The Adventures of Jim & Rhonda

For everyone who’s seen the movie blood diamond you’ll know that this means “This is Africa” and it is so true! Nothing is quite as you’d expect it to be.
Our flight was due to leave Cairo for Nairobi at 2am on 19April and instead left at 4:30am. Long 4 1/2 hrs waiting in the airport! We had about a 1hr connection in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and then on to Kenya. We weren’t quite sure what to expect since all the latest news reports were of the rioting but it is actually quite a nice city. There are certainly slumy areas but overall it was green & lush with lovely parks and was quite clean. The Hotel Boulevard was just ok but for 1 night no worries. At 6pm we met 11 of our group and had an early dinner and bed.
As we expected, everyone else on the trip is in their young to mid 20’s! We are definately the old farts in the group. Lots of Aussies, 2 Scots, 2 Brits, and an Irish guy make up the rest of the group. The next morning we 11 and our guides Renee and Justin headed out to the market for supplies and then drove a couple of hours to Lake Naivasha to meet up with the remaining group members. There were 21 of us the first couple of days and since 2 girls have finished their bit so we’re at 19 in the group plus guides and the driver until after Victoria Falls.
We do love camping….the only negative here is that it’s the end of rainy season in Kenya and Tanzania. ugh, not that much fun to wake up in the morning to have to get up and break down camp in the rain. The truck is HUGE, 24 seater but underneath has loads of compartments for bags, tents, food, camp supplies, etc. It’s quite a group effort and we’re broken into 4 teams, each day 1 team is responsible for helping Justin cook dinner, 1 team does clean up, 1 cleans up the truck and 1 does set up of the chairs, tables, etc.

For the last few days we spent the time driving out to the Masai Mara Reserve to meet the Masai people and do our first game viewing. The Masai still live quite traditionally in most cases and we took loads of photos. As for the game drives, it is amazing as we’d remembered from our time in South Africa a few years ago. We’ve seen thousands of zebra, wildebeests, impalas, etc. and dozens of warthogs, topi (a type of large antelope), elephants, giraffe, buffalo and also some lions and a cheetah.

After 2 nights back in Nairobi (where Jim & I splurged on a $22/night room with ensuite bath ) we had a long drive yesterday into Tanzania. The landscape and scenery here in Tanzania is absolutely stunning so even though we were on the truck for 7 hours it was enjoyable. We’re currently camped outside of Arusha, a rather bustling market town of a capital, and this afternoon head in 4X4 jeeps to the rim of Ngongorono Crater where we’ll do a half day game drive tomorrow morning.

So far we’ve been stuck in the mud, had a flat tire and had quite a lot of rain.  But, we’ve also had some great times around the campfire and everyone has a great attitude and hey, we’re all in it together! The sightseeing and people watching is as amazing as we’d hoped for and, even though the camping gets old occasionally, the trip so far is incredible.

Today we’re splurging on a french press because we can’t stand the crap nescafe at camp any longer and they have absolutely amazing coffee in this area we’re not willing to miss out. Plus, it will help our moods on days we DO have to get camp broken down in the rain! The good news is, in 5 days we’ll be on Zanzibar for 4 nights …dry in a hotel and hopefully having good beach weather, and as we drive further into Zambia, Malawi, etc. we start hitting dry season. That is really the only down side so far.

The food in camp is a bit monotonous. Breakfast everyday is toast, cereal, etc. Lunch is always leftovers from dinner and sandwich makings, and then dinner is a stew or something similiar. It’s all tasty enough, but I’m sure we’ll be buying some of our own snacks to supplement it with soon.

Well, time to head back to camp and back up to head to the crater. The animal viewing is meant to be fantastic there, it’s own mini version of Rift Valley (where we were at Masai Mara). Not sure when we’ll get back on line so hope everyone stays well until we are in touch again. Living the dream in unpredictable Africa. Love, Jim & Rhonda

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