Nairobi does have a few quiet, beautiful places. In the hills that border one side of Nairobi is a fairly wealthy area. Near there is Karen Blixen’s former home. The picture to the right is part of the grounds of her home. Though the farm was broken up long ago the house and the main grounds around it remain. There are beautiful views of the surrounding hills from her house. It really is a lovely spot, and the green everywhere is a nice contrast to the last three days travelling through Tsavo and Amboseli. The house is well taken care of, though as with the grounds, nothing like the farm pictured in “Out of Africa,” I can’t imagine that it ever looked the way it was portrayed in the movie.

Amboseli is not as dramatically striking as Tsavo, but there are more animals including large herds of gnu (i.e.. food), zebra, elephants, giraffes, hyenas, warthogs, a few lions, and the occasional cheetah. The flat plain that makes up the majority of Amboseli almost seems staged, it’s so flat, and there are so many animals. The animals seem almost completely unfazed by the minibuses, except for the zebras – they usually turn around and give you their tails. The animals walk the electric fence line around the lodge compounds too. It’s amazing to be in the pool at the lodge and have a line of zebras walking along the electric fence 100ft away.

One morning we had to be ready to go on a 5:30am game drive. I am not a morning person. I joked with our driver/guide that if I had to be ready to go at 5:30am I had better see something with fur, four very large paws, and some very big teeth – and we did! The lionesses were really funny. They seemed to think posing for pictures was part of their job. It was like someone had given them their schedule for the day:

5:45am be in the clearing for all the tourist

6:15am leave for breakfast

The lodges at Amboseli are beautiful. There is one thing truly unique about the lodge compound – it has a resident baboon population, and they’re a cheeky bunch! I was staying in a newer lodge and they were still a little warry, however some friends staying at one of the older lodges had a great story to tell:

A lady at breakfast had a banana, one of the baboons wanted it so he jumped in her lap took it out of her hand and ate it. Then jumped down went to an empty table that had a cup of coffee sitting on it, got up on the table and drank the coffee. Guess he’d finished his breakfast, so he went back to the trees.

The lodge also had several “nonpaying” guests on the grounds, a group of groundhogs! They were absolutely adorable and would bake for hours on the rocks outside the lodge. Beautiful views, friendly furry locals, good food, and comfortable accommodations – who could ask for more? But, there was more – wonderful game drives into the bush around Tsavo!

We didn’t see any big cats at Tsavo,   but we saw plenty of zebras and antelope, and the area itself had many beautiful vistas through the valley. I don’t think the zebras think much of the tourists – they have a favorite position for photographs – they turn so you get a nice view of their back ends.
On one of the game drives from the lodge we traveled up into the hills to a spring. Though the sign at the entry reminded all exactly how “wild” the area was, it was a beautiful, peaceful oasis, home to several hippos and monkeys.

Traveling by minibus through Tsavo, and then across the country side to Amboseli we stopped at a check point going out of one of the game reserves. That’s where I snapped the picture of the cute little guy on the right. He posed so beautifully for me, and I was so interested in him, I didn’t even notice until I got the pictures developed he was sitting on a gnu skull!

Oh – travel note: The roads in Kenya are HORRIBLE. Between the game reserves, they’re mostly dirt and washboard rough. My advice – if you can afford it Fly! Most of the bigger reserves have landing strips and planes that fly in on a regular basis.

Everyone went on a city tour here because we had an overnight on the ship before leaving on safari. It never seems to fail, one bus has to get stuck in a pothole somewhere along the way. The town is rundown looking, but people are very friendly.

The old fort still stands in Mombasa and is very interesting. The building walls contain an array of different colors, black, grey, cream, red, yellow, blue, and green. There were also beautiful views of the coast from the walls of the fort. Buildings from all different time periods in the fort’s history made exploration fascinating, and an exhibit showing the life of the fort in one of the newer buildings in the center tied them all together. Outside there are wonderful old streets to wander with interesting craft shops and a few little monkeys that are very adept at begging handouts from the tourists. The only thing I didn’t really like in Mombasa were the huge flying ant like bugs that come out at night – I hate bugs!