Tom & Holly Travels
since 2004
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Africa

Well Nairobi is a very different “big” city than we have been to before. When you drive through the absence of tourists is very evident. Not one in sight. You can tell because no one is reading a map. It is a city of four million people and we drove by a slum where one million of those four million live. It is called Kibera Slum. There is no electricity, no running water, and no sewer for one million people. I can’t even imagine. We just have to stop some times and pinch ourselves to realize how lucky we are. In Nairobi, it may be better to be one of the lucky orphan elephants that have been rescued. Well maybe! First you have to be found in time before lions or whatever eat you or you starve to death. If you are found, life is then good. The elephants stay in the orphanage until they are three years old. A keeper stays 24/7 with each elephant, even all night because they must be fed every three hours. They rotate keepers so the elephants don’t get attached to anyone keeper. Also when the baby lays down they must be covered with a heavy blanket to keep them warm. In the wild all of the adults surround the babies and their heat keeps the babies warm. Baby elephants are prone to pneumonia and are very difficult to treat once they have it. After age three they are moved to a national park where keepers stay with them until they are adopted by a herd of elephants. Some are adopted within the year, one of the elephants was nine years old before it was adopted.

Then on to the Karen Blixen museum. After the museum we went to lunch at the Carnivore which is considered 'Africa's Greatest Eating Experience' and has been voted one of the 50 finest restaurants on earth by a panel of 71 world renowned food critics, restaurants and chefs. They not only serve your normal beef, pork, lamb and chicken, but also zebra, giraffe, impala, wildebeest, crocodile, gnu, ostrich, and other game meats. The meat is roasted on traditional Maasai swords over a huge, charcoal pit and brought straight from the fire to the table, and the meat is then sliced onto pre-warmed, cast iron plates. Fantastic when enjoyed with a cold African Beer. I asked Holly to stand in front of where they were cooking meat for a Photo Op when a waiter ran over and put his hat on her. She says if she gets head lice I am in deep trouble.

A bit of Kenya trivia: you only have a short term lease on your burial plot in the cemetery, and if your family doesn't keep renewing the lease you are put out with the trash and someone else gets a lease on your small plot of real estate. The cemeteries are over crowded and plots are in demand, so you better have confidence in who you are counting on to keep your lease up.

We leave the hotel at 8:30 tomorrow morning to catch an in country flight to the Masai Mara Reserve and will have our first game drive prior to lunch. Hope our luggage doesn't get thrown off the plane because it exceeds 33 lb checked baggage limit.

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. Robert Louis Stevenson