Peace, Love, and Ugali: Safari!

One might think that I would have a lot to say about one of the coolest weekend of my life... and generally you'd be right. But in this case I'm short on time, and to be honest I think the pictures do a lot better job than I could. So this post will be brief.

Safari started out on Friday at 8am. That day was what Mike (our wonderful safari guide) called "introduction day." We dove 4ish hours from Nairobi to Maasai Mara, Kenya's premier game reserve. In other words 14,000 sq km of the most beautiful place I've ever seen. On the ride there we got to know each other. I was traveling with Thais, an other volunteer named Dave from York, a girl who works for the UN from Sweden, another American girl, and in Narook we picked up three other people who were volunteering with a different organization (they were from England too). The drive from Narook to the Mara was like an amusement park ride. You've got to appreciate roads that are so bad people intentionally drive on the shoulder of the road. When we finally got to our camp site we had a quick cup of chai then our vehicle was transformed into a full on safari van. The top came up, giving us room to stand and move all around the van to see the animals up close and personal. Mike assured us that our mini-drive tonight would just be a taste of what was to come.Within two hours we saw three of the big five. We drove through a heard of giraffes, we saw lions, and buffalo. We continually had to remind Mike to keep at least one eye on the road as he pointed out wild life left and right. It was awesome! After seeing the most breath taking sunset I'll ever witness we headed back to camp for dinner and passed out early.

The next day we woke up early hoping to get onto the reserve quick enough to see a kill, unfortunately that didn't happen. However, we did see a pride of lions munching on a freshly dead buffalo. We were so close to mama lion and her cubs that we could hear the bones crunching as they ate, talk about wild. We drove allllll day and saw tons of animals. We saw a leopard, which Mike says he hasn't seen in three safaris. They are probably the shyest of the Big Five so that was pretty cool. We got within 4 meters of some elephants. We went to the Kenya/Tanzania border (two african countries down 53 to go). I saw a baboon baby that was just on day old! It was so tiny and cute and looked like it should be wearing a diper. When we got to the river to see hippos we got out of the van and were greeted by a man named Daniel holding an AK-47 and told to follow him. He showed us hippos and crocodiles, and even let me hold his gun. That part was nice b/c we got to walk down around the river, and he showed us where National Geographic and BCC come to film the wildebeest migration. We saw allllll kinds of animals; ostrich, cheetahs, merecats, tons of antelope, more lions, more elephants, zebra, lizards. It was absolutely quality.

The next day we visited a Maasai Village and saw their way of life. I really liked that and it was very interesting to see. After a short game drive we departed with the 3 day people and left just me, Thais, and David. We drove alllllll day before arriving in Nakuru after dark.

On the last day of safari we went to Lake Nakuru National park. We saw a rhino and completed the Big Five! That was really cool, we also saw lots of flamingos. Then after leaving the park we convinced Mike to make a detour to the equator!! One more bucket list check! The equator was really neat. A man showed us an experiment to prove that water drains the opposite direction on each side of the equator and drains straight down on the equator line. It made me really want to go flush a toilet on each side, but since flushing toilets are a rarity here I had to settle for not doing that. After the equator we made our way back to Nairobi and said our goodbyes.

The weekend was really cool, Mike is such a lovely guy. He was so funny and so knowledgeable. He promised to be able to answer 80% of our questions, but I don't think he missed even one. I was quite pleased with the whole exerience and would recommend it to anyone who is interested.

Okay! Picture time!

Kenya's Big Five: