Upon the sight of sth crossing the road in front of our car, the crazy UN gal screamed, "what's that!". Realizing it's just a cat, she sniffed, "oh it's just a normal cat." That pretty much sums up our trip in Kenya. We screamed at every living (or dead) animal leaping into our sight at the beginning of the safari, later on we saw so many zebras, wildebeests, hippos, then lions, leopards, cheetah...it'll be very cheeky to say this and you jealous people will probably spit on me for saying so, but we did kinda get bored (we'd parrot Nana and say, "oh it's just a normal zebra")! towards the end of the trip, only those big cats would get us adrenalized, like this one (against the beautiful red earth at Tsavo):
it's NOT a normal cat, it's a genuine Leopard! crossing behind our van. ( Nana, pls scream :)
Like they say, it all starts with a dream. I dream to walk every continent. Africa was my 5th. and this time instead of being cool and travelling alone, I decided to find partners to share cost etc. Hooked up with Pink Lady on a travel website. - when we first met, everything Pink Lady wore was pink, clothes, shoes, even her watch and mobile phone, so the nickname came naturally. i wish she were naive too, so i could get to call her hello-kitty, if you know what i mean:).
so, after some research, air tickets, visa, vaccine, hotels, booking local tour, exchange money, buying stuff, packing...done and done. we were off. Hv always been an anti check-in and mobility extremist, this time again I sacrificed a large chunk of modern living convenience and limited my stuff to only carry-on bags. Meanwhile Pink Lady bragged about the three hats she brought to go with different clothes. I could only guess she was really keen to impress the leopards and zebras with her superb fashion taste. PL was generous enough to let me borrow some space in her gigantic backpack for the two packs of instant noodle - all those Chinese travelogues i had read bitched about safari food, so this was our life-saving straw in case of any boring food situation.
For a movie junkie like me, Emirates was paradise. with over 500 chanels in-flight, sleeping was my enemy. and they had this fancy blue starry sky on the roof after the lights were off. oh yes Emirates did get pretty flght attendants from all over the world, so they speak all these exotic languages, like swahili...very good business model.
we transitted at Dubai. PL said she'd do a lot of shopping when we were back. i said "God bless your wallet". I didn't realize Dubai was such a nice city. I'll write about it:) anyway, Dubai airport's shopping wasn't that massive and glorious as I had expected (or maybe we didn't go to the right places??). there were indeed people of all colors there though, many of them sleeping on the floor like this chap here:
from those travelogues, I learnt that Emirates offer free buffet meal to its passengers with over 4 hrs' layover. it's near gate 17 (there's also free internet near that area). we had a hearty breakfast:
Saw a kid wandering outside one of those gas chambers, probably abandoned by her smoker parents:
the flight from dubai to nairobi was a bumpy ride, esp approaching Nairobi, i thought we would crash. both PL and me got sick, and i was never even car-sick. upon landing, all passengers applauded, not sure it's to celebrate they survived or to give the probable intern pilot a bravo... anyway now we knew Kenya got not only bad road condition, but also bad cloud condition.
Driver from the local safari company picked us up and took us to their office to pay (for 8 days' "all camping" safari, incl two nights' Hilton in Nairobi, we paid 800usd per person). Joyce, their boss, talked us into swapping two nights' camping for lodge in Ambosseli. we had to pay 200USD extra each which made us broke as we didn't bring much cash for safety reason. we also had to skip Karen Blixen's house as it's quite expensive. so there we were, happily on the way to Hilton and when driver stopped at a slum kind of place, we realized sth. had gone wrong.
we asked driver to call Joyce, while i was talking with Joyce over the phone, the girl who was getting a ride in our car (who was also Joyce's client) mouthed to me "don't take her crap". Unable to settle it over the phone, we asked the driver to go back. the getting-a-ride girl told us Joyce was "a pain" and that we needed to be tough. after a long and exausting battle, we settled for Comfort Inn for the first night and Hilton after we were back from safari. i was quite happy with Comfort Inn already so we were again happily on the way. and guess what? it's not Comfort 'Inn', it's Comfort "Hotel", completely different thing. i knew we were once again screwed, but the "hotel" (more like a hostel) looked clean and proper and it's dark and we were exhausted so we caved in. To be fair, I don't think this was a complete scam by Joyce, there was some misunderstanding and mix-up from both sides.
the hotel was actually a surprise, it's "simple" of course, but quite clean and nice. we scouted around the area, didn't find any pretty restaurant and it's dark and there were strong healthy-looking taxi drivers hello-ing us in Chinese. we retreated to hotel for dinner. ordered some beans etc, quite nice actually. 
next morning we had a hearty buffet breakfast at the hotel. For this, we almost forgave Joyce. while waiting for our safari driver downstairs, ready to check out, PL said she's got some "feeling". I said me too why not let me go there first while she watching the luggages. this topic doesn't sound elegant, but it's for sure a delicate issue when you are on the road - how precious it is to get a Nr. 2 at the right time and right place! when i went downstairs again, PL had lost her "feeling" and the driver just arrived. she grew very jealous of me.
Enroute we picked up Nana, who's originally from Ghana and now worked in Chade for the UN. then Abraham and Nancy, both locals of Nairobi. We were surprised that local people also go on safari, and for Abraham it was not even the first time. Abe was very friendly, talktive and funny, like Americans ( I meant it as compliment:), he became our voluntary tour guide on the way from Nairobi to Masai Mara.
Driving from Nairobi, "the city under the sun", up to Uplands where they grow teas, Abe kept asking us whether we felt cold, we all laughed thinking he's being funny, then we got out of the car to take photos, we knew Abe was not joking, it was cold! but the air was sooo fresh, the tea garden was beautiful...we never breathed another fresher cleaner air after that.
Going downhill, it got warm almost immediately. Abe pointed us to some coffee trees and then got off and picked some fresh coffee beans for us to taste. it was tasteless. then we came to The great rift valley. the view was stunning. this was a souvenir shop on the cliff overlooking the valley.
after some photos, we continued down the valley. Began to see animals. antelopes and baboons mostly. we got excited. Nana screamed stop, we stopped. it was some gigantic wild aloe vera she spotted. Our driver picked off some aloe leaves for Nana. she couldn't believe her luck of getting this all for free like it was just some roadside weeds. Nana said aloe vera was v expensive in her country. Nana was jealous of Kenya, as she put it, "you guys got everything (tea, coffee, wild aloe vera, castor...not to mention all those animals)..." Apparently Ghana got only some deers and the only thing there that attracts tourists is the annual deer hunting where you can only catch a deer using bare hands. so the men r trained all year round to run fast and to catch deers. now u know why they r good at football.
our car broke down twice on the dusty dusty road. thanks to that, i got chance taking some photos of a beautiful mowed wheat field (is it wheat field?) 
our driver chopped off some branch and made a makeshift plug to fix the broken cooling tank. Had lunch enroute, bumped into a table of Chinese girls who were just back from climbing Kilimanjaro, awesome.
Arrived Masai Mara, this was our camp. (there are two kinds of camp on safari, one is permanent camp, like this one at Masai Mara, it's kind of house; the other is temporary camp, that's the real "tent" camp, we did that at Tsavo)
then we set off for our first game drive. Abe said it's better to game drive at evening as it's cooler so animals were all out, "like these", he pointed to a car load of tourists passing by. Driving into the park, we saw zebras, all kinds of antelopes (gazelle, impala, topi...i can't remember their names so i call them all antelopes), Nana screamed upon seeing a couple of wildebeests and stopped to take photos of them. Driver had to convince her we'd see millions of them later on. As she admitted herself, Nana didn't sound like she's from Africa, even I recognized more animals than her and I knew wildebeests had the least facevalue on a game drive (sorry, wildebeest, yes we human beings are snobbish).
we saw giraffs, they were the only animal that actually pause to pose for our photo session. very gracious, absolutely elegant. they walked slowly...antelopes running around...if there's Disney music playing in the background, you'd think you were watching the opening scene of Lion King live.
posted on 2007-10-14 19:01
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