Safari Njema

"Safari njema" is kiswahili for "bon voyage" or "good journey" for you English-only Americans out there! Anyway, after our luscious stay in dreamy Tiwi we hopped back into a taxi, grabbed a matatu, waited in the hot sun for a ferry, another matatu to our hotel in Mombasa. again. (Man, when I read that traveling in Africa is not the same as traveling in America I was not prepared for what I got! They weren't kidding! And, after reading Dre's blog, looks like we're in for more of the same in Egypt. Well, as the locals say, hakuna matata.) This time we were only staying for the night as we left for Nairobi the next day. Coincidentally, the hotel was closing the next day for repairs (and the next day was the first day of Ramadan) so our room was cheaper as there would be no breakfast. No prob. We woke up and packed up and left the hotel pretty early for us in search of BreakFast. Just down the street we saw a tiny restaurant (Kenya is full of tiny shops and stuff), one we've never noticed before, and seeing the waiter bringing coffee to the businessmen seated inside, decided to try getting breakfast there. The menu was on the wall, which I loved, so I ordered a fried egg and a sausage (NOT LIKE AMERICAN BREAKFAST SAUSAGES) and a white coffee. (***sigh*** some of you coffee drinkers reading this will be disappointed when I tell you that Kenya, major supplier of coffee to fancy-pants American coffee shops does. not. have. good. coffee. my white coffee is, really, instant coffee made with hot milk instead of water. more on coffee in a later post.) The food was nice, nice and hot, and when the bill came found it only cost about Ksh200, which is less than $3. :-)

Anyway, made it to the bus station on time but this was before we learned that buses really don't leave on time and you could arrive late and still make the bus. ANYWAY, got to our seats in the back, the last seats available, and had no problems until we arrived in Nairobi. Nairobi is Kenya's biggest city so when we got there at 6pm of course we hit traffic. Man, that was the longest hour! We were supposed to meet Sammy at the bus station, a friend of Zapporah's (owner of Sakina Camp in Arusha who suggested we go to Kenya and do this safari, remember?), so we got to use our cell phone to call Zapporah who called Sammy who called us who called him back.

Finally got off the bus! Only 10 hours! And it had stopped raining long enough for us to get into a car driven by Martin, Zapporah's husband, who drove like a maniac to the hotel we'd be staying in. I mean, really. Ex: the car ahead of us, in our lane going our way, was in the intersection trying to make a left turn, but Martin felt he was taking too long so we drove around him, on the left of course!

Next day we got ready for Safari, Part II. Met our safari partners Marije and Blair, a cute young couple who we'd be sharing the car and guide with. Our guide, Big Sammy, was knowledgeable and had a great sense of humor and Joseph, our cook, was good and a bit quiet. We all settled for the long, long, drive to Masai Mara- Kenya's most popular national park and site of the annual wildebeest migration, the reason for doing this trip!