The One Where I go Camping (Andy)

Kerry flew back home last week to prepare for the baby--still a few weeks away, but the airlines restrict your flying well in advance--and I found myself the unfortunate position of trying to find something to do with myself. Our friends Devin and Mark were planning on going camping up near Mt. Kenya and invited me along. Although we've done several tented safari's since we've been here, I haven't actually been camping-camping, so I jumped at the chance to go. 

We left early Saturday morning from Nairobi and headed North up the new Thika Road highway (which was surprisingly nice). Our destination was the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, touted as the largest Black Rhino sanctuary in East Africa, although I'll highlight that I saw no Rhinos during the entire trip. 

It takes approximately 3.5 hours to get up and we made a pit stop in the closest town, Nanuki, for some extra supplies and some lunch. The British military also has a large training area in the region so we encountered numerous military vehicles along the way. We entered the park and searched for our campsite, the location of which was not readily apparent, and after tracking down some workers, finally found it. I managed to forget to take any photos of the campsite, but it was a great location on a riverbank with several good-sized trees for shade. 

We immediately set up our tents knowing that we probably wouldn't want to do it later in the dark. The campsite was enclosed with a single, approximately 5 foot high, single-wire electric fence to keep out elephants, buffalo and hippos (luckily, the cats and hyenas would have no problem casually walking under wire if they wanted to). The guides showed us how to "close" the gate at night, which consisted of grabbing two live wires buy their insulators and wrapping them around themselves. Since I was the oldest in the group, I decided I wasn't going to do it and left it to Devin, our resident Marine, to do it (and quite frankly, he did it much better than I would have).

The conservancy, unbeknownst to me, housed a large chimpanzee sanctuary, which we got to just before it closed. I've only seen chimps at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., so it was great to see these chimps--primarily rescues from Rwanda, Burundi, and South Sudan--up close and personal.

(this guy was really cute but I thought he looked like Teenwolf)

 Devin and Mark's wives, Cassie and Stephanie, and their friend Katie, where there on a separate trip, so we met up with them briefly, too. 

We also got to observe some, shall I say...interesting?...social habits among the chimp families. Being that this is a family blog, I won't share them here, but needless to say we've definitely come along way.

(we nicknamed him Burt Reynolds)

We got back to camp at dusk and began collecting firewood, stoking the fire, and getting dinner prepared, which I'll shamelessly admit was hot dogs/bratwurst and Doritos. Following our feast, we settle around the fire with some drinks, talking politics and Mark and Devin reminiscing about life in the service. We were far into the country so the stars were abundant. We turned in around midnight hoping our trusty electric fence would keep us safe.

Morning came and I had no desire to get up. I had a great night sleep--awaking only a couple times to the sounds of Hyenas far in the distance--but still couldn't quite get it in gear. We cooked a good size plate of bacon and eggs, got pack up, and headed out of the conservancy for Nairobi. We passed some more animals on the way out, including a striped Hyena, which I'd never seen before, and got a clear view of Mt. Kenya, which we all concluded was not as impressive looking as Mt. Kilimanjaro. 

All in all a great trip and welcome escape from Nairobi. Hopefully I can squeeze in one or two more adventures in the woods before I leave next month for the real adventure:).

The One Where Andy's Family Comes to Visit, Pt. II (Andy)

After my parents settled on the dates for their Kenya trip, we received word from my Uncle Bruce (mom's brother) and his wife Ann that they were planning an Africa trip and wanted to meet up with all of us in Nairobi. Terrific! They live in Michigan and we haven't seen them since our wedding almost two years ago, so we were really looking forward to catching up with them, plus, we really liked the novelty of our extended family all being in Kenya at the same time.  Since we didn't have a spare room in our house to set them up in, we booked them at a guest house by the embassy we found on TripAdvisor, called the Gigiri Homestead. Normally, we don't like to use our family as guinea pigs in these scenarios, but they place had good reviews and turned out to be a real find (Bruce and Ann were very pleased with the place, to our great relief). 

We picked them up Saturday morning, dropped their bags off at our place, and proceeded to the Great Rift Valley Lodge just outside Lake Naivasha. Like our harrowing drive up the escarpment in the Masai Mara, the drive to the lodge included--what is becoming increasingly standard on Cook vacations here--a 30 minute drive up a ridiculously bumpy and poorly maintained road. Everyone agreed never to complain about the state of roads in the US again, in what also has become an increasingly common refrain from visiting guests here.

The lodge was fantastic. Kerry booked us in a three bedroom cottage that was within walking distance to the main lodge area. Given the road down the mountain, we decided to just relax at the house/lodge. Had a great dinner that night and retired early.

The following day, my parents stayed behind and Kerry, Bruce, Ann, and myself traveled back down the brain-scrambling road to go on a boat ride of the lake to see the hippos. For those that are not aware, hippos are responsible for the majority of human deaths in Africa, not the big cats, so we totally expected to be riding around in a rather thickly-hulled boat to keep us protected. However, as the pictures below showcase, we traveled around the lake in little more than a canoe. 

The tour lasted a little over an hour and, in addition to the hippos, we saw many animals grazing on the shore, as well numerous birds, including a fish eagle that we got to see demonstrate it's fishing technique when our boat captain tossed a fish into the water.

Following the boat ride, we went into Naivasha town to the only restaurant we know, the La Belle Inn, for a late lunch. We then drove back to the lake to Crescent Island, which is a bit of a misnomer because part of it was filled in in the 1980s during the filming of Out of Africa, technically making it a peninsula. While we are on the topic, it still amazes me how much of this country was used in the filming of that movie. Everywhere we go there someone points out to us where part of the movie was filmed. It reminds of traveling through old towns in mid-Atlantic and the south where every old house and barn you see was used as a civil war hospital.  Kind of makes you wonder what's fact and what's fiction. Anyway, the movie crew transported a bunch of wildlife to the Island for the movie and left them all there when they were done, so the Island is now a great place to walk around and get close to giraffes, buffalo, zebras, wildebeest, and the like. We had a nice two hour walk around the island then got back in the car and journeyed back up the hill to get ready for dinner. 

Stepping back a minute to the first day, my mom wanted to order me a birthday cake that we would have at dinner on the last day at the lodge. After much go around trying to explain all this, we were fairly confident that there would be cake at dinner, possibly with my name (or something close to it) on the top. We arrived at for out meal to an empty dinning room, where we were escorted to our reserved table in the corner and had a fantastic meal. Shortly after we finished, the lights went out and the staff struck up some music and began dancing towards our table with a lit birthday cake singing an African birthday song. As my mom would stated in later retellings of this story, this was her best experience of the entire trip. Forget the Mara, forget the Museums, forget Mosby, Africans wishing me happy birthday for approximately 30 seconds was the best. I have to admit, though, it was pretty cool.

I had to go into work the next day so we packed up and headed back to Nairobi rather early. The whole family was together for another two days--my parents were headed back home and Bruce and Ann were departing for Samburu and then onto Rwanda to see the Gorrilas--so we had Jimmy take them around to the Elephant Orphanage and the flower farm, with a stop at Talisman in Karen. We had a fantastic time with the family and were so glad with the time we were able to spend with everyone, even if it had to be on the other side of the world.

The One Where Andy's Family Comes to Visit, Pt. I (Andy)

Ok. I'll admit it: we haven't done a great job in the past few weeks of updating the blog. I'd like to say that it's because we've been doing so much cool stuff that it's just impossible for our writing to keep pace. Technically, I guess that's true, but the reality is that we've both been busy with work and with getting things set for the baby and for Kerry to head back to the States, so we haven't really have much time for adventure. However, we got to take a break from all that worry two weeks ago when my parents came to visit. This trip was the first time either of them had been to Africa and, much like myself, they never figured this was a place they would ever travel to, so we did our best to make sure it was memorable trip.

We picked my parents up at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport Thursday night (February 16th) and took them back to our place for some rest before their first official day of touring Nairobi. Kerry and I have developed a kind of package deal for visitors traveling to Kenya that involves some combination of the following: Tea Farm, Elephant Orphanage, Giraffe Center, Karen Blixen House, Talisman Restaurant,  Cheese Farm, and the Masai Market at Village market. It's a tested itinerary, with few surprises, that seems to go over well with all who have signed up for it. I decided this time to add the National Museum of Kenya and the Nairobi Railway Museum just to spice things up a bit. But we'll get to those items later.  They went to the Tea Farm on Friday and then we all spent the rest of the day relaxing and getting ready for our trip to the Masai Mara for a long weekend. 

The following day, we boarded our surprisingly large charter flight--stopping first to see my favorite lounge at Wilson Airport, the Nairobi Aero Club--for an even more surprisingly short flight (35mins) to our stop in the Mara at Kichwa Tembo airstrip. 

We landed, offloaded, and were greeted by Francis, our guide for the next three days, who drove us to the camp. We stayed at the Mara Sira Bush Camp, a more primitive Safari camp on top of the escarpment overlooking the plain, which was very nice but a terrible drive up the mountain from the airstrip (we were warned about this on TripAdvisor, and I assure you that ever bit of it is true).

We got to the camp  and were greeted by our Masai host, Leshoa, who gave us an overview of the camp and setup our afternoon Safari. 

The camp really does have a fantastic view and at night an amazing view of the stars in the sky.  Since Kerry is very pregnant now, she stayed back at camp while my parents and I went on the game drives. 

We did three drives total--one afternoon and two morning drives--and saw the full host of animals the Mara has to offer, including four of the big five (the leopard kept eluding us). 

(I know, Giraffe are not one of the big five but I didn't take any rhino pics).

And we had a great bush breakfast.

Both nights we had great meals and good conversations with the other guests staying at the camp. The last day we were there, we caught a crazy sunrise with a dark cloud trapped in the valley; it kept moving parallel to us, strangely like curtain being drawn open. We took one last drive in search of the leopard to no avail, packed up, and took our surprisingly smaller and surprisingly longer flight back to Nairobi. 

Since we've detailed past visits to the Tea Farm, Elephant Orphanage, Giraffe Center, Karen Blixen House, Talisman Restaurant,  Cheese Farm, and the Masai Market, I'll skip the recap and move straight to the two new places we toured, the National Museum of Kenya and the Nairobi Railway Museum.  Unfortunately, the only photos we have of these are on film, which I haven't developed yet, so some imagination will be required. 

The original National Museum of Kenya was built in Nairobi in 1929 and was located further downtown before being moved to its current location in the late '30s. The museum focuses mostly on plant and wildlife, but has a great section on Kenya's political and social history--including a surprisingly unbiased section on colonialism and independence--and a great display of skeletons of early man found in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia, include a mold of the famous Lucy (and some of her less famous relatives). 

The Railway Museum, which in some ways could be more accurately described as a railroad graveyard, turned out to be a great find, but when we first got there, I was pretty sure the whole thing was going to go off the rails (I had to work in a least one railroad-themed pun in here). My dad has always been really interested in old trains and I thought this would be an interesting place to take both my parents, knowing that its Kenya and you can probably climb around on a lot of the stuff. The trip started at the actual Nairobi train station, which literally has not been changed, altered, or cleaned in any way since approximately 1938. While that may not be the most flattering description of it, it actually is a really neat look at an old British-style train station, which could be a great attraction in and of itself, should anyone put a little money into restoring it. We were greeted by some guy who, as we came to find out, is a former railroad employee who just gives explanations of Kenya's rail systems, but isn't actually affiliated with the museum (you don't actually find that out till the end of the "tour"). 

We proceeded to the actual museum following our unofficial tour, which has a large collection of railroad gear, photos, and memorabilia from the early days of the Kenya/Uganda railway. Outside, there are several old locomotives and rail cars, including the ones that were used in the movie Out of Africa, as well as the famous (or infamous) train car that two hunters were dragged from in Tsavo, Kenya, in the 1920s by a lion that, ironically, they were hunting. The museum and the station itself has  lot of potential and clearly there is a market in Nairobi for colonial nostalgia--hence the museum--but both are desperately in need of funding, which unless it comes from private pockets, is not likely to happen.

Next up: Meeting up with my Aunt and Uncle and traveling to Lake Naivasha