I am starting to get behind on this blog. This is the first time I am not really behind due to the Internet access shortages, but rather finding time or energy to write it up. I am in Egypt now and have been for a while, but I will keep this only about my trip to Kenya & tell you about Egypt in the next blog. Hopefully I will get that one started soon after this :)

I flew into Nairobi early Monday morning met my friends Evan & Sophia at our Safari guide's office. We were the only 3 that signed up for the Safari, so we got a personalized trip, which was nice! In the Safari van we traveled from Nairobi to our camp site on the edge of the Masai Mara National Reserve and in the middle of a couple Masai tribes. Most of the roads in Kenya are quite ridiculous to drive on as there are many huge potholes & bumps along the way. By the end of the week I was definitely ready to stop bouncing around.

To start we went to visit one of the local Mara tribes. They had one of the Chef's sons take us around and show us their huts, how the camps are set up, gave us a welcome dance and answered all of our questions. The Masai people are a nomad type people that are cattlemen. Apparently most Masai men will have over 100 cows. The people still keep many of their traditions. These people still do a lot of the traditions like long earlobes, removing front teeth, circumcising at 12 years old, and the warriors become a warrior by killing a lion at the age of 15. They are set on keeping there traditions and not becoming modern. However they like education and meeting new people, they are just not changing. They live in houses constructed of sticks and cow dung. The cows all come in and stay in the center of the village at night. I thought it was interesting that most of the tribe men and woman that go to university come back and continue on the traditions. As they are nomads they sometimes do not even know which country they are in as they move there homes as they need to for the cattle. It was a great to learn about there culture.

The Masai Mara is on the Kenyan side, while the Serengeti is on the Tanzanian side. There is no fence around the Masai Mara, so we were definitely camping right next to a whole bunch of crazy, insane scary animals. Our first night we only did a short trip not far at all from our camp and we saw huge lions, African buffalo, elephants, hyenas, and the list just keeps on going. Our camp had a fence around it, but it did not look quite as secure as I thought it should. Even with the animals so close we could hear them & a questionable fence I slept quite easily. I could sleep because I knew that I had 6 Masai warriors staying up all night protecting us and the other guests. On my way to bed a couple of them stopped me & just wanted to chat. They told me how each had killed a lion before, what type of animals they were worried about that night, what they did during the day, and how many cows they had. After learning lots more from them and making friends they all promised they would protect me. :) So with all of this I felt nice and safe in a crazy land.

The safari was good. For the safari we had our guide who told us all about the animals and drove us around. The safari van had a roof that raised up outside under the shade of the roof. When not in our camp or one of the tribes we not allowed to leave the vehicle as there are animals everywhere there. We did a 3 day safari. Apparently doing a 3 day safari is short, but I could not imagine being stuck in a vehicle for many more days, even with the ability to stand up. It was a surreal experience! I was actually in the natural habit and in the seeing wild lions, wildebeests, zebras, hippos, giraffes, etc. So close up too! Even had lions that were maybe 1-2 feet from us. We were there at the time of the wildebeest migration, which meant we saw hillsides covered with wildebeests.

I never knew how much of an educational movie the Lion King was until my visit to Kenya. I need to go watch Lion King again as it has been probably 15+ years since I last watched it. From the wildebeests migration to Hakuna Matata, Lion King got it right! Hakuna Matata is used by everyone all the time to let you know, no worries mate, all will be good. I should have watched Lion King as part of my pre-research, but hopefully I will be able to watch Lion King on my next major flight and see what I missed. :)

After our 3 day Safari trip, the three of us got to Nariobi and left a few hours later for Milani, a beach town. We traveled by an overnight public bus & found the camp site we had hoped to stay at was closed and bunch of stuff was booked out. After all of the traveling and frustrations we decided to just go sit on the beach and figure it out later. The option on sleeping on the beach was definitely discussed. However a bit of food, water, and rest I decided to go on the hunt. After a few chats, a few walks up and down the beach, a number of boyfriend offers and lots of haggling I ended up getting the three of us a place to stay for amazing place. The place was new & had all of these new decked out cabins, but was empty, so we had the whole place to ourselves. It was similar on the beach, not many tourists at this time of year so all of the boys who organize things for tourists were bored and wanted to just hang out with us. They took us to dinner and the best dancing spot as they had already discovered my love for dancing when they put some music on at the beach. After a good trip to the beach, a bit of snorkeling, and hanging out with the Kenyan guys we headed back to Nairobi.

We had got directions to our church group in Nairobi from a friend. After finding the building and obscure room in the back we surprised the Kenyans by having three Americans just walk in. They were so welcoming and we really enjoyed chatting to them after church services. All of the people in our age group than took us over to one of there houses, showed us how to us the local matatus, than into town for dinner & a drink. They were awesome! I so wish we were there longer and could have some more crazy times with the Kenyans in Nairobi.