Sunday 25-Dec-2005 (admittedly the longest journal entry because everything was new to us)

We didn't sleep much during our night in Nairobi- likely adrenaline mixed with jet-lag. We were both up at 3:30am - wide awake. Channel surfed for a bit. Weighed myself on a scale showing "stones" as the unit of measure. It said I weighed 9.4 stones - I can't even do kilogram-pound conversion, so I wasn't sure if this was good or bad. When it was finally daylight, we were able to see that the Nairobi Serena was a nice enough hotel, and was surrounded by lush gardens and a pond filled with HUGE orange and gold koi. Other tour groups staying at the hotel were Somak and Abecrombie & Kent. No offense, but we were glad that we were alone.

We went down for the breakfast buffet around 6am. Everyone in the entire place (us included) was wearing some shade of tan or khaki. At least we weren't wearing our hats though :) This was our first encounter with eggs in East Africa - they are unusually white - even the yolk. Tasted fine though. After a quick stop in the business center for a blog entry, we met Christopher in the lobby and headed out a bit before 8am.

We traveled out of Nairobi, past the airport, and onto the Nairobi-Mombasa road, which was well-paved. Along the way we passed beautiful acacia trees dotted with weaver nests, Maasai herding cattle and goats, crowds of people waiting for buses to the city, and police checkpoints for "criminals and guns". We were always waved through the checkpoints.

We stopped for a drink at a souvenir place when we reached Namanga. Instead of "rest stop" the sign said "travelers pause" which is both eloquent and accurate. The bathrooms out back were scary but functional, and BYOP (bring your own paper) of course. Namanga is the border between Kenya and Tanzania - a dusty and wild juxtaposition of aluminum shacks, "butchery" shops, clinics, genuine real antique shops, mosques, "laboratorys", churches, vervet monkeys, Maasai folk wearing brightly colored cloths and elaborate ear ornaments, muslim women entirely covered except for their eyes, and Jehovah's Witness men in suits.

Past Namanga the road became "not as good" (as described by Christopher) - dustier, bumpier, and louder (as described by me). The ritual became quite clear: note vehicle approaching in opposite direction, close windows, wait for vehicle to pass and dust to settle, open windows. "Why open them at all," you ask? It was approaching the mid-90's.

We were amazed at how much wildlife we saw even before entering the park - elephants, zebras, wildebeests, hartebeests, and even a few giraffes. After about a half an hour, we reached the Meshanani gate to Amboseli National Park. Christopher went inside to take care of the paperwork we were immediately bombarded by Maasai selling beaded jewelry, statues, keychains, etc. They all spoke wonderful English, and asked where we were from so they could quote prices in our local currency. How considerate :) We really weren't interested, but were trying to be polite. When they realized we weren't going to buy anything, they shifted to bartering - "trade a t-shirt" or "give me a pen."

About a half hour farther down the bumpy and dusty road we arrived at lush oasis of the Amboseli Serena Lodge. We were greeted with champagne and cold towels and taken to the bar where we encountered a wild Christmas parade that included a few santas and a lot of birthday party hats. Christopher told us to have lunch, relax for a bit, and he'd be back to pick us up at 4pm for an afternoon game drive.

We were assigned room #33, which was quite a walk from the main lodge area, but was quiet and private for sure. Except for the monkeys. There were vervet monkeys all over the place! And signs suggesting that you shouldn't "encourage the monkeys". I knew not to feed them, but I wasn't sure what constituted encouraging. I'd later find out.

The rooms at the Amboseli Serena are not large, but we weren't in the room much so it didn't matter. There's no air conditioning either, and I mention that only because I'm American and we like our environments chilled to the low 70's - but I was in Africa, I could deal with no a/c. Aside from the bed (which took up most of the room), there was a small desk, a window seat which was great for luggage storage, and two louvered windows. There was also a huge picture window on one wall that overlooked a forested area with lots of monkeys, Maasai herding goats and cattle, etc.

After dropping off our luggage, we went to the restaurant for lunch. The entrance to the restaurant was draped with lots of Maasai fabric in the traditional color red - not sure if this was there all the time or was special for the holidays. We were assigned a table (#7) which would be ours for the duration of our stay. Our table was located in a small room off the main dining room, with good proximity to the buffet yet out of ear shot from all of the bigger tour groups. The room had a really neat mural featuring two life-size giraffes. The lights that hung from the ceiling were made from sausage fruit trees (which we later learned is the best place to spot leopards).

The buffet was ok, and luckily all of the dishes included labels. Unfortunately some of the labels were in Swahili. Some of them were also misplaced - it took a lot of guts for me to scoop what looked liked mashed potatoes but was labeled "English fish boil", but I did, and they were potatoes. Basically all I could tell was that none of the food was called "hello" or "thank you" since those were the only Swahili words that I knew. The meal began with soup, as we later learned that all meals do. I don't think I've ever eaten so much soup in 12 days in my entire life!

After lunch we sat by the pool for a bit and then returned to our room to find THREE baby monkeys playing on our doorstep. Was this the best Christmas ever or what?? Of course I took lots of pictures, and video, and I learned what "encouraging the monkeys" means. I guess they are used to people feeding them, because if you show the slightest bit of interest in them (i.e., "encouragement") they are all over you. And not in a good Costa Rican way. I squatted down to take a picture of one and it ran straight for me! Not good since I was wearing flip flops and the monkeys have claws. I stomped my foot and it ran off like a squirrel - No harm no foul.

We met Christopher at 4 for our afternoon game drive - it was 94 degrees. Whenever we were going out for a game drive, the "pop-top" part of the minivan was up. This provided good ventilation but also good shade. The light was just perfect, and he always tried to position the vehicle with this in mind. It was attention to these small details that made us really like and appreciate Christopher. What an awesome first game drive! We saw zebras, wildebeests, hartebeests, crowned cranes, baboons, thomson gazelles, grant gazelles, warthogs, pelicans, storks, Egyptian geese, egrets, hippos, herons, cape buffalo, hyenas, scarlet crested sunbirds, amd blacksmith lapwings. A definite highlight was this one elephant who got REAL close - and then splayed his ears (gosh, they really are big, aren't they!) - and then raised his trunk (uh, should we start the vehicle?? not sure we need to be charged by a full grown elephant within our first 24 hours in Kenya!). I'm sure the guides sit around at night and tell stories about how their clients screamed when they almost got charged by an elephant. We also saw three lions!

We returned to the lodge a bit after 6pm, unloaded the memory cards to the Epson p-2000, showered, and headed to the bar for a few Tuskers before dinner. The bar overlooked a meadow where a heard of zebra were grazing. There were also several baboons - it was so great to just sit outside in the bar and watch baboons! There were two men playing guitars and singing. They alternated back and forth between acoustic versions of "Jambo" and "The lion sleeps tonight". The atmosphere in the bar was just perfect - the zebras and baboons combined with the music combined with overhearing people from all over the world talk about the exciting things that they'd seen that day combined with having just seen such amazing animals combined with being 8,000 miles from home. Difficult to describe, but wow.

Soup that night was cream of broccoli - can't go wrong with that - and there was a menu (we both had steak) rather than a buffet since it was Christmas. By the time we returned to our room it was pitch black out, and though we thought there were two men following us, they were actually escorting us to our rooms (perhaps to protect us from the monkeys). Note to self: bring flashlight to dinner. We doused ourselves with bug repellent and tried to ignore the sounds of dive bombing mossies, the local term for mosquitos. We were both asleep by 9pm.

Monday 26-Dec-2005

We both woke up around 1am to the sounds of lions grunting and monkeys moving around on the roof. The lion sounded very close. We'd seen an electric fence when we drove into the grounds, but as it turned out or room was right near the edge of the property so he probably was close. A little while later it attacked something - Andy guessed that it was a warthog because of the squeals. We later learned that lions really like the taste of warthog, so much so that sometimes when they kill one they refuse to share it with the other lions in the pride. Warthogs, yet another white meat, who knew.

We finally got up around 6, doused ourselves with bug repellent, and headed out to meet Christopher for our morning game drive. When we opened the door we saw monkeys everywhere! What a way to start the day. It was blissfully cool - 74 degrees seemed downright cool.

About 2 minutes into the game drive we saw two juvenile male lions with a few small cubs trotting across an open area. We drove a little farther and found another group of lions feasting on a recent kill. We pulled over and watched them a bit. The other group of lions that we'd seen earlier arrived, and it was clear that one of the cubs was the favorite - the male with the big mane ensured that he was getting plenty to eat. It was cute to watch the little one struggle with holding the wildebeest head. This was also our first encounter with safari vehicle traffic due to something of interest, what we nicknamed a "lion log jam".

We moved on from the lion breakfast party to an area with dozens and dozens of elephants. There were a few hyenas (with very cool-looking spots) around, and the elephants were visibly protective of the babies. One was running around, shaking his trunk, and trumpeting loudly. We learned that the babies (calves) stay nearly under or close to their mothers for the first year and that their tusks begin to grow when they are two to three years old. We moved on to another swampy area where the elephants were up to their armpits in swamp-age, and some had egrets (white birds) on their backs.

Christopher heard on the radio that there was a large pride of lions nearby, so we hurried over arriving just as they were on the move. They were heading right at us! Too close to photograph! There were at least 9, old and young, male and female. They crossed the road right in front of our vehicle before disappearing into the tall grasses toward the herds of wildebeest and zebras. There were only three other vehicles there, and all the passengers were speechless. The only sound was... the auto-focus beeping from all the digital cameras! Hilarious.

Andy proclaimed that we had seen enough and we could go home now. Mind you, this is day 2.

When we got back to the lodge, a lot of the large groups (Abercrombie & Kent and Mountain Travel Sobek) had departed and we had the entire place to ourselves. When we went to the dining room for breakfast, the host greeted us with champagne and asked us to move to a new table in the main dining room for the rest of our stay. I made a face because the table was next to a window overlooking a scenic and lushly landscaped pond - but the window didn't have screens. "Ah," he said "you are worried about the monkeys?" Uh, no - the mossies! "No worries," he said, and he closed the louvers. I don't think it mattered much since I had on enough bug repellent to take down a cape buffalo, and had more in my bad if I ran into any trouble.

We spent the afternoon lounging by the pool, which was freezing (which makes no sense since the nightime low was 80). The vervet monkeys were pretty bold, and they'd run over and inspect your area the minute that you left. I watched a young Dutch boy walk over to take a picture of one calm monkey, and just as he squatted down to take the picture it ran straight towards him. He (the boy) let out a funny scream as he ran from this little 8 pound monkey. We also watched another pair of monkeys stalk what we thought was a fruit carving demonstration (NO idea, a chef, some watermelon, and Japanese people clapping). Mischievous little suckers.

Lunch was tomato soup and something new that we discovered - "the active corner". We'd seen it on the menu, but the description didn't interest us, but it turned out to be sort of like Mongolian grill (made to order vegetables and pasta stir fry). We used the internet to post to the blog and checked out the gift shop, which had a kiosk where you could burn cd's from memory cards. Pretty cool for those who don't have the handy p-2000.

On our afternoon game drive we saw more of the same and visited Observation Hill, locally known as Noomotio, which means "a place with inward hollow curved rocks which can hold water" (there were a lot of descriptive signs).

The overlook had a good view of the surrounding swamp, which is called Enkongu Narok and exists due to underground seepage of runoff from nearby Mt. Kilimanjaro.

By far the most exciting part of our visit to Observation Hill was spotting the very rare Nikon D2X. We were carrying some pretty fantastic photographic equipment (not to mention two sets!), but the sighting of this exquisite (EXPENSIVE) newly introduced SLR left both of us with brief camera envy.

We returned to the lodge , showered, and reapplied the bug spray. Our laundry was delivered (cost for 2 days worth of clothes, about $15) and we packed up so we'd be ready for our early departure in the morning. Dinner that night featured chicken and mushroom soup, and we both had the active meal. Our waiters, who treated us like royalty during our entire stay, taught us some new Swahili phrases such as "I am finished" (ne may ma lay za), "goodnight" (la la salama), and "OK" sawa sawa. While we were having dinner it poured rain for about 10 minutes straight, which dropped the temperature down to at least the mid-70's - fine sleeping weather :)

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