Day Twenty-One: End of 3rd Week and 3rd Year

We woke up to a beautiful sunny day on the equator in Entebbe. We had spotted multiple gecko friends in our palatial room the night before, grateful for the help in the fight against our insect foes, we checked up on them in the morning only to find ants devouring one of them. Thankfully the housekeeper was just as surprised and disgusted as we were so we didn't deduct any Travel Bucks™ from ourselves. Travel Bucks being our arbitrary currency that we award ourselves for traveling smartly or being adventurous/frugal.

The majority of the day was spent trying to find the gorilla office and arranging the details for our journey to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park (best named NP in the world). In the evening we enjoyed one of our nicest dinners yet...a romantic techno-Italian meal in a Zen garden restaurant to celebrate our three year anniversary. (Lamp chops in a blueberry mint sauce with mashed potatoes and freshly caught tilapia in an olive pesto from Lake Victoria-Yum!)

We capped off the night with a candlelit game of cribbage on our front porch, which conveniently kept us unaware of the power outages.

Day Twenty: Kenya in the Rear-view Mirror

On day twenty we took an eight hour bus to Kampala and ended our short time in Kenya. With more than half of our days in Kenya out on safari, we didn't have the same opportunity to experience day-to-day life.

Lasting Impressions:
* People on the street were very friendly and quick to help if we needed it (or offer Erin kisses). While roughly half of people working in tourist facing businesses had little interest in being of assistance.

* The men were very jovial until your questioned them and then they seemed to pout. (So far true of Uganda as well, our cab driver seemed very upset when we suggest he look at a map for the place he admitted to not knowing where it was.)

* The people in the markets were less pushy than Ethiopia, and we garnered less attention in general. The go to cities to mention when we said we're Canadian changed to "Toronto? Vancouver?"

* Particularly in Nakuru, it was interesting seeing all the activity on our street, knife sharpening and sewing machines running (both pedal powered), along side restaurants and market booths.

Masai in traditional dress

 * Both in Kenya and Ethiopia we have certainly experienced a Mzungu tax (Farangi in Ethiopia, both mean white person/foreigner). The starting price for a taxi, or any other service/product without a listed price jumps up 200% or more and it is up to us to fight the price down. We have more success on non-travel days when we don't have out large packs with us.

* Kenya has amazing wildlife and the people are very proud of it, we would often be asked if we had been to the Maasai Mara.

Day Nineteen: Lake Victoria

A pretty straightforward day. We woke up, took a bus to Kisumu on Lake Victoria. Our main challenge was finding food as 75% of the places in our guidebook were closed on Monday or permanently. We ended the day by sitting on our roof top terrace watching a storm roll in at sunset.

Day Eighteen: Four out of Five

Our Jeep and driver, Moses

We splurged and spent the extra $20 so we could have a private jeep for our last safari. This allowed us to  dictate our early pickup time... 6 am for maximum animal viewing opportunities, and when to stop and when to go during the day.

In Nakuru, the National Park is more wooded and lush than the Mara. There's is a large lake and a series of wetlands accentuated by the fact that there has been unprecedented flooding (it seems to follow us!).

Within minutes of driving through the park, we spotted two lionesses and four cubs hovering over a recent kill. These lions are notable because they are a rare form of tree-climbing lions. Sadly, as hard as we searched that day, we did not see any lions or leopards in the trees.

In the same field of view, a rare black rhino grazed on bushes and small trees, which he did by tearing it to the ground. We had just achieved our fourth out of five 'Big Five.'

Other highlights from the game drive include:

- endangered Rothschild giraffes

- white rhinos

- striped, rather than spotted, hyenas

- male waterbucks with their stunning horns

- vervet monkeys

- crowned crane

We loved the beauty and tranquillity the park offered after the crowds of the Masai Mara, but being right next to a city meant that the 180 sq km park was fenced in, giving it a less wild feel.

Now we have just one more day left in Kenya before moving on to Uganda.

Day Seventeen: Least Exciting Day Yet

Due to our breakneck pace and our inability to book a safari, we took it easy on day 16. We got day 17's plans figured out, did some laundry, and tried to sift through all of our photos.

Most of the intrigue happened through the nights. We are not sure if we are a part of a pysch study or if there is a broken record player in Nakuru, but both nights we heard the same song on repeat, at full blast, through the entire night and some of the morning (it was a different song the second night).

We have become very familiar with downtown Nakuru as we walked the same market street 6-8 times a day.

Erin even got a restaurant named in her honour.

Day Sixteen: A Change in Plans

After a leisurely start to the day researching where to stay that night, we learned that Naivasha was a popular weekend getaway for Nairobians (?). And as luck would have it we were trying to find a place for Friday thru Sunday for a long weekend.

Just six short hours later (half of which was standing on the street waiting for the bus to show up) we arrived in Nakuru, having decided to skip Naivasha entirely.

Our prison-chic sheets

The rest of the day was spent trying to find internet and a tour company to arrange a safari. We failed at both and relaxed in our hotel. We sprang for a room with an ensuite bathroom. It ended up being just a part of the room, but we were happy to be saving money to offset the safaris.

View from Craig's Bed, notice the sink
at the foot of Erin's bed, and the lack of a door.

Day Fifteen: Week 3 Begins, Safari Ends

We woke early to see the sunrise on our last day in the Maasai Mara. Early on we spotted a group of hyenas walking around a hillside and followed their path to find a group of male lions sharing a recent kill. The hyenas were anxious to join the feast and we thought we might get to see a fight or at least hear a good roar. But again another pushy car trying to get right in the middle of things made one hyena spot the third lion who had been hidden crouched in the bushes ready to pounce. It promptly ran away. We watched the lions drag the carcass into the bushes for safe keeping.

After lots of driving around searching the trees for leopards, we came across another group of hyenas at their burrow. This family has some very young babies; they looked practically newborn and were very cute!

On our way back to the campsite we passed a male and female lion 'honeymooning'in an open field. As they nuzzled noses, we resisted, only mildly, singing 'Can You Feel the Love Tonight.'

The rest of the drive back to Nairobi was uneventful, just a little sad that our safari was over and to once again be saying goodbye.