WEATHER: Beautiful and 24C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Meeting my new family
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Can’t think of anything today
BUYS OF THE DAY: A Kivi Club sandwich at the hotel for 4.50AUD
Well as I thought, I didn’t make breakfast. After thinking about it I had been on the go for just under 24 hours. 4 hours prior to my flight from London, a four hour flight from London to Cairo, a 5 hour layover in Cairo, a 4.5 hour flight from Cairo to Nairobi, also taking into account the 50 minutes we sat on the plane and the 1.5 hours to get bags, visa and to the transfer in Nairobi. No wonder why I am stuffed.
I had set my alarm for 9.30am (only getting 3.5 hours sleep) but I just couldn’t open my eyes, so I turned off my alarm and went back to sleep. The phone rang at 10.30am telling my new roomie was on her way up, as there is only one key, to make sure I let her in. Well here I introduce my new roomie Afte (pronounced Arfte) and she is from Holland. Afte has been here a week and just finished climbing Mt Kenya yesterday! Awesome effort. Anyway she is super nice and I think we are going to get along great.
I slept till around 3pm and decided I should get something to eat. So I showered and changed and ate lunch downstairs, which had an outside section amongst leafy tress and green shrubs, under an umbrella. It was just awesome to have some time out and the temperature was perfect. Afte joined me for a drink after loading some pictures on FB and we just chilled there till our meeting we had at 6pm.
There are 3 tours leaving tomorrow, so we were checking everyone out, wondering if they were going to be on out trip or not. So there was a mass congregation of people at 6pm all trying to work out where they had to be for their respective pre-tour meeting. We have 22 in our group and we all look pretty much the same age except for 3 who would be classified senior travellers. There are a handful of people who have just finished the 40 day Cape Town to Nairobi (which is the one I am doing but in reverse) and now doing the 16 Gorillas and Chimps. Julius is our guide for the next 15 days and so far he seems okay. He ran through a few of the main points for our trip, which included the impact of plastic bags and bottles on the trip. Intrepid supply us with a canvas bag to use for shopping and stuff so we don’t have to use plastic bags and apparently Rwanda are quite anal about the plastics and their environment, and they have been known to check the trucks as we cross the border and making Intrepid get rid of plastic bags and bottles before they are allowed to enter. There are a few animal rules we need to learn about, but Julius will expand on them as we go, the facilities at some of the camps are basic but we should know this already from the trip notes and we also had to pay out local payment of 1220USD. The kitty money only went up 2 days ago, as all the National Park fees have increased from the 1st July by 60USD in total, so some people didn’t know about it and man there was uproar. I felt sorry for Julius as he was only the messenger and to top it all off, they are quite strict that you cannot use USD notes that are dated before 2003. If they are before this date no bank in Kenya will take these notes. Tough country, picky on what notes they take – I wonder why that is? Needless to say, people had notes prior to this, so there was some more uproar about this as well. Poor Julius. We will also see the camp roster tomorrow, as we are expected to help with cooking, washing, setting up and shopping.
Well the meeting only took an hour, so the group that had finished today had their farewell dinner to get to (7 of them in total) and there were 12 of us that caught taxi’s to a restaurant called Casablanca’s for an Italian meal for dinner. It was a beautiful restaurant and my penne carbonara was only $8 for, easily, a 4 star restaurant. I have a feeling that Africa may give Morocco a run for its money in the price of things. So it was great to get to know the group a bit more, and I have a great vibe from the guys tonight. So far there are 3 of us doing the whole 60 days. Sean, Lisa and myself. James is going through to Victoria Falls, which is 40 days, and there are 2 girls that are doing the 30 days to Tanzania. So it looks like the tour is made into 4 different sections, so we will get a turnover of 4 different groups as such. It is also good to know there are also other ‘non campers’ so it will be an interesting experience for everyone.
So my new family looks pretty cool and I am really excited to start this portion of my trip. We head out tomorrow at 7.20am, via a local school and to our final destination, Lake Nakuru. With my first night in a tent, with my new sleeping bag, with my blow up pillow I have carried for the last 3 months, in the wild, with drop toilets and a new roomy. Sounds interesting……… I am sure I will have some stories to tell, just from tomorrow night’s camp set up, and it sounds like we will have internet access every 3-4 days, so it may not be as primitive as we think.
Tomorrow we head into the wilds of Africa.
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