Safari Time in Kenya!

On to my sixth and final continent! I arrived in Nairobi around 8pm and waited an hour for the driver to arrive to take me to the hotel, then we sat in traffic for another hour. At which point I had been in Africa for only a couple of hours and had already experienced the validity behind the phrase "TIA" - "This is Africa" - used to explain the non-sensical way things work in the African countries. I spent the next day walking around the city. I have never seen a place so poor, it was definitely worse than Nepal. The pollution was awful as well. However there was quite a bit of high rise construction going on. I was happy to be getting out of the city the following day for safari! 
It took 8 hours to get to the Massai Mara National Park which is Serengeti NP just on the Kenyan side of the border rather than Tanzanian. There were 8 of us on the trip and after arriving at our camp, we did a short game drive as the sun was setting that night. We saw a bunch of animals in that short amount of time which made me even more excited for the next day which we spent almost 12 hours driving around the park searching for animals. I'll let the pictures do the talking but overall it was an awesome experience! We saw 4/5 of the Big Five game animals (missed a rhino) and many more. 

 Here is the list:
Warthog
Cheetah
Giraffe
Ostrich
Crane
Elephant
Impala
Tomboy Gazelle
Wildebeest
Antelope
Zebra
Timon - bandit mongoose
Water buffalo
Topi antelope
Heyena
Vulture
Baboon
Crocodile
Hippo
Lion
Jackel
Eagle
Leopard
Dikdik antelope
Blue parrot

                                          


Cheetah 



Lions relaxing after feasting on a warthog 


Water Buffalo 


Gazelle 

Antelope 

Hungry, hungry hippo! 



Me with men from the Massai tribe near our camp
Typical storefronts in Kenya
Nairobi

 We also did a little tour of the local Massai village there. It was interesting. The women build the houses and make it out of sticks and dried cow dung (gross). The men can have multiple wives. Jumping is a common competition which they demonstrated for us and all I could think about was the phrase "white men can't jump". When the men are 15 years old, in order to become a warrior, they must sirens three full years out in the wild alone and then kill a male adult lion before they return to the village. Needless to say we learned lots of interesting things from them. The bus ride home the next day should have been about 6 hours but ended up being 12 hours due to traffic. I got a bit more of a tire off the city on this ride and realized my hotel was actually in the ghetto. There are some very nice parts of Nairobi. Now on to Tanzania to meet up with Mike and Doug for a trek up Kilimanjaro!

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