More highlights...

 While we were in Nairobi we visited the animal orphanage. They house over about 20 baby elephants, and each is fed every three hours with bottle milk so the keepers sleep next to the elephants. The elephants wake their keeper up during the night when its hungry by ripping off their keepers doonas!

 Nairobi; We got to feed and 'kiss' the Giraffe..which was very slobery

 Masai Mara: the iconic lone acacia tree

 Masai Mara: Elephant family

 Masai Mara: Sleeping male lion..and yes we really were this close!!

Serengeti!

Highlights

 This picture is my absolute favourite without a doubt! Being this close to the gorillas  was an unforgettable experience. Absolute gentle giants. 

 A large black back (male)

The elephant  orphanage at Nairobi. We watched the babies play in the mud pool, pushing each other over and kicking a soccer ball around. Very cute!

Gorilla treck

Apologies for Jenny hunters explanation of the Gorilla treck! I should have known better than to let her contribute to the blog as it would only result in utter nonsense. In attempt to redeem it, here is a link of a much better explanation of our experience (well hers but we were all together) with the gorillas by Lucy a fellow traveler from the UK who recently quit her job as a writer for hello magazine.

http://letluceontheworld.blogspot.com/

It also gives a brief description of all the people on the tour which is quite comical!

Off to the elephant orphanage and giraffe sanctuary tomorrow!

Kwaheri!
Jen

Kenya and Uganda

Hello everyone! It has taken a while to update the blog as the internet connections are very slow and usually a bit pricey. We have been doing the most amazing things and i don't even know how to fit them all in or begin to describe what its like over here. We started our tour last Saturday night, over a week ago and so far so good!

We got comfortable on our tour 'truck' not bus (usually we are forced to do push ups if we call it a bus...but we hate the rule and have decided to rebel against it!) as there are only 12 people on our tour and the truck seats 24. Having a smaller number is great as we can sleep on the truck, and have more locker space. We were thinking how uncomfortable the big drives would be if the truck were full, because it gets really hot and stuffy. We will be picking new people up along the way though, which will be great too meet some newbies.

We departed Nairobi and headed for Nakuru National Park through the Great Rift Valley which had stunning views. We past Lake Navasha which was covered with pink edges, which were thousands of flamingos in the distance. Once we got to the national Park itself we were all in disbelief as we entered and almost instantly were within 2 meters of Zebras, Impala, Lions, water buffalo, gazelles, baboons, giraffe, many beautiful birds and were really luck to see 2 rhinos which are very rarely seen in the park! We spent the whole afternoon and the following morning game driving. We were lucky enough to also see a pack of lions that had just taken down a buffalo as a kill. Oh and did I mention we actually camped in the national park itself with the lions and leopards! We did NOT get out of our tent to go for a toilet stop that night!

Our next stop was Eldorett, and we stayed at Naibini campsite which had an amazing underground bar and was quite a step up in camping facilities which was great. Eldorett is about 2,300 meters above sea level, so we were all feeling a little dizzy and Jen H used it as a good excuse to expel large amounts of gas!

We then headed for Jinja where, where we would be able to relax for a few days by the Nile (the actual source of this large river!), and discover the cheap hot chips at the bar (only 80 cents a bowl). Jen and I went a little bit crazy over this! Uganda is a fantastic country with amazing locals who are always happy to see ‘Mzungus’ which means foreigner or traveler. Kids often come running up to the truck saying ‘MZUNGU’ ‘MZUNGU, how are u’ in excitement which is very sweet! Although I don’t know if they know what the second part means, they just like to say it lol. Oh I forgot to mention the border crossing from Kenya to Uganda. We were lucky enough to bypass the one week waiting line of trucks which runs for about 1km, as we were tourists and this is always the case. However for trucks transporting goods etc, the wait is usually 1 week! Just to get across! Crazy.

After we had a good night sleep, we headed for the Nile the following day for some serious rafting down series of grade 4 and 5 rapids, one a 16ft waterfall! This was scary! Poor Jenny H missed out and was out of action for a few days with a bug, but recovered swiftly and is back to herself again. We started off on a gentle part of the Nile and practiced flipping the raft over so we knew how to get out if we got stuck underneath. We spent the whole day rafting, and floating down the river in our life vests. The water was so warm which was strange for such an enormous body of water, but really good because we spent the majority of the day getting smashed by rapids, and I’m covered in bruises from ores going everywhere.

The next day we walked 10 minutes to a local preschool to visit the kids which are apart of a project called ‘softpower’, which raises money for education and health awareness for the children. As we came walking up the path we got absolutely swamped by the kids! They were jumping all over us and we played for a little while and then headed off to the school where there were older children. We helped out by painting educational pictures on the walls of some of their rooms, including numbers, letters and heaps of animals (Jen H was very proud of her monkey and I was quite fond of my horse).

It soon became time to continue on to our most anticipated destination of Uganda, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. Here we would see the critically endangered mountain gorillas. We camped for a few nights at Lake Bunyonyi, which was by far the nicest campsite in terms of the views and the grounds were really well kept. Here we all started to feel like we could relax because we had a couple of days to do anything, so we opted to do nothing and spent a lot of time chilling out on the deck by the lake.


(Jen H writing)
Gorilla trecking in Uganda. Awesome. Georgia and Jenny G were slowing up the pack by constantly falling over and commando rolling down the steep slopes and falling onto their bums because their runners were very slippery on the wet grass. Amateur mistake of wearing runners.  I on the other hand was quite strong and illustrated the tallent of gorilla trekking quite well. After 2.5hours of walking up and down hectic hills in the heat we got the call from a ranger that had found them. “get the freaks here I have spotted the gorillas”… it was awesome. Sitting within 5 meters of our group was a big black back gorilla (10 years old). However I’m pretty sure I read no where on the pre treck departure about needing adult nappies because I think I left some nasties in my undies when the black back gorilla charged us… yikes.. ok we all know I said some rude word. The black back then scooted calmly down the hill to munch on some leaves or the pebbles left behind by jenny g LOL, after being creeps following this black back, the bad boy lead us to his family. Little baby gorillas, a silver back (leader of the group) and some more gorillas (25 in the group). Being creeps we watched the silver back and obviously pissed him off and he jumped out of the bushes and charged us… well jenny said it was because he was asserting his authority but I don’t believe in plebs that study science… what a wank. Anyways, it was scary but harmless. After cruising in their domain for an hour, sliding down hectic valleys, stung by stinging nettles, thorns in the bum and bush bashing we had a wicked day. Once in a life time experience. Jenny felt a connection when the gorillas looked into her eyes… inner ranga.

(Me writing again because Jenny H is crap at describing things)
The drive back from the mountains was very painful….the road was absolutely terrible and we were all packed like sardines into a mini van that kept scraping over all the bumps and Georgia’s head collided with the top of the van about 3 times. We scrambled to the showers being utterly exhausted from the day.

So far we are writing from Kampala, and staying at the ‘red chilli hideaway’ campsite which has its very own HUGE pig walking the campgrounds and a very overweight dog that Jen H has named 2 pack. We have a big drive tomorrow to Eldorett and have to get up at 5 am (it’s 12 am now) which we’re not looking forward to. Now that we’ve seen the gorillas we’re on track to head back to Nairobi and then continue down south to Masai Mara, then back to Nairobi, then Arusha and Serengeti. I hope this fills you in for the meantime! I will try and write again in another week or so and upload some pics when there is a fast enough connection.


Lots of love
The three musketeers

Nairobi

We have arrived safely! So far I seem to be leading the tally with the most "ameture mistakes" or "rookie errors" such as spilling stuff on the plain, leaving my 150 ml moisturiser in my day pack and then having to go through the scaner again as there was another small tube of toothpaste i forgott about. Gog (Georgia) is coming in second with her exploding roll deodorent, making a mess all over the airport bathroom and Jenny H leaving her aerosol can in her main luggage. Allthough, all of these mistakes are providing us with a good opportunity to pay eachother out and have a bit of a giggle. The journey was very long (about 36 hours travel time including change overs and waiting around) and we were so keen to get to our hotel as soon as possible, however when we got to the airport our hotel transfer was no where to be seen. But after we sorted that out (apparently they mucked up and came the day before), we were on our way with a replacement driver.

The city is very different to what I expected. There are people walking everywhere! Selling bits and pieces, and there is a lot of construction going on. Dad, you would have been very impressed with one of the concrete buildings that was being set up as the scafolding was all made from sticks. Our trip from the airport to the hotel took about an hour as trafic was very bad, but our driver was pretty savy and liked to tell us about his city which he seemed very proud of. He asked Jenny H to count the number of stories of a building (there were 28) and said "this building has a lot of stories, how many do you have in your home?" to which we replied, there are buildings with probably around 200 stories! He replied "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat! Are youn serious!?" which just goes to show how different things are over here. The drive was an experience in itself! We had all the windows down as it was so hot with no air con, but made sure doors were locked as there were people everywhere and we seemed to be attracting a lot of attention and stares from locals. Although we still felt moderately safe. The sun is really hot on our skin (malaria tablets not helping with this) and we were able to quickly learn what it will be like in the peak heat of the day.

We finally arrived to our hotel which was manned with a security guards and big gates, and were then able to relax. We had a good nights sleep and just had a big breakky and are ready to meet the rest of our group tonight.

Love you all Jen, Jen and Georgia

Walking back to the hotel past the University of Nairobi.

Looking at stalls and shops in the city center of Nairobi. Everyone hassles you to buy things! They say "take your time, take your time". Markets are quite pricey, and people seem to think we have a lot of money. Jen picked out a wallet, some earings and a scarf and the man wanted $100 Auzzie! We walked away of course....

A ground shop that had so many different things to buy. Jewlery, paintings, clothes, carved animals...and it just goes on and on. People follow you everywhere while you are shopping, and they are very persistent but very friendly.