we saw loads of animals now chillen at a beach town or roasting it is soooooo hot

Laura's post

Sorry to our faithful blog followers who are probably wondering if we've been eaten by lions, but the internet is hard to come by in Kenya! haha It has been for us anyways! Also, thanks for the comments, I love them! They make me happy!!

I guess I will start from Dahab. We got ourself a seat in a minivan thing going to Cario Saturday morning, (chris is pretty sure we were ripped off, but I am sure he will tell you about it. He's typing away furiously beside me! lol) cutting it pretty close as we had a flight to catch saturday night, we got gas with the engine running and the driver smoking a cigerette. We made the 9 or so hour journey, and arrived at the airport with time to spare.

Our flight arrived in Nairobi (nicked named Nairobbery) so we stashed our valuables and headed out of the airport to catch a cab to a hostel we found in our guidebook, since it was 5 am we though that was the best idea. We were attacked at the airport by people trying to sell Safaris, but we made it through and got to the hotel, which was acually a campsite type of place that rented out tents or cabins. We got a cabin (basically a bed in a hut) and crashed for a few hours.

When we woke up Chris made friends with a couple from England, Ben and Laura. They were waiting to meet with a guy about a safari so we joined in on their meeting and ending up booking one for the next day. That was Sunday where I attepted to email and let the moms know we would be away from the computers for a while, but the internet place next to our hotel was closed, so we weren't able to.

We got picked up at our hotel on Monday morning, along with our new English friends, and then picked up an Irish guy as well. We got our water and some snacks, paid for the trip and headed off with our driver and cook who spent the next 6 days with.

We headed off to the Masaai Mara game reserve, the most popular in Kenya. We checked into an AWESOME tent! It had a toilet, and HOT shower! Who would have thought! Not me!

We went on our first game drive! It was awesome! We saw some lions, gazelles, zebras, giraffes, and lots of other small animals! We headed back after about 2 hours, and had supper. It was surprisingly good, as we imagined to be eating crap for the week!

The next day we went out for the full day in the same park. It was also awsome! Lots of animals again. The first thing we saw was a pair of Cheetahs eating a gazelle. It would have been cool to see them hunt and kill it but this was still pretty amazing! The only downfall is there are soooo many safari vans in that park. When we were watching the lions the day before I counted 30 vans parked around them. Crazy. And those lions just sit there, used to all the vehicles. That afternoon we went to a river and saw some hippos and crocodile. We had a picnic lunch along the ways which i am surprised didn't give us food poisoning from sitting in the heat. We had some kind of mystery meat sandwich that I didn't look at too closely or I would not have eaten it, a chicken drumstick and a boiled egg (all which I am sure require refrigeration, but we are both still alive and likely healthier for eating it!! ahhaha) and some fruit and cookies for dessert!

We continued the drive, seeing more cheetahs, and giraffes and zebras and more!

I wish I could post some pics, since I got some good ones, but this computer is so old, it hasn't got a USB port so I will have to wait for another time!

The next day we did a 6:30 am game drive looking for some leopards, but we didn't find any. It was pretty funny, in the van the driver had a CB radio that all the other drivers would talk in Swahihi if they saw anything good like lions, or cheetas. We didn't understand what they were saying, but if our driver started driving like a maniac we knew we were onto something good. He never told us what we were looking for it was just suspensful for us!!

That afternoon we were off to the next park. It was a 5 hour ride on bumpy crazy african roads. We stayed in an old house converted to a guest house, it was good. We had a view of the park, and there were zebras and rhinos just outside the fence! The next day we headed out and saw flamingos on the lake, and huge rhinos, and other animals that we had seen at the park before this one.

We dropped off our 3 friends, and Chris and I continued on to the next park. At this time both of us were wishing we were ending our safari. We ended up sleeping at a border town (Tanzania border) and eathing in some LOCAL restaurants, where I got different rice from the men, as it was the rice that women get???? weird. It was gross and I could barely choke it down, so I said I was full. Luckily I had some almonds from home stashed in my bag so we at those when we got back to the room. The next morning we found out that there was a cholera outbreak in town, and all the restaurants and hotels were ordered closed, so we headed to Tanzania where we ate breakfast as illegal immigrants.

We headed to the park that morning, seeing giraffe on the way. We got there and checked into our wayyyy crappier accommodations, this time just a tent with a bed, and an outhouse a few meters away. I saw eyes looking at me in the long grass on the way to the bathroom at night. I literally ran back to the tent and hoped whatever it was wouldn't get me in the night! When i woke up in the morning, i look to the left out of the tent and there was a huge elephant. Who knows how close it was to us, as it was slowly walking away.

The park we were at was definitely not as nice as the others, it was so dry and dusty, Pretty sad as the animals didn't have access to water and have to travel far to get it. Our driver had the local paper and it showed a picture of a tractor dragging a dead zebra out of the park from lack of water and green grass. Very sad. Hopefully they get some rain soon.

The next day we drove to a different part of the park. It was a bit greener, way less depressing! We had an amazing view of mount Kilimanjaro and the park was filled with elephants. It was seriously amazing, hundred and hundreds of elephants heading to water. Just awesome.

From there were dropped off in a town so we could catch a bus to the coast. We had the hottest and dustiest 8 hour ride to a Malindi, where we are now. We found a great little hotel. it must have one time been apartments. Its a 2 bedroom with a living room. Really cute, only downfall its quite far from everything, so we take a tuktuk for about 50-70 shillings when we want to go somewhere. That's about 60 cents or so.

So here we are in malindi. Quite possibly the hottest place I have ever been in all my travels. Chris is sweating buckets off his head, and I am just plain hot. Yesterday by 10 am we had drank 2 liters of water, 2 passion fruit juices each(YUM) and Chris had a sprite, me a coconut, and a cup of tea which I am told is good to drink when its hot. Not sure about that one yet. We strolled around town in the heat and searched for an internet cafe, but being Sunday nothing was open. We finally found one that we used for about 1/2 an hour before we got kicked out. SO today, we are at a better one and I will try and post some pics.

Last night for supper we went to an Italian restaruant (Malindi has a crazy amount of Italians living?/staying here) The pizza was good, and I almost brought you home a kitten Leanne. It was so cute and tiny!

This morning we had a strange breakfast. I ordered fruit salad and toast and tea and Chris orderd some bean/meat/potato thing. The waiter came by and said Chris's would be 10 minutes, and that they had no toast, would I like chapati (flat bread thing) He assured me it has lots of "fibers"lol so I got that. I had to remind him about my tea, and Chris got part of his breakfast. I asked for my fruit salad again, and he said, sorry for the disappointment but be have no fruit. Was he going to tell me this??? Chris finished part of his and then he brought us the bill. Then Chris asked where his potato and meat was, and the waiter said, they didn't have any. Talk about disorganization! or just bad communication! it was funny though!

SO now here we are in a somewhat decent internet cafe, except there is a fan on the other side of the room, doing nothing for us. I am so hot I can barely breathe! But, I am sure i will survive to feel the cold next Saturday when I come home! I think today we will go and search out the beach and maybe I will pick up a few souvenirs. We will head back to Nairobi on Tuesday or Wednesday night and have a day there to so to an elephant/and rhino sanctuary and maybe a giraffe orphanage if we can find it.

I am going to try and add some safari pics now!

Chris's post

mmmmm well think Egypt was last email flew to Nairobi, Kenya stashing money if every spot i could as our book sure made it sound to be dangerous..............arrived and booked a government taxi as safer that way as plate number of cab is recorded so there can be no funny business.......................saw 2 single vehicle accidents on way to hotel and got us a cute lil cabin at about 5:30 am so just layed down as sun was rising and cocks starting to crow

first day spoke to an English couple that did tour in summer and got some tips from them..................we had breakfast bout 11:00 after a freezing cold shower i had hungry man burger huge burger fries n onion rings ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh nice way to start the day washed down with a coke in a glass bottle...........................they seem to taste soo much better from glass bottle

a tour man came to explain details to us and we were tired and didn't feel like cabbing to 3 different tour offices but we did manage to work the guy down from 130.00/day to 105.00 including all park fees 3 meals and lodgings including the 3 most popular parks in the country plus covering quite a bit of ground so we could see lots of the countryside.

next morning we were [picked up with that English couple and we picked up an Irish tourist that sure loved to talk about beer and getting drunk......................................surprise surprise.......................nice guy though the English couple too

drove out to park for next 3 days were we had a really nice big tent maybe 10 feet wide by 16 or 18 feet deep maybe it had concrete floor 2 beds and a toilet n sink and shower with hot water amazing considering we were out on the African plains.

the tour was really good we saw nice rolling African plains green with mountains in background and all kinds of animals living together i prob will forget a few but in the next 6 days we saw lion cheetah loads of elephants rhino,giraffe,warthog,hippo,crocodile,3 kinds of gazelle,water buck, dik dik(deer the size of a big cat or small dog),wildebeest,water buffalo,ostrich,jackals,tones of other birds i never saw before,zebra,flamingo and basically every African animal u can imagine, no doubt there are many others i am not thinking of now

basically we did animal drives 3 times/day and some days all day with an afternoon picnic when we were deep in the park..........was cool driving by Masai villages where they had mud hut located in a circle to keep animals out and they also piled these thorny branches all around to keep lions out..................was really hard to comprehend we were actually out there seeing it and that obviously chance of a lion attacking them our their animals was real or they wouldn't go to such lengths to try and protect them.

we saw many children and Masai warriors i guess u'd call them or Masai men wearing colorful bracelets and arm/leg bands with beaded work on them plus a colorful shawl/blanket wrapped around them and the skin in their ears sliced so their earlobes were dangling down all loose..........................I've said this in years before but this time really was like watching a natural geographic show but it was real in front of our eyes we could reach out and touch it, breathe it, feel it, hear it. it was a once in a lifetime experience.

our van had a pop up roof so we could all stand up and look out from out the top of our van and we had our own personal guide and cook 24 hrs/day for 6 days straight which was a neat feeling, like me n Laura were real big wigs i tell ya. the food was really amazing first 3 days, sadly we had to drink warm beer , but we were out in the middle of nowhere with no electricity. the ladge ran a generator for 3 hrs in the morning and afternoon otherwise it was dark. we did have a bonfire and talked with people of different walks of life from many different countries telling travel stories of our favorite and worst countries and experiences.

i couldn't believe that the locals lived almost as they did hundreds of years ago goat and cattle herders and being self sufficient for everything they needed or trading for other supplies living with no electricity,running water,banks,post offices, computers,newspapers and no contact with outside world aside from seeing tourists vans drive by the road past them. 1/2 the local kids we saw waved at us, the rest all stuck out there hand want8ing money. sadly the entire country thinks all white people are filthy rich so we should give them money....sorry , not all but many.

conditions here are pretty poor we passed by many towns with children in dirty tattered clothing barefooted and living in very bad conditions, even in the town we drove by with electricity and running water. many smaller towns just have wells with the pump handle and water coming out a spout, like in the western movies and u see people walking with jugs of water everywhere. many people here sure have strong body odor, unsure if underarm deodorant is available, i don't think it is used if it is here. our guide and cook both smelled very bad , laura said the cook wore same clothes everyday , i am a guy i never paid attention but that could explain some of the smell, they smelt worse than me, by far, and i was quite the stinker myself.

after 3 days we left for another park down the bumpiest road u could ever imagine to a park with a huge lake with many pink flamingos in it. we say some huge rhino's and many more zebra's n monkey,baboon,etc. stayed in this cool house built by the english while they still ran the country located right in the park with amazing views and mountains in background. our supper sucked but we had a shitload of beer and a fridge so who cares we sat on patio drinking beer, looking out over the park.

next day we were sad to drop off our friends but Laura and i carried on just the 2 of us with our cook and guide to yet another park that was much hotter.on the way we stopped for lunch, a buffet, and i was chewing on this weird tasting thing while i looked at it and it was like these white tubes, and flat pieces of meat with these little finger like pieces on them. my god i was eating stomach and intestines i am sure, a few days ago they were filled with shit, and now here i sit chewing on them. i was so grossed out but didn't want to be rude first night we had supper in this totally local small rest. where everyone else was Masai and dresses in colorful traditional dress with was cool to see and most had drooping earlobes with colored bands in them.we stayed in a town that had a cholera outbreak and all the hotels and restaurants were ordered closed(i guess white tourist hotels could still be open as we stayed in a hotel?), so the next morning we just walked right over with our cook into Tanzania past both borders, ate eggs and pancakes and tea in this very basic rest. cooked over coals in this tub located in the restaurant... Laura/i laughed how cholera outbreak in the town so everyone just walked over the border to eat their which won't stop spreading it at all amongst the locals. nice views of mountains while we ate and the whole place watched us the entire time we were their.

this park had many elephants but was hot and dry and not as nice as others. our second night we stayed in just a plain tent and our neighbor saw a large scorpion he warned us of and an elephant had chased a local Masai man the day before we arrived. the outhouse sure was something else.yucky, but was cool staying in a game park listening to all sounds of animals. our guide was worried that we didn't have boots and warned us of poisonous snakes so he picked us up and drove us back and forth from our tent to where we ate like we were real princesse's but i guess if we died, he wouldn't get a tip from us , so he was watching out for us. seriously he was good, making sure we were safe until he walked us onto a bus at end of tour. we both were kinda cheeped out between the poisonous snakes, the large scorpion next door, and the elephant that roamed the camp the day earlier, but we managed to finally fall asleep.

we finished our tour with the worst chicken n chips lunch i ever had really dirty conditions(no i am NOT a princess!), my chicken still had some crispy fine feathers on it! we stuck out like a sore thumb and were totally stared at, and Laura just about got sick from going to the bathroom, it was so nasty even i had a tough time. obviously some people wiped their ass with their fingers, then smeared their fingers on the wall to clean them off so there were many shitstains on the wall.yuck!oh well, what choice did we have only toilet for hours we had and none for the next 6-8 hours while we were on bus so you gota squezze it out while u can, where u can

we sat on the hottest bus Laura sat in a wet seat and we both wonder if it was pee!

was horrible long bus ride finally got to beach town

we r getting kicked out of internet place now..................

think i left off after using the most disgusting outhouses/toilets ever after eating chicken with deep freid feathers on it then the buis ride was soooo long and hot. people here drive crazy we totally nearly had a head on collision really scary how close it was and we saw 3 semi trucks flipped on there side in our bus ride. got to this town 'milindi' bout 8:00 pm or so after 8 hrs we are staying at a hotel run by a church so we must act like we are married as we share a bed. can u believe there isn't a fridge in the hotel!!!!!!!!!!!! have u ever heard of such a thing! oh well it is amazingly clean, really nice and we bribed the cleaning lady to scrub laura's panties for some extra cash, actually she did all our laundry so i am fresh n clean as a daisy once again. (ok Chris, not sure if I should delete this or not..Laura)

it is soooooooooooooo hot in this town,major humidity and during the day sweat just rolls off your face. i see locals all have a cloth that they use to wipe their face, this is really hot place..........Laura just said to me now she can hardly breathe in this internet cafe and i have a wet spot on my shirt where the sweat is collecting in a roll................guess i ate too much seafood in egypt. the power goes off quite often here but the 100% pure juices are so good and .60/glass so we are drinking many. Laura likes the passion fruit ones....the way she is drinking them maybe i'd better sleep in that other bed tonight!(haha very funny......off you go.......)

this town has many Italian stores/rest's as must have been settled years ago by the Italian's. locals say Italian phrases to us. it is nice you can get these lil 3 wheeled taxi's for about .50 so ride them lots b/c of the heat. funny b/c we r tourists, they always ask for 1.00 , but the locals pay only .50 so we say .50 to them and instantly they say 'okay' quite funny they don't even try to fight for more money. lots of touristy gift shops here selling all kinds of wooden carvings/animals/masks/bowls all really nice but we cannot carry in our bags, i am quite sure Laura will figure out a way to bring some home though, that is for sure!

food isn't so great here had some beef curries, and some waaaaaaaay overpriced seafood spaghetti at this fancy Italian rest last night, but i plan on eating lots in next 3 days till we go back on stupid 10 hour bus ride to capital city for 2 days then my sweet Laura is off home to visit Abby and i go to Ethiopia.
it is quite gross how i am sweating now and it is only 10:40 am it is just trickling down my neck soo hot here too much and many people smell like body odor..........really worse than me even

would love to hear from everyone reading this at least once in the next 3 weeks............crazy to believe i still have 3 weesk left..our legs are quite mosquito bitten, i hope i don't get flea bites in Ethiopia as i am going mad scratching at my legs already

we may go visit the hospital and leave a donation on my grandpa's behalf then go to beach.

oh just had the craziest breakfast my meal was .60 plus 1.00 for a huge mug of 'obama juice'(how cheesy orange/pineapple/passion fruit) anyways Laura asked for toast, but waiter said cuz it was Monday they had no toast but she should order a chapatti instead cuz it had lots of fiber in it, guess Laura looks like she must need fiber. she agreed and ordered fruit salad n chapatti while i ordered a local dish 'githeri' not sure what it was but wanting to try local dish as was veggies with meat n potatoes.

i got a plate of corn n beans,without the beef n potatoes, then 15 minutes later a plate of this green shredded up leaves still no meat n potatoes like i ordered, then 15 minutes later the bill came. i still didn't get my meat and potatoes, waiter said they had non, prob cuz it was Monday i guess, so he decided to give me shredded leaves instead and Laura still didn't get her fruit salad...what an absolute disaster and the guy did speak English so i dunno why this happened. oh well the juice was good n cold

lator