The above quote was sent to me by a fantastic lifelong friend, and it is soooooooooo true. It applies to us both, doesn't it Anne?
And for those who have been rushing to their office to log in each morning and read the blog updates, apologies from me as I've been unable to update this. This is partly because my laptop won't be fixed until (hopefully) tomorrow,and also because there hasn't been a lot of time and any internet access was either painfully slow, bad keyboards made sensible typing impossible and prohibitive costs.
We're now back in Nairobi. So much has happened since my last brief update. In no particular order:
I finally got the opportunity to ask a Masai 'Naomba kukupiga picha?' to which he did look quite astonished and then agreed. So we were both happy!
While we were at the exit gates from the Serengeti, we met a Dutch guy and his Ugandan partner on their BMW GS800, the last of the airhead bikes. We spent quite a bit of time talking with them. They had ridden from Kathmandu to Sweden, and also from Cairo to Entebbe and lots of other rides. The bike had worked beautifully throughout all the rides - of course - and we had offers of accommodation (when we need it) in Sweden and Entebbe. They were just riding around Lake Victoria for a few days when we met them. It's not possible to take motorbikes across the Serengeti.
On the animal front, it would be quicker to say we HAVEN'T seen a cheetah. We've been so very lucky to see everything else, but no kills. Well, we did see the the result of one because the young Thomson gazelle was in the lower tree branches and the leopard mum with her young cub had just climbed down from the tree and were in the grass nearby. We waited for some time, hoping they may decide to climb back up in the tree, but they obviously had another agenda. We have also seen a leopard asleep on a branch in a tree, but it was quite a distance away. Still, at least we've seen it!!
Last night, at Elsamere, we had a hippo and then a giraffe right outside our room, munching away. Absolutely amazing.
One of the photos I had in my mind was to take a sunrise shot of all the flamingos at Lake Nakuru. I remember when I was there last and we went down at sunrise - there were flamingos from one side of the lake to the other and my camera batteries died, so no photos. So I had this image in my mind, and I knew that I was going to have it printed on canvas and hang behind our dining room table. However, when we arrived at Nakuru I was completely horrified to find that there were hardly any flamingos - but plenty of pelicans. Some of the flamingos move to either Lake Bogoria or Lake Elementata but I have gathered that their numbers have plummeted over the years. I think I am still shocked by it. So no flamingo shots!
There is always a silver lining with everything though, isn't there? And the silver lining at Nakuru was the baby rhino with its mother. At one stage, we could have put our hand out the window and patted it. We didn't. The mother wouldn't have liked it, and as much as we were privileged to see them so very close for such a long time with no other vehicles in sight, we didn't want to upset them. And a rhino charging the vehicle would have meant a huge repair bill for the vehicle!
We have also seen lots of elephants - and with that I am really happy. You can never see too many elephants. We've also seen lots of hippos - watching them on land as they do just about everything in the hippo pool, in rivers, and also at eye level from a small outboard boat.
We had a wonderful time staying at Nakuru Lodge - the staff were fantastic, there was a guitar player at dinner times and he was brilliant, singing a mixture of Kenyan and other songs and there was a family from Nairobi who had 2 absolutely gorgeous very young daughters. We dubbed them the Princesses. They danced and sang with the guitar man and he loved it as much as we did watching them. After dinner they had a troupe of dancers one night, and the same troupe the next night performed some amazing acrobatic shows - some of the acts I'd seen at the Mama Africa Circus, and some of them you'd have to see to believe.
We've just come into Nairobi from 2 nights at Elsamere, outside Lake Naivasha. Our stay there was made even more memorable because we met a family who are now living in Naibobi, and they had 3 wonderful children. I even got to go to the pool with them yesterday afternoon to watch them swimming and playing in the pool, and I loved it. I still felt strange watching other people in a pool as I do miss being in one myself, but that's another life. And for those of you who may be wondering, yes, we were at Elsamere (which fortunately had NOT changed) and NO, we didn't get to watch 'Born Free'.
We've had great opportunities to spend proper time just watching baboons as well. And another highlight for me was just BEING IN the Serengeti. Unless you've been there, I think it would be hard to imagine even though you may have seen countless BBC documentaries about the place. It has a 'something' about it, much like Africa has for me.
I will stop for now, as I could type for yonks but Nairobi beckons, and I need to take a few more photos of this grown up city for G, just to show the changes. And hopefully I will be able to get my laptop fixed tomorrow. I was quite surprised when I checked what day it actually was last week - on Thursday I thought it was Tuesday and I had no idea of the date, but now of course with such limited time left in Africa I need to be aware of dates, days and times ...
So here are some shots from the Serengeti, Mto wa Mbu and around Nakuru for you all to enjoy before excitedly tackling your email inbox and endless phone calls and printer refills and ..... oops, I think I've forgotten!!!!!
these have come out very dark on this monitor, hopefully not so dark on yours ...
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