Nick's Travel Blog

London, England

So I’m sitting in the airport in London right now, and this is really the first chance I’ve had to sit back and reflect on my time in Africa. My thoughts are kind of all over the place, but being up for about two days straight tends to have that effect on people.

My day technically started yesterday morning back on the Masai Mara. We woke up, went out on an early morning game drive and continued to see a lot of amazing stuff. Here’s a few shots from that:

Lioness - Kenya - Masai Mara

The same lioness a little later. Another of my favorite shots - Kenya - Masai Mara

Masai Village just outside the Mara - Kenya - Masai Mara

The rest of Kenya isn’t exactly the most attractive and comfortable place in the world, but it’s hard not to love the Serengeti. After the drive was over, we headed back to camp, packed up and took off back towards Nairobi. It’s about a four to five hour drive and even though the roads are far worse than anything we travelled on in southern Africa I managed to sleep through a fair bit of it.

We were travelling in two separate trucks, Ben, V and Michael in one and Siobahn2 and myself in the other. About an hour outside of Nairobi we stopped at some small shop along the road for a packed lunch. When it was over, we said our goodbyes and took off back to the city. We dropped Siobahn2 back off at her hostel and I caught a ride with someone else to the airport.

Roadside restaurant - Kenya - Masai Mara

My flight didn’t actually leave until around 11:00pm, so I had about 8 hours to spend in Jomo-Kenyatta. I had figured that it’d take a few hours to get through customs, security and the other various forms of bureaucracy that self important officials in developing countries love to slow people down with. And that’s not meant to be a shot at third world countries, not in the slightest. Just in my experience either they do not care at all about who comes or goes in their country or they are extremely paranoid and make it as difficult and painful as possible. It often varies from official to official, but most of the ones I ran into leaving Kenya were of the latter variety.

So it did take a few hours to get into the main terminal. I figured I’d be able to find an internet connection somewhere and upload pictures, journals, catch up on the news and all that kind of fun stuff. No such luck though, of the 3 or 4 wireless networks that were open – none of them actually worked. I was even to the point where I was trying to find their sources so I could offer to fix them, but that proved to be too difficult to pinpoint as well.

Instead I just organized my pictures and walked around a lot. The airport really isn’t that big and consists primarily of one dimly lit hallway that has about 14 gates and is surrounded by a bunch of cluttered duty-free shops.

The sprawling Serengeti - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

Eventually we boarded (Kenya Airways hilarious boarding procedures that involved laminated colored construction paper I’m sure will be the subject of a future post) and I sat through the nine hour trip to London. It wasn’t that bad, really, and it did leave me a lot of time to think.

I found my thoughts frequently drifting back to all the cool people I’ve been fortunate enough to meet on this trip. Andy, Katrina, Jim, Elizabeth, Lydia and Tara are probably in Malawi somewhere right now, Michael moved on to Arusha, Allison would just be leaving for Namibia, Gerrie and Jimmy are likely a day or two into their next trip back down to Jo’burg and V, Ben and Siobahn2 are all in Kenya for a while yet. I’m extremely jealous of all of them – well, except for the five Irish girls. They would have arrived back in Dublin on Monday and should already be back at work. Less jealous there.

Not to get too sappy here (don’t worry, I’ll go back to talking about monkeys and poop in a little bit) but I really didn’t think I’d find myself missing everyone that quickly, especially folks who, in the grand scheme of things, I hadn’t spend that much time with really. But I think that whatever it is t hat draws each of us out here, be it a longing for adventure, a sense of wanderlust or something else entirely also makes us kindred spirits of sorts. It’s rare to find those anywhere, and suddenly finding oneself in a group full of them makes it awful hard to want to leave.

I was thinking about that a lot the other night at the campfire on the Masai Mara, while everyone sat around it reading or writing quietly. As I sat there staring into the flames, one of the Masai men working in the shack behind me briefly turned on a battery powered radio. As if to drive home the point my mind was already circling around, I couldn't help but laugh as a familiar set of nonsensical lyrics echoed out into the campsite. There’s a lot more people like us out there still… keep travelling, keep finding them. Sort of like immortals in Highlander, only hopefully with less chopping off of heads. So I guess the question for me right now is, where to next?

The most immediate answer to that is, of course… Newark. My flight to Liberty International leaves in about four hours. The prospect of a few hour layover in Newark has me considerably less excited than a full day in Nairobi’s poorly ventilated, internetless airport did. The only saving grace that airport possesses is that it is located on the exact opposite side of the country as I am, and honestly I still sometimes feel that it’s a little too close.

The more long term answer to the question though… is I don’t really know. I do know that I don’t want to wait another year for it. Maybe something this winter. There’s still a lot of Asia I’d like to see. Who knows. I’m open to suggestions. Anyone up for an adventure?

Also, because I promised to end on a bathroom related note. I have to say that London-Heathrow has the best bathrooms of all international airports I have ever been to. They are clean, have soft toilet paper and I haven’t gotten one glare for brushing my teeth in there – which was kind of unexpected all things considered, given the country I am in.

Anyway, that’s going to about do it for me for this one. I’ll see everyone back home again next week, and just for good measure, here’s one last picture of a monkey:

Baboon deep in thought holding a baby - Botswana - Chobe National Park (Day 2)

Masai Mara & Serengeti Plains

Right now I’m sitting in the middle of our camp grounds with V, Ben, Siobahn2 and Michael. We got back from a full day game drive about an hour ago and now we’re just sitting around reading/writing while waiting for the sun to set and for dinner to be ready. Dark clouds are rolling in over the hills and the air smells of rain. There’s a Masai boy playing with a bunch of sticks right behind me and down the hill a ways the owner of the campsite is showering in a small room made of tin. A fire place burning wood that the Masai workers living here brought in earlier heats the water. I can hear the clanging out cowbells and the occasional moo off in the distance somewhere. The local Masai tribe must be moving one of their herds.

And here I am, next to an empty fire pit, in the same pants I’ve been wearing for two weeks, wondering if we’ll all be able to get enough water out of the hand pump well to brush our teeth tonight. It’s one of those moments where you kind of realize, wow, I actually am all the way out here… and that’s pretty cool. Well, assuming I’m able to brush my teeth, at least. Going home is going to be hard.

Vulture on the lookout - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

Lion next to a kill - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

Things I don't want to get bitten by, part 2 - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

Nom nom nom! - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

The game drive today was a lot of fun. It was a full day game drive, so we got really deep into it and went right up to where the Masai Mara reserve joins with the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.

Buffalo and zebras are found together a lot - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

ZebrasKenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

More Zebras - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

Two herds combining - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

I had a picnic lunch of local style chicken and potatoes under a tree in the middle of the plains today. Talk about surreal. Not another group of humans anywhere in sight, just a family of impala that were clearly envious of the shade (that we had admittedly stolen from them for the duration of our lunch).

V, Ben and Siobahn2 at lunch - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

Michael taking a picture - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

My version of the above picture - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

More elephants - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

Hanging out in the rain - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

Hello! - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

The Serengeti hardly even seems real. It’s more like we’re on some sort of movie set. At times, you can see for miles in every direction and no matter w here you look something is happening. One moment you’re watching impala grazing amongst a herd of Zebras, the next a group of elephants passes you by and then you’re watching a pride of lions finish off the left-overs from last night’s kill. Then at other times there’s nothing but sprawling grasslands for as far as you can see – it’s like being on another planet.

Masai Mara, Kenya

I hit the snooze button on my travel alarm clock for the first time on the trip today. That felt good. Unfortunately I couldn’t really manage to fall back asleep so I just ended up getting up anyway. I needed to be downstairs in the lobby at 7:30 to meet up with my driver who was going to take me out to the Masai Mara, so I got up and started to pack up all my crap and do the normal morning routine.

I had requested that breakfast be sent up to my room the night prior (they have room service but no TV?) so I was excited when there was a knock on the door and a dude carrying a giant covered tray came in and set it down on my table. I hadn’t really had dinner the night before so I was quite hungry. I tore off the top of the giant platter and sitting there on the plate were two small croissants and a glass of orange juice wrapped in plastic wrap. Oh well, better than nothing.

I finished packing and headed downstairs, where I proceeded to wait for almost an hour after he was supposed to show up for the driver to arrive. I’m quickly learning than Kenyan time is different from the rest of earth time. If someone says they will be somewhere at 9:00 o’clock, what they really mean is they will be somewhere at some point in the day after 9:00 o’clock. You’d think a nation full of people who win marathon after marathon would put the ability to move fast into a bit more practical of an application in their everyday lives.

Anyway, the driver did eventually show up. He’s a nice enough guy, but straight off the bat I could tell I wasn’t dealing with a rocket scientist. So to protect the innocent, we’ll just call him D for now. D informed me that there was another person he was supposed to be picking up as well and asked if I knew where she was. I was sitting the lobby of some run down motel in the middle of Nairobi. I barely knew where I was. I certainly didn’t know where this other chick was. He turned to the girl sitting next to me on the worn couch in the hotel lobby and asked if she was the person he was looking for. He showed her the name he had written down, she shook her head and said that it was not her.

D looked at her for a few seconds, walked away, then came back and asked if she was sure it wasn’t her. I could already tell this guy was going to be awesome. Eventually the girl next to me managed to convince D that she was indeed, not the person he was looking for and after a few very confusing sounding phone calls he determined that we were not at the right hotel to pick the other person up at. So we hopped in the truck and headed off towards the new girl’s hotel. To D’s credit, we only got completely lost enough to ask random strangers on the street for directions two times. So in a way, it was a step up from my first night in Johannesburg.

Eventually we found the girl, who was also named Siobahn but who I will call Siobahn2 so as not to confuse her with the Irish Siobahn. She’s a medical student from England who had been in the country for several weeks already doing volunteer work. When the driver hadn’t showed at 7:30 she’d just figured he’s forgotten or decided not to come as is so often the case here evidently and didn’t think much of it, so she seemed somewhat surprised when we actually showed up.

Small shops along a steep cliffside road - Kenya - Nairobi

Kenyans are very fond of high speed games of chicken - Kenya - Nairobi

Once we were all situated there we tore out of Nairobi in the truck pretty quickly. It was about a five hour drive through increasingly rough roads to get to the Masai Mara reserve and our campsite, which is just outside the grounds. One thing you notice pretty quickly here is all the dust and sand/dirt that gets kicked up everywhere. Any time a car drives by, any time a herd of sheep crosses a road – big old plumes of dust are kicked up and left floating in their wake. You just kind of have to accept the fact that you’re going to be covered in it for as long as you’re here.

Road to the Mara - Kenya - Nairobi

Stopped at a gas station - Kenya - Nairobi

We got to the campsite about midway through the afternoon. No sooner had I gotten out of the truck with my stuff than I saw Michael hopping out of the truck next to us. He was also just arriving. We figured we’d run into each other here, so as soon as we got situated in our tents I gave him his t-shirt he’d left with me last week.

We also met up with another couple who are staying at the campsite (which honestly is just a few tents set up next to a shack that is for eating in and another shack that is for crapping in) named V (that’s what she introduced herself as) and Ben. V was a med student as well and was also doing volunteer work and Ben was her boyfriend who’d just come for a week and a half to be with her before he had to go back to work. They were both from England as well and had only been in Africa for a day or two. You could tell because they still seemed to care about how dirty they were.

Campground dining room - Kenya - Masai Mara

Campground bathrooms and showers - Kenya - Masai Mara

After a quick lunch we hopped back into our trucks and headed out for our first game drive in the Masai Mara. I could sit here and describe all the stuff we saw, but I think these probably get the point across a bit better:

A whole lot of nothing out there - Kenya - Masai Mara

My first lion - Kenya - Masai Mara

Nothing special, just thought it was a cool picture - Kenya - Masai Mara

Another lion - Kenya - Masai Mara

Sunset on the Mara - Kenya - Masai Mara

It is also worth mentioning, that we saw a leopard after having been in the park for maybe a half hour. Back in Kruger, Gerrie had mentioned he’d only ever seen three leopards in his life. I’d now seen two, and each within minutes of entering each respective park. Not too shabby. As you can see above, we also saw some lions pretty early on. So at this point, I’ve seen all of the big 5 and the only thing I’d have liked to have seen but haven’t was a cheetah. And apparently nobody ever sees cheetahs so I’m not too bent up about that. And honestly, the animals are cool but the real fun has been hanging with and meeting the people.

Best shot I could get of the leopard - Kenya - Masai Mara

After we got back from the game drive the five of us had a simple but excellent dinner at the campsite and just sat around and talked for a few hours. One nice thing about being there with four Brits was I got to talk about Doctor Who and Torchwood, two of my favorite shows. They are both produced by the BBC so nobody in the US has ever seen them but like everyone in the UK has, so it’s always the first thing I mention. I think I even worked Torchwood into the first conversation I had with Andy and Katrina two weeks ago back at the Amadwala lodge.

Eventually we all got kind of tired and decided to head back to our tents. I think everyone else is asleep by now, but I really have to pee. Unfortunately there are a group of mean looking baboons that hang out over near the little shack with the toilet in it so I’m a little hesitant to go stumbling around in that direction at night. The empty water bottle I have in my tent from earlier is looking mighty tempting right about now. Decisions, decisions.

Johannesburg to Nairobi

Not a whole lot to report on today. Slept in in Johannesburg, which was very nice. Caught a shuttle to the airport and flew to Nairobi. Unfortunately it was dark by the time I got there so I didn’t get to see a whole lot of the city, but the cabbie who took me to the hotel didn’t get lost so technically we were already ahead of the game.

One amusing thing about entering Nairobi, when I came in through Jomo-Kenyatta I was given a form to fill out while standing in line at passport control. It was basically the standard “Are you really sick and bringing your sickness into our country?” form. It had a long line of questions that asked about your health with check boxes. Let’s see:

Sore throat? Yes
Cough? Yes
Runny nose? Yes
Fever? Probably

I  tried very hard not to cough at all in the line, checked “No” all the way down and then entered. All the guards here have machine guns, which is kind of unsettling – I think more because they’re holding them in their hands rather than wearing them on their backs. Although it sort of seems they’re doing that more just because they think it looks cool and is intimidating.

Anyway, I got to the hotel (which was just a small step up from a hostel, really), spent about 10 minutes in a tiny internet café right next to it and then went up to my room to sleep. I’m hoping a full night’s rest can knock this cold out and I can get back to normal for the start of the next trip tomorrow morning.

Livingstone to Johannesburg

Today was a travel day. I woke up kind of upside down and in a weird position in my tent at the lodge near Victoria Falls, which is usually a pretty good indication I had fun the night before.

I didn’t realize how lopsided my tent was last night when I set it up. Apparently I’d missed a few of the snaps somewhere on the outside. I hooked them on properly before anyone else got up.

It was just me, Allison, Gerrie and Jimmy camping in the area and I was the first one out of my tent, so I went off to the bathroom to brush my teeth and get cleaned up as much as I could. When I got back to my tent Allison was just getting up, so we decided to go grab breakfast at the lodge’s outdoor restaurant.

Zambia doesn’t really have a currency. They do, but it’s so devalued it’s really not worth anything so they take pretty much everyone else’s money instead. I think I paid for breakfast with a mix of rand and pula and I got change back with Zimbabwean currency.

It wasn’t long before Gerrie and Jimmy joined us and Andy and Katrina soon showed up as well. Unfortunately I had to catch a plane back to Johannesburg around 1:30 so before I knew it I'd said my goodbyes, promised to keep in touch and was in a cab on my way to the Livingstone airport. If I had to plan the trip again, I think at the very least I’d have stayed a few extra days in Livingstone. I’m definitely jealous of the folks who were continuing on into Malawi before heading to Tanzania, Zanzibar and then Kenya. I would have loved to do that, unfortunately I think taking over a month off from work probably would have turned out poorly for me.

Getting onto a plane at the Livingstone airport - Zambia - Victoria Falls & Livingstone

I was wondering why I couldn’t get a direct flight from Livingstone to Nairobi, but after I got to the Livingstone airport my question was answered pretty quickly. It’s basically a two roomed building and the only airlines that actually run flights to and from there are South African Airways and British Airways. I wasn’t there for too long and the time waiting went pretty quickly. I loaded a season of Farscape onto my iPhone before I came and with airplane mode turned on its holds a charge for a really long time, so I watched a few episodes of that while waiting for my flight and then while on the plane.

When I got back to Johannesburg I was really kind of bummed that I had to leave such a cool group of people but at the same time I was excited to be staying in a hotel room that had a bed and a warm shower – and if I was really lucky an internet connection.

Turns out they had all three, and after taking a very long hot shower I mainly just settled in, uploaded pictures from my camera, e-mailed relatives to let them know I hadn’t been eaten by lions and just caught up on the news. Favre didn’t sign with the Vikings, other than that not a lot appears to have happened. I was really looking forward to giving John crap about that. Oh well.