AFRICA - Nov 13, 2010

This morning we left Nairobi to go on the actual safari part of our trip. This is the jeep and driver that we had for the first few days of the trip. Because we would be traveling with 6 people in this jeep and be gone for 6 days we had to travel light. We left our main luggage in storage at the hotel and packed a duffel to take for the remainder of the trip.
One thing about Nairobi is the traffic. It was terrible. It moved very slowly, they had progressed in ownership of cars faster than the road projects could keep up. Certain times of the day and areas of the city it seemed to not be moving at all. There were no sidewalks, just dirt or mud where the people walked and set up businesses. These next two pictures give you an idea of how it was all over town.
As we left Nairobi the landscape was beautiful. there were lots of nurseries and interesting trees everywhere. There was beautiful landscaping everywhere. The central part of Kenya is all at high altitude and the weather is very pleasant. Where the soil is good the people grow everything....vegetables, coffee, tea, cacao, bananas, pineapples. There are tons of floral greenhouses ( it is the second largest exporter of flowers globally). Where the soil is not good for growing they use it for grazing animals.

From Nairobi we headed to Abedare National Park. We stopped at the country club for lunch and to leave our luggage again. We were to spend the night in a place called The Ark(which I will talk about next post). The Ark has very small rooms and we were told we could only take a backpack with the few essentials for overnight with us. So it was arranged for us to leave our bags at the country club.
The view of the valley from here was amazing, and the landscaping was beautiful.
Here we saw our first "pumba" warthogs. This mother and babies were right beside the road. Of course we saw many more later in the trip.
After lunch, we boarded our jeeps and headed to "The Ark" for a chance to see animals at night.