Maasai Mara

We arrived back in Nairobi on Monday after a not-so-easy ride on the Easy Coach. It took about 8 hours on some pretty rough roads and ended with some steamy mid-afternoon traffic in the city. We called our resident taxi man, John, and he scooped us up and brought us home. We snuck in a few hours of sleep that night before our Safari mini-bus picked us up in the morning.

Makau is a man about 36 years old that owns the Wilderness Zones safari company that I was referred to by an American man on a bus in Tanzania. The man has been traveling to Kenya every year for 25 years and said that Makau runs the best ship around. I couldn't agree more. Makau was there to pick us up and introduce us to our guide, Jeff, and we set out for Maasai Mara. The drive took about 6 hours as it carried us right through the Rift Valley and into the game reserve.

Our accomodations were tents and I expected more bucket showers with cold water and most likely pit latrines. Man, was I wrong. They were tents, but the permanent kind, with HOT running water, and lights, and real toilets! We were ecstatic. We ate a traditional Kenyan lunch with rice, some ground meat that tasted like goulash, and kale. Yum. That afternoon was our first game drive. Within minutes we were staring down an extremely endangered black rhino, some giraffes, a couple of lions, and a whole mess of wildebeasts. Without actually knowing or planning it, we just happen to be in Kenya during the great migration so the Mara looks like a sea of wildebeasts. We finished up our drive just as the sun was setting over the Serengeti which as one could imagine inspired a few oohs and aahs. And then we slept.

5:30am rolled around and we woke to set out for another drive. Within hours we had seen the big five. The rhino, elephant, lion, leopard, and buffalo. We presented Jeff with a new title, the Sargent, or Sarge for short. We definitely got lucky with this one. He would maneuver our little bus through rivers and up the sides of mountains to get us the best views. I couldn't have wished for anything more. Except maybe more time. I did manage to sneak in a few minutes at the clinic in the park, though. They treat travelers but mostly Maasai from the villages around the outskirts of the reserve. They have only one nurse on duty at a time, no doctors, and the woman said they are in great need of more help. It was surprisingly tidy and spacious but maybe only in comparison to some of the devastation I've seen over the last few weeks.

Our three days came and went much too fast and suddenly we were back in Nairobi. Icky. But the day didn't end there. Sarabeth and I had just enough time to repack our bags and catch an overnight bus to Mombasa. We got in about 5am and grabbed a tuk tuk to take us to Bamburi Beach. So here I sit at 6am in the lobby of a hotel near the shores of the Indian Ocean. I'm looking forward to relaxing but at the moment the mosquitos are gnawing at my neck and I'm starting to lose my composure so here ends this post. Tea time!