Kenya

Little did I know that one of Maurice's lifelong goals was to be involved in a nutshot. I grabbed a nearby elephant bone and made dreams come true.

One of the three Cheetah brothers that we continually saw throughout the safari.

Me and my mom! Set against the backdrop of beautiful Nairobi.

Typical Savannah scene, lioness poking around in the grass. Awesome animals.

After leaving Perth it took a short 32 hours to finally touch down in Nairobi. Along the way I visited such beautiful destinations as the Kuala Lumpur airport and the Qatar airport. The airport in Doha (Qatar) was so unbelievably crowded due to some renovations, that it was making me ill, the air constantly stunk of this strange BO mixed with sewage smell. Luckily I found an empty planter to sit inside and tried to read while billions of Arabs stepped over and on me.

I spent the first two days alone in Nairobi, basically watching football and reading before finally rendezvousing with mom and Maurice at their hotel. We were obviously both quite happy to see one another and spent the rest of the night catching up (as well as exchanging gifts...it was a one way transfer really, thanks to everyone...you know who you are!). We had three full days in Nairobi before hitting the Savannah, so we decided to make the most of it and see what the city has to offer. First day was pretty much relaxing around the hotel with some short walks out into the dirt of the city to poke around. Visited the market on the second day to pick up some souvenirs. Was great to see Mom and Maurice assaulted by the peddlers and shopkeeps, apparently they made much more inviting targets than I did, I think traveling over the last 9 months has given me a resistance to their mischievous tactics. The third day we took a small tour of the city just to confirm that Nairobi has absolutely nothing to offer the tourist.

Thursday morning we woke up early and ventured out into Kenya for the safari. The trip took us to the the Maasai Mara game reserve, which is just the northern part of the Serengeti (it changes names when it crosses the Tanzania/Kenyan border). Really didn't know what to expect from this but whatever I expected, I was totally blown away by what we actually saw. Too much to really go into detail here but we saw pretty much everything. Lots of the regulars; Zebras, Gazelles, Impalas, Elephants, Giraffes, Wildebeest, Monkeys, Ettins, Baboons, Hippos, Boars etc as well as the good stuff like Water Buffalos, Lions, Hyenas and Cheetahs. There were a few that we missed including Leopards, Rhinos and Orcs, hope to see these guys as I continue through Africa though. Some of the more exciting parts of it came with the "kills". We spotted three different kills, the best two being a lioness gnawing on a wildebeest carcass and three Cheetahs being chased off their Impala corpse by an army of vultures.

Each night was spent in a camp just outside the park where our guide and cook (both very awesome guys) would tend to our needs and made some great meals. Definitely knew I was in Africa the one night while seated alone at the fire, I looked over and found a hyena staring back at me. Unfortunately that was the only intrusion into the camp as there was a 24 hour surveillance by Maasai warriors who walked around the area with spears and swords just in case things got ugly. The Maasai themselves, once fabled warriors, are still very traditional in their lives, but seemed to have switched to fabled peddlers and trinket hawkers. More often than not they found Maurice to be an easy target for their pestering when he would buy whatever they had usually just to shut them up. Was funny by the end as Mom and Maurice gave out these little Canadian items (pins, pencils and pens) until almost the entire village and staff of the camp (the same people pretty much) walked around with all these items pinned to them and hanging around their necks. All in all it was an awesome safari and probably the best tour I've been on during the trip.

We're finally back in Nairobi now for a short stay before flying to Zanzibar tomorrow afternoon. Not sure when or how, but that's where I'll meet back up with Jas and Ry. It promises to be a very tearful reunion.