Jambo!

I woke up to sunshine and warmth and joyous, abundant flowers our first morning in Nairobi. The skies were bluest blue which, given it is February 3, we haven’t seen at home in weeks. But the most welcoming of all were the smiles and genuine greetings of “Good Morning” and “Jambo” from everyone we met. Our time in Africa started well. We did have a day’s delay due to an airport strike in Frankfurt and Greg’s seat on our Frankfurt to Nairobi leg did not decline nor did either of our TV monitors work on the 8 hour flight (not the best business class experience) nevertheless we arrived safely and well fed and excited to begin our safari tour of Kenya and Tanzania with Odysseys Unlimited Tour Agency. Hakuna matata!

First impressions: we arrived Nairobi airport around 11:00 pm local time (3 pm EST) and ‘quickly’ navigated Immigration with our E-visas and passports, picked up and scanned our luggage, and met our friendly Odysseys tour director George. The advantage of business class travel is being first in line and out of the airport quickly. The disadvantage is you have to wait anyway for other members of the group. But the night was warm and George was friendly and hey! We’re in Nairobi! Nicholas, one of our local drivers, took the first 6 of us to our hotel, Fairmont The Norfolk. A new highway allowed for a fast trip (20 min) through the outskirts of sprawling Nairobi (elev. 5889 ft) and between the CBD (central business district) and the newer Upper Hill city district. The beautiful high-rises light up this city of 5 million, nearly 10% of Kenya’s population. Most Nairobi citizens live outside the city as these buildings house government offices, businesses, hotels, or universities. Once at the hotel we disembarked the Land Rover and got scanned for explosive residue (???!!!), required security since terrorist bombings in 1998 that destroyed the American embassy, the Westgate shopping mall attack of 2013, and other ongoing incidents. Our beautiful hotel is reminiscent of colonial plantations of old Kenya with flowers lining the paths, terrazzo floors, beautiful wood wainscoting lining the walls, and lazy ceiling fans slowly whirling above. We enjoyed warm hand towels and a quick welcome drink and then headed off to a comfy bed at 1:00 am (that’s twice this year I’ve been up that late!)

I slept well but Greg didn’t. Our body clocks were still out of whack. Breakfast was an extensive buffet in a sunny glass enclosed veranda. We strolled the grounds and checked out the pool area for later then had our first meet up with the entire group: 8 other lovely travellers with whom we will spend the next 2 weeks. After introductions and a brief information session we pottied and then were on the move. Our first full day in Africa was spent getting a drive-by introduction to Nairobi. People were bustling about on a Saturday, shopping at the many stalls lining the roads or in special malls. Streets are clean. We then got a little learning and a lot of tongue feeding a few of the 9 Rothschild giraffes at the conservation minded Giraffe Centre. A bit of what we learned: there are 3 types of giraffes: Reticulated, Rothschild (or Nubian), and Masai whose differences are largely in their patterns and coloring; the subspecies being generally separated merely by geography. We fed those that were hungry and sociable, their long tongues easily enveloping the feed and my hand with it, a manual French kiss shall we say. Obviously these were captive giraffes but it whetted our appetite to see more in the wild. We then stopped at the Karen Blixen Museum. This Danish Karen (died 1962), under one of her nom de plums, Isak Dineson, wrote “Out of Africa” (1937) and “Babette’s Feast” but is more locally respected as a benefactor to her staff of the failed coffee plantation she owned with husband Baron Blixen and later to Nairobi’s citizens, especially children and women. There are a lot of buildings, schools, hospitals, roads, and districts named “Karen” in her honor. We lunched at the Karen Blixen Coffee House nearby, enjoying an outdoor buffet with distinctive Indian flavors and several outdoor cats for entertainment. Our final stop on this ‘light’ travel day was to learn about what to look for when shopping African crafts and jewelry though there was no time to practice what we learned. Back at the hotel we had a couple hours to relax at the pool and repack before enjoying our welcome dinner with the whole gang. It’ll be an early morning tomorrow as we head to Amboseli National Park and begin our game drives!