Sept. 28, 2012 -Niarobi, Kenya

The first flight was from Dallas to London. A 9 hour flight. One of those big two story airplanes!!! That was a first and they fed me both dinner and breakfast.  I was the last to arrive in London so I did a lap around the A gates in terminal 5 but couldnt find Liz and Alene.  So I sat for a while and then decided to do a lap.  As soon as I got up to walk around I hear my name from across the way and look over to see Alene and Liz! Yay!  Our second flight was delayed for two hours so we had some time to kill in the airport.  We mostly just sat and relaxed considering we hadnt slept and we were on a 6 hour time difference.

Our flight from London was 8.5 hours and again they fed us dinner and a sandwich snack before arriving.  We landed at approx. 10:30pm local time and headed to immigration to get our visa.  The visa was 50USD and we got through without any trouble.

We arranged for a transfer from the airport to the hostel beforehand so there was a guy waiting for us at the airport with a sign!  But instead of Alene Efaw it said Glene Efaw.  That gave us a good laugh at about 1am in the morning. We FINALLY got to the hostel, crawled into bed and crashed.  

 

The next day we chose to have a rather chill day to recoup from the jet lag.  There is a total of 8 hours difference from central time to Kenyan local time, 7hrs difference for all my eastern time zone folks.  We just walked to local bead factory and to a flip flop recycling place where they used old flip flops picked up fromt the beach to make pieces of really awesome art. That night we just played cards and had a local beer called Tuskers.  Also, had a local twist on the shepherds pie for dinner. 

Sunday we woke early to take a cab to see elephant orphanage where we got to pet and watch little tiny baby elephants eat from bottles.  Some elephants werent even as tall as my waist and the youngest was ony 6 weeks old.  These elephants come from all over the country and are orphaned due to poaching or natural deaths of the mothers. Admission = $7.  After the elephant we went over to a Giraffe sanctuary were we hand fed the giraffes! Admission = $13.   We also had the cab driver take us to the grocery store to pick up PB&J supplies and other snacks. 

 
We met our driver for the trip and it turns out that the first couple of weeks we are the only people on the tour.  Instead of the big bus we will take a Land Rover and will get to move around faster which translates to seeing more stuff.  AWESOME!  He said we will be picking up some other travelers in a few weeks.