Saturday, June 20, 2009

Fly All Day, Safari All Night… I’m in Nairobi!

After a half day of learning, Corey and I headed to the airport to catch our flight to Nairobi. We had a 7.5 hour layover and expected to wait in the Nairobi airport for the duration of the trip. As we were landing we saw one of the OLPC staff and he asked us if we wanted to go on a safari. Wait What?!?! Corey and I had read that visas were $125 and we didn’t want to spend that much but one day visas are only $20. Another $30 for the park entrance fee and whatever the cab cost for 2 hours and I was sold. We grabbed a cab and negotiated for $50 for two hours (split three ways).

On the drive to Nairobi national park we hit lots of traffic; I mean turn your engine off traffic. Lots of locals had figured this out and walked up and down the street selling everything from 5’x10’ world maps to knives to fruit to jumper cables. By the time we made it to the park we had about 1 hour until sundown. We headed into the MASSIVE park and started asking everyone, “where are the animals?” We saw two giraffes from afar and I was happy but we pressed on into the park. We finally found a lady that told us two adolescent lions were on the path straight ahead. We found the lions and I could have touched them with how close we were. Farther up the path we saw antelope and zebras. Our drive ended as we found a lion and her two cubs on a ridge as the sun was setting. I have some great shots of the three. It was black by the time we left the park and I think we were the last ones out and it was amazing. What I expected to be the worst layover turned out to be the best that I’ll ever have.

We were only 30 feet from this lion as the sun started to set.


Put another stamp in my passport!
-XO Mike

1 comment:

  1. Your blog title is missing one word :) I'm going to wait to look at your pictures until I can have you sitting next to me to elaborate on them!

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