We flew out of Brisbane on 29 August. Our trip did not get off to a flying start as Virgin cancelled our flight to Perth, apparently due to a shortage of cabin crew!! Not very impressive. The later flight that they put us on missed our connection to Johannesburg, so we spent an unscheduled night in Perth. We arrived at our eventual destination, Nairobi Kenya, a day late. Luckily, we had planned to be in Nairobi a day before our Safari started, so we did not miss that but we did miss out on looking around Nairobi.
Our Kenya Safari started by driving out of Nairobi, across the Great Rift Valley, and into the Masai Mara. Mara Simba Lodge greeted us with elephants at the front gate, and crocodile and hippos in the river behind the lodge. On our first evening game drive we were overwhelmed by the numbers and variety of game that we saw, including lions, wildebeest, gazelles, warthogs, zebra, cape buffalo, giraffe, and a rare black rhino. And all in just two hours!!
Our time in Kenya continued in this vein in all of of the parks that we visited. In Lake Nakuru NP we saw wonderful bird life including large groups of flamingos and beautiful crested cranes. In Lake Naivasha NP we took a boat cruise and got up close to a mother and baby hippo, as well as seeing fish eagles. Both of these lakes are in a string of water bodies that run down the Great Rift Valley.
Our last National Park in Kenya was Amboseli, located at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. Unfortunately, during our whole stay there the mountain was shrouded in clouds and we never got to see it. We did see more interesting birds including Ostrich, Kori Bustards and Secretary Birds. Our main interest this trip was wildlife and Kenya was awesome.
The second week of our Safari took us into Tanzania, and out to the Serengeti Desert. The sky in the Serengeti never ends. The vistas are vast and empty. Animals were not as concentrated as in the Masai Mara, but we did see vast herds of wildebeest and zebra stretching to the horizon on their annual migration. We also saw our first leopards, a mother cheetah and cub, and prides of lions. At one point a grumpy elephant charged us, but luckily he was not as fast as a Land Cruiser.
We also visted Ngorongoro Crater, an incredible circular plain surrounded mountain ranges. Our hotel was high on the crater edge and we could gaze down into it from our rooms. We spent a beautiful day down in the crater, where we had breakfast beside a pool full of hippos. We later watched anothef huge group of hippos take mud baths and roll over to coat themselves with mud. An upside down hippo, kicking his feet in the air, is a never to be forgotten sight.
In between game drives, we managed a few other activities, including an early morning ballon flight and visit to a Masai village in Kenya, and guided nature walks and Swahili lessons in Tanzania. (The most useful words of Swahili we learned were "hakuna metata"--"no problem")
We have left Safari life behind for the immediate future, and are now in Cape Town SA. We are staying at a beautiful bed and breakfast house in Geen Point, on a hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and the stadium built for the 2010 world cup. Today we took the cable car up through the clouds to Table Mountain, then walked to the highest point at Maclear's Beacon. We later walked down the mountain via Platteklip Gorge, a spectacular 2 hour walk that left us with jelly legs and and aching knees. A local member of one of the mountaineering clubs took pity on us and offered us a ride back to our accommodation. We gratefully accepted, and shared a beer with him at a pub on the way home.
We are staying in Cape Town for 2 more days, then picking up a rental car and heading up the east coast. Stay tuned for more adventures.
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