All Aboard! Lunatic Express to Mombasa

Three of us (Botes, Shawn, and I) boarded an overnight train at the Nairobi Railway Station and headed to Mombasa. We sat in second class and had four beds in our compartment. This overnight train was insane... lots of mzungus (gringos) with too much alcohol and hectic music. The train itself was super old school and quite rickety. While Botes was waiting for me to get to the station he met Rob. Rob is from Cyprus and just started 10 month treck around the world, Kenya was his second stop. The four of us hit it off and had a pretty good time on the train. There was a rowdy bunch next to us who ended up causing drama on the train. It was pretty hard to sleep due to the drunkards as well as the shifting of the train. We had dinner and breakfast on the train and arrived in Mombasa around 9:30am. We found a taxi driver, Osman, to take us to Diani beach. By 10:30am we had put our stuff at STILTS, a tree house we were going to stay at and were on the white sand beach swimming and soaking up some rays. We lunched at a restaurant/bar called forty thieves and then went out on a glass bottom boat to snorkel around a sand bar. We saw some pretty awesome coral, fish, eel, and starfish. Spent a few hours playing in the sand on the bar and then headed back for showers and dinner. We were all pretty beat after our day so we crashed early and woke up to see the sunrise and then spent the morning into the early afternoon enjoying the last bit of the weekend. A two day tropical vacation was just what the doctor ordered after a rough week at work.... weekends like this one are going to be my motivation to push through work weeks.... this country is just beautiful!  Check facebook for a new album dedicated to the Kenyan coast! If it doesn't make you want to come visit I don't know what else will! 

Safe travels and fun adventures to Rob! Hope we meet up again soon... maybe in Cyprus?

First Trip out of Nairobi!

I was sitting at breakfast last Sunday in my temporary housing complex when I ran into a South African guy (Botes, I will be writing about him quite a bit) about my age who went white water rafting on Saturday and then ran the Nairobi half-marathon that morning. Meanwhile, I had just rolled out of bed and haven’t participated in any physical activity since August. We had a great chat and he told me about this ‘social’ group that gets together and holds happy hours and excursions all over Kenya and beyond. He has only been year two weeks longer than me and had already seen half of Kenya. So he told me that a bunch of people were getting together this weekend for a trip to Nakuru and he invited me along. A total of 15 people; a combination of Americans, Brits, Danes, South Africans, Kenyans, French, and Belgians all met up at Soysambu about an 45 minutes south of Nakuru on Lake Elementaita.

Botes, and our two Danish friends, Camille and Therese drove out to Soysambu (about 1.5 hours north of Nairobi) together. As we entered the Great Rift Valley the scenes were absolutely beautiful. We stopped at a few look out points just to take in the landscape. We arrived at the Giraffe Research Center at Soysambu shortly after dark. We stayed at the center as one of the women; Zoe actually lives and works in Soysambu studying giraffes. We had a big pasta dinner, drinks, played games, at the main house of the center. We all woke up on Saturday and went on a drive through Soysambu and came upon Lake Elementiata...it was all absolutely stunning. We then drove through the reserve and came across some giraffes; Zoe was able to tell us their names, ages, and who has been hanging out with whom (she has been studying their social networks). After giraffe spotting we found a lunch spot in the bush and had a scrumptious lunch: baguettes, meats, cheeses, fresh avocado…. Yum!

After lunch, we headed to old diatomite mining caves from the 1960s.  Today, these caves are filled with hyenas. We walked through the cave and discovered what we all considered to be an animal graveyard. There was some fresh kill in the caves as well so we were fairly concerned about running into a hyena around the next corner. The Lion King wasn’t lying about hyena dens.

Once through the caves, we headed back to Lake Elementaita where we had ‘sundowners’ on top of these beautiful rocks overlooking the lake. Once the sun went down we could see almost every star in the sky…including the Milky Way. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many stars in my life. We headed back to the research center and had an authentic Kenyan dinner, played cards, and mapped out Sunday.

On Sunday, Botes, Camille, Therese, and I headed to Lake Nakuru National Park. We got there shortly before sunrise hoping to get in so we could see the animals first thing in the morning. Unfortunately, the park operators didn’t care too much about our plan. When we got in though, the park is just beautiful--- it’s somewhat forested and the flamingos!! There were thousands! I’ve never seen anything like it. This was my first official game drive and I’m hooked! The rhinos, the zebras, the buffalo…. Up close and personal and simply awesome. We had lunch in the park among some zebras and then headed back to Nairobi. Camille and Therese are medical students volunteering in a small town about six hours north of Nairobi and are headed back to Denmark in December, I’m hoping I get to plan another trip with them before they go home (or maybe I’ll just head to Denmark one of these days). Botes is only in Nairobi through February and we have become fast friends.  He definitely helped me get my much-needed escape from Nairobi and work!

All and all an awesome weekend, met some great people, and saw some beautiful things… I’m starting to realize that living in Africa is 90% about the weekends.