3-12-12– 3-13-12 Samburu National Reserve

 

Elephants. Who would ever think you’d get bored of elephants? Well, we didn’t really get bored, but we did see so many of them, so often that we would take a couple of pictures and scoot on quickly. The most enjoyable part of all the elephants was all the elephant babies. They are a riot to watch. One crossed the road then couldn’t get up the little hill on the other side. He tried and tried and it almost looked like he was laughing at himself. Adorable!

We took both an evening game drive and a morning drive. Both were really neat and we saw oodles of different types of animals, but we really didn’t see much more than we did in Nairobi National Park (except there weren’t any elephants in Nairobi at all – they are very destructive!). In reading the reviews of all the game parks in Kenya, I really believe it’s luck of the draw what kind of experience you’re going to have. Our driver for these two weeks, Newton, says that he takes it personally when he can’t track an animal and he feels really badly, but it happens. He was following cat prints while we were out but we never saw any big cats (or small, either) in Samburu. But maybe people there the next day saw several. You just never know.

Samburu Sopa Lodge was pretty nice. It was a main building with a pool and restaurant surrounded by small two-room buildings that completed one side of a semi-circle. Actually, the rooms were ginormous, when I think about it. Within the semi-circle was a watering hole and a grassland area, so the animals could really come right up to your porch or to the restaurant. They say that the animals prefer to stay far away from people, but there were TONS of security guards all over the place wearing snazzy uniforms and carrying batons. Just in case, I guess. I set up the camera on the back porch and got photos of the stars. Orion’s belt was up there but in the photos you can barely tell because there are so many other stars that are within that one constellation. In the picture below, look for 3 stars running from the upper left to the lower right, towards the bottom of the photo. The thatch you see in the bottom right was from the roof of the room. It was open underneath all the way around where we have our flashing under the roofline.

During the morning game drive we saw – you guessed it – elephants! and giraffes, warthogs, monkeys (not sure what kind), ostriches & some cool birds. We also managed to get the truck stuck. I was just amused, but I think Newton was a bit concerned since he was tracking a cat, after all. We got out of the gully due to some fabulous pushing effort and some machete action. The winning pusher was Dr. PJ – not the two guys standing there now.

Nairobi National Park & The Giraffe Center, 3/11/12

 

It’s incredibly hard to decide which photos to include in this blog post. We saw hundreds of animals and more than a dozen different species on today’s safari though the largest city park in the world. Nairobi’s National Park is fully enclosed within the city limits and it’s amazing. The photo above is, I believe, an aerial view of the national park. I took this just before landing and the airport is near the park so I’m fairly confident this is where we were today.

Honestly, it kind of started off feeling like one of those safaris we can take in the U.S., especially Fossil Rim (near Dallas). We were in a raised-top bus, one we could stand up in to see out the roof; it was just Newton, our driver, our Fearless Leader, Reverend Kaburu, Brad and me. The roads were dirt and well-pitted and we drove and drove and drove. There were copses of trees, watering holes and vast acres of grasslands. Once we got to the watering hole any similarities to a U.S. ‘safari’ ended.

Nearing the water we could see hundreds of maribou storks flying circles through the air and alighting on a small peninsula in the water. Zebras and (many hoofed creatures whose name I don’t know) were tentatively slipping towards the water for a drink. They seemed rather skittish and we realized that there was a female lion on the other side of the pond; we could just see her head pop up over a rise every once in a while. Off to the right we discovered 4 other lions, all standing on the back side of the rise surrounding the pond. We drove up further and saw THIS.

And this is how close we could get:

We also attended a “lion wedding,” where the male and female were hanging out together.

Here’s an album I REALLY threw together because I’m tired and we’re heading for Samburu Game Park tomorrow morning. Gotta get to sleep!

		Nairobi National Park VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Dubai to Nairobi, 3/10/12

We woke early…no, wait, I never really slept! Argh. I woke up at 1:30 am and never went back to sleep. One warning, if you stay at the Millennium Hotel near the Dubai airport it is LOUD at night. Not from the planes, as you might expect, but from the people in the hotel that are coming and going at all hours. There was a happily screaming child apparently running all around about 3:30 this morning. Seriously, folks, like you can’t tell people are trying to sleep??

Anyway, so we got up early and went downstairs for the complimentary breakfast buffet. Like dinner the night before, it was yummy. Well, most of it. The Foul Madame (I kid you not, there’s some sort of dish called Foul Madame – I wanted to get a photo but our shuttle left early) was totally skanky. Tasted like toes. Post-marathon toes. It was, very literally, FOUL.

We scarfed down the other food and jumped into the shuttle bus to the airport where we waited for a couple of hours then hopped on our Nairobi-bound plane. This time I slept while Brad stayed up. And here’s an Emirates tip: if you fly with them (which I recommend) go online ahead of time to choose your dining options. There are maybe 10 out-of-the-ordinary options such as low-sodium, vegetarian, vegan, no pork, etc… I ordered low-sodium to try to head off any possibilities of a vertigo attack. The tip is that if you order something “different” you will get your food first. I was finished with my food by the time Brad got his.

So we looked out the window as we leave Dubai; the water was nice and greenish-blue. It really looked pretty. We were on the wrong side of the plane for the totally awesome view of Dubai with the Burj and the Palm and so on, but hopefully we’ll catch that on the way back. Kenya below us was relatively flat with some deep canyon like areas and a lot of brown field. It was way cool to think “I bet there are elephants and giraffes and all sorts of cool stuff down there that we can’t see.”

Nairobi airport tip – you’ll have to stand in line to get your Visa after filling out a bunch of forms. Don’t go to the first counters you see; there is another set of Visa counters allllll the way down the hall near the baggage area. And then tell the guy at customs that you’re on a medical mission. He won’t bother to check your stuff.

Nairobi is a very pretty city. There are a lot of hills and curves and big trees and parks. Oddly, it felt a bit like driving in Bermuda with its sharp turns to go up really steep hills, roundabouts, and left side of the road driving. We're staying in the Methodist House Guest Rooms for tonight and tomorrow night. After our tasty buffet dinner tonight we actually got to Skype the girls! It was great to see them. I think they've grown since Thursday.

Tomorrow we’re heading to the giraffe center and the orphaned elephants center. Yay!

And We’re Off!

The family drove us to Intercontinental Airport. It was sad to leave the girls, and Grace, in particular, seemed kind of dreary, but we know we’ll have awesome adventures to share with them, photos galore and souvenirs. The way I look at it, Brad and I are traveling the world trying to find the places we really want the girls to visit.

Our humongous Boeing 777 left Houston right on time Thursday evening. Emirates sure seems to be a good airline choice: although our seats were rather snug, we did each have our own little TVs with zillions of movies, TV shows, music, games and other stuff – like live maps and (this is really cool) live video from outside the plane either looking forward or looking down). I watched Contagion (OK), The Help (great) and In Time (so-so) - more movies than I’ve seen in many months! Plus we got our choice of hot meals for dinner and breakfast, blankets, pillows, headphones, toothbrush & paste & other goodies. Emirates is also putting us up tonight at a local hotel since we have an overnight layover. The stay includes transportation and  dinner, breakfast and a snack!

We landed here in Dubai around 4:30pm on FRIDAY. It was a real trip in the airport. Who knows what languages everyone is speaking and the attire varies amazingly. The Americans really, really do stand out here, though. You can spot them a mile away. As for the other folk, there were men wearing all white robes and head pieces with black hoops around the top, women fully covered including their faces, and other women with just head wraps. here were no women (and I don’t think men, either) wearing shorts, and most of the women wearing pants were wearing long shirts that covered their bottoms. Lots of variety in the Dubai airport. By the time we got through customs and the really, really enormous airport and made it onto the hotel shuttle it was dark. Other than the cool views out the plane windows we haven’t yet gotten to see any of the city. We’ll see it on the way home.

Tomorrow it’s off to Kenya!

		Dubai VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Ready? Set? GO!

 

This shot is just the extraneous goodies that will be heading to Kenya with us. Rumor has it that the Kenyans are very impressed by our peanut butter, so we’ll take some to our host family. We also have leave-in shampoo, mosquito repellant (bottles & bracelets), Purell, snacks and tons of other stuff. We have one HUGE bag that’s devoted entirely to medicines that have been donated. My fear is that someone’s going to check the bag and freak out, thinking that we’re drug traffickers or something. We have a nice letter that states otherwise, but that’s still the one thing that makes me nervous. Oh, I take that back. I’m more nervous about getting some sort of intestinal “issue” while there. Eeek. I don’t need that.

Getting Ready for Kenya

Woo hoo! So Brad and I are headed to Kenya. Yes, Kenya, AFRICA. And on the way back we're going to stop in the MIDDLE EAST, too - Dubai. The continent of ASIA.

It's a medical mission so Brad will be doing all the medical stuff. Me, I'm just gonna be the photo girl. I got this new laptop so I can take it with me to upload the photos and blog our awesome experiences. This post is just a "hey, I need to get this blog thing set up on the new computer" kind of post.

More to come...

Summer Road Trip 2011 - Day 1

Flew to Newark today. Well, eventually, anyway. All went just fine: changed planes after a short layover in Atlanta, until somewhere over Maryland everyone decided we would need to be in a holding pattern over Newark and we didn't have enough gas to do that. So down we went into Baltimore. We weren't stuck there too long and the kids, honestly, were pretty good. They re-gassed us and off we went back into the air and on to Newark.

John picked us up in his snazzy 4-door Jeep. The kids were a little tired at this point and we heard, "How many more minutes" about 20 times. Once we got to Lambertville and stopped at Guissepe's (let's face it, it's Jack's!) Pizza to chow down on the best pizza on the planet all was well. The kids scarfed down a ridiculous ton of food and we went back to my mom's house and crashed for the night.