to Kenya and built a coffee plantation. Won't bother going into detail, but she wrote Out Of Africa, which was about her life here ... Enjoyed that also.
Just got back to the hotel and finally got wifi, which was evident from the amount of people sitting quietly I their phones in the lobby. So, if you can't beat em', join em'.
We have our tour meeting tonight, and will get to meet the rest of our crew.
Day 2 of our East African adventure has us heading south west to The Great Rift Valley ... Updates to come.
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