Pay No Attention

All of my Egypt/Kenya trip entries are now up!

I'm now done blogging about my recent trip to Egypt and Kenya, and included some pictures.   I've composed 17 back entries (starting on September 29), which I've numbered so you can keep track of where you left off in my saga.

I'm back from Egypt and Kenya

The internet was absurdly expensive in Africa, and I didn't have much time to access it, so I kept a paper journal instead.  I'm going to be adding back-dated updates from that journal to this blog (along with some photos) over the next couple of days.   It was one hell of an interesting trip, so the entries should be entertaining. 

 This blog puts the most recent entries first, and then the rest in reverse date order.  Reading them in that order works just fine for most purposes.  I suggest, however, that for purposes of my Egypt/Kenya travel journal, you consider reading the entries in date order instead, starting with Trip Entry 1 on September 29, describing my day in Amsterdam.  (I flew through Amsterdam, and spent a day there before going to Egypt.) 

I've numbered each entry heading (e.g., "Trip entry 1", "Trip entry 2") so that those of you who are reading them while I'm still getting them up on the blog will be able to easily keep track of where you are in the story.  Isn't that convenient?  I introduce some characters along the way, and you'll be more able to keep track of who they are and exactly what I didn't like about them if you read them in order.

To give a summary of the trip in a couple of sentences:  Kenya was amazing in just about every way, and I highly recommend you go there.  Read my shopping tips first, though!  As for Egypt -- well, the temples and pyramids are incredible, and it was all very interesting.  But essential accessories for the savvy single girl include a man, a wedding ring, and a lot of Imodium. Oh -- and a shitload of Egyptian pound notes.

Trip Entry 17: One last game ride, and back to Nairobi

I slept just terribly last night.  There was an enormous thump on my door at 3:30 am.  No one was there, but I absolutely could not get back to sleep. 

We were supposed to leave at 7 am for Nairobi, but ended up leaving at more like 7:30 because Karin had a problem with the front desk.  She'd put a deposit down of $3000 Kenyan shillings (a bit over $40) for the use of a hair dryer during her stay, which was supposed to be refunded upon the return of the hair dryer.  She had a receipt and everything.  However, the woman at the front desk -- who, by the way, was the same one who had taken Karin's deposit two days before -- denied that Karin ever gave her 3000 shillings.  When Karin presented the receipt, she claimed that the hotel's policy was to issue a receipt for 3000 shillings with the hair dryer, but not take the 3000 shilling deposit from the customer unless they didn't return the hair dryer.  Of course, that makes no sense whatsoever.  It would be too easy for people to take the hair dryer and not pay the deposit.

I alerted our trusty Nizar to the problem, and he came into the lobby and argued volubly in Swahili, ultimately summoning the manager.  The manager, trying to cover the lodge's ass and avoid embarassment, said that indeed the policy was what the woman behind the desk said it was;  however, he refunded Karin's 3000 shilling deposit, and gave the woman behind the desk a very suspicious look.  We're sure he knew she was lying, and are betting she got fired, as she should. 

Unfortunately, apparently this kind of petty thievery by service staff is not so uncommon.  (I forgot to mention it, but on our lunch stop the other day, the waiter double-charged us for our beverages.)   Nizar told us that the people who work in the hotels and lodges are paid very low wages, and sometimes try to supplement their meager income.

Anyway, the drive out of Masai Mara was not scheduled as a game drive, but it turned into one, thanks to the animals who for some reason all decided to hang out by the road.  We got way close up to a couple of pumba, a hyena, a cheetah, a secretary bird and a hippo out of the water (which unfortunately lumbered into the bushes before any of us could get a decent picture). 

We stopped at a Masai village on the way home.  It was very interesting but also amazingly dirty -- dung and flies absolutely everywhere.  The kids were cute, but they all seemed to have pink-eye and astoundingly runny noses, with flies buzzing around their poor little faces.

The huts of the Masai were different from those of the Samburus.  They're roofed and walled over with cow dung to keep in the warmth.  Like the Samburu huts, you have to double over to enter the tiny space.  The beds are on either side of the cooking area -- parents on one side, kids on the other.  The children stay with the parents until age 8, at which point they go to live with their grandparents.  (That's one way to dodge the teen-age years, I guess.) 

The Masai are taller than the Samburu, and many have absolutely huge and stretched out earlobes.  Like the Samburu, they pull out a bottom center lower tooth or two.  (Nizar told us that they administer medicine through the gap -- seems like there's got to be a better way that doesn't involve losing teeth.)  Weirdly, although they are polygamist (men can have as many wives as they have cows to buy -- a wife costs 10 cows -- but women can have only one husband), they are also Christian.  I'm not sure how they reconcile that, and it seemed rather rude to ask the Masai villager giving us the tour. 

The men are circumsized at age 15, and the kids go to school.  One adult told us he really missed going to school because he used to get lunch at school, and the Masai only eat breakfast and dinner. 

At the end, there was the usual village market.  This time, we all "forgot" our wallets.  However, the four large loud women had also arrived for a visit at the village (I deleted several photos because the women kept stepping into them), and they seem to have done enough shopping to make up for us.

We finally got to Nairobi around 2:30 pm.  Jo and Matt went off to Zanzibar (which coincidentally, is where Karin and Alexander go tomorrow), and Karin, Alexander and I had an absolutely enormous and delicious lunch.  I was so tired that, out of nowhere, I started calling Alexander "Sebastian" without realizing it.  He does remind me of someone named Sebastian, and coincidentally, his father's name is Sebastian -- but nonetheless that is not his name!  (Sorry, Alexander!  When I'm tired I sometimes get very ditzy.)  Karin and Alexander were going on an afternoon excursion after lunch, and they kindly let me nap and shower in their room before I had to set off to catch my plane home. 

To my surprise and delight, it was Nizar who came to pick me up for the airport.  He was less delighted, because he was supposed to have the rest of the day off after dropping us at the hotel.  I'm hoping I tipped him enough to make up for it -- I tipped him more than twice what the Pollman representative had suggested as an appropriate tip.  He was worth every penny.  Thanks, Nizar!

Trip Entry 16: Masai Mara, continued

Luckily, Nizar got our van repaired in time for our morning game drive, and so we were rid of the four large loud women.  Hurray!

We saw some gorgeous full-grown male lions with full black manes.  And then we got really lucky.  As we bumped over a plain, Alexander spied a cheetah chasing two pumba (warthogs), a big one and a baby.  The cheetah did not catch them, by the way.  Apparently, while cheetahs are the fastest amimals on earth over short distances and in a straight line, pumbas have learned to zig and zag, which throws the cheetah off his game. 

It all happened too fast to get a picture, unfortunately.  (Plus, Nizar didn't realize what Alexander saw at first, and didn't stop right away.)  However, the cheetah kindly wandered back and perched on a rock for us -- I got some pictures with the zoom.  Unfortunately, a game reserve ranger was right there, which prevented us from driving closer.  (There are rules about how far off the road you can drive to approach an animal that is not one of the "big five" -- elephants, lions, leopard, rhino and buffalo).  The cheetah also had two cubs hunting with her, although they didn't go close enough to each other or to their mother for us to get them all in one picture.

We got up close to another couple of sleeping lions - a male and a female, I think -- and then it was time to go back to the lodge for breakfast, which, idiotically, the lodge runs during the same hours -- 6:30 am to 9:00 am -- that everyone does game rides.   Since the whole purpose of being there is to do game rides, and the animals only like to come out early, before the sun gets strong, it doesn't make sense to go out later.  Anyway, they hold breakfast open a bit late so that everyone who was on a game ride -- that would be everyone -- can eat, but I must think that the breakfast room is pretty empty from 6:30 to 8:30 am.

* * * * *

At 4 pm, we went for another game ride.  We saw a couple of topi, a hyena, a bunch of masai giraffes (different from the reticulated giraffes we saw at Samburu), a crocodile, and a couple of lions.  But the highlight was wildebeest and zebra crossing the Mara river.  Nizar told us that wildebeests and zebras often travel and graze together and that "zebra always lead the way."  Anyway, it was amazing -- enormous numbers of wildebeests and zebra lined up and plunging into and across the Mara river, and then galloping away.  Too bad I didn't have a video camera.

We also saw a troop of elephants, including a very tiny one that Nizar estimated at 6 months old. 

* * * * *

At dinner, a bunch of men from the local Masai tribe came to the lodge to do a dance for us.  The Masai dress in red, and the young men wear their hair long and in tiny cornrows down their backs.  The dance (like the dance the Samburu men did for us a few days ago when we visited the Samburu village) involved them leaping into the air one by one or two by two, and doing a lot of rythmic strutting and chanting.  The men grabbed me and Alexander and pulled us into the dance, which was entertaining.  Karin got some pictures, which I hope she'll send me.

The men then put one of their robes on me and had me pose with them.  To be honest, I'm a bit anal-retentive and didn't really want to put on the robe, but it felt like it would have been very rude to refuse.  It should make for a funny picture, anyway. 

The chanting was the really memorable part -- I wish I'd had a tape recorder.  One guy did this weird low deep-in-the-throat thing I couldn't begin to imitate.  It was rather mesmerizing.

Trip Entry 15 -- Masai Mara: a leopard, some lions, and a lot of hippos on the way

We left Lake Nakuru early in the morning and set off on the very long drive to Masai Mara. 

On the way, we stopped to take a boat ride at Lake Naivasha, where we saw a couple of hippo families, some fish eagles, a sacred ibis, some yellow-billed storks, and a pair of pied kingfishers.  The hippos are so cute.  Nizar told us they "party all night", so they rest all day in shallow water, all piled up companionably in a heap, looking like a bunch of giant pigs.

We also got out of the boat and walked a bit on a plain where "Out of Africa" ws filmed.  There were some antelope strolling around, a dead bull or two, and a lot of animal poop of various varieties.  Seriously, though, it was quite lovely (although I still like the hippos best).

  After a lot more driving over some unbelievably bumpy dirt roads, we arrived at Masai Mara, and had a game ride on the way to the lodge.  We saw quite a few lions, and got incredibly lucky and spotted a leopard in a tree with its kill (a tiny antelope).  We watched him chow down for a bit, and then he seemed to get tired of being watched.  He took his kill in his mouth and headed down the tree, then sauntered away.  I got pictures every step of the way; I've posted one of my favorites.

Just after we spotted the leopard, we went over a really ludicrously patch of road (I'm not sure it could properly be called road at all), and blew something out of whack on the van.   I'm not sure what, but I wasn't at all surprised -- if anything, I was surprised the van hadn't broken down earlier, given the condition of the roads.  Nizar radioed another  Pollman van that wasn't far away.  Karin, Alexander, Jo, Matt and I piled into the van with the four loud  women and the driver that were in there already, and Nizar stayed behind with the van and the luggage to wait for a mechanic.

It's lucky we only had to do that for an hour or two.  There really was not room in the van for 10 people, especially given that the four women already in there were, let us say, substantial.  They were nice enough people, but damn, were they loud, which is not just annoying to people, but also to animals.  With Nizar and our little band, we got quite close to the animals, and they generally didn't run away because (a) Nizar knew how to approach them, and (b) we all knew how to shut up and keep still.  This driver was fine, but not nearly as good as Nizar, and the women were all "OH LOOK, ELEPHANTS!  LOOK HOW CLOSE THEY ARE!  OH, THEY'RE RUNNING AWAY, THAT'S TOO BAD!  CAN WE FOLLOW THEM?" 

Also, since there were so many of us, I was stuck in the front seat with the driver, which meant that I couldn't stand up and take photos through the pop-up top of the van.  I had to keep handing my camera to Jo to take photos when we saw anything interesting.  Luckily when we ran into a bunch of lions by the side of the road, they were on my side of the van, and I could see them quite well from the window.  If they'd been on the other side, I would not have been able to see them at all.

Thank heavens, Nizar got the van repaired and back in action by nightfall (and brought our luggage).

Trip Entry 14: Flamingos, rhino, and a zebra still-birth at Lake Nakuru

Nizar, Karin, Alexander, Matt, Jo and I left the mountain lodge at 7:30 am and set off for Lake Nakuru, known for its flamingos. 

We stopped at the equator for a demonstration showing (via a rotating match in a bucket full of water with a hole in it) that draining water flows clockwise in the northern hemisphere, counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere, and goes straight down, without rotating, when directly on the equator.  It was actually pretty cool that stepping maybe 20 meters away from the equator in either direction made that difference -- I was fascinated.  What can I say, I'm a geek.  

We also stopped en route at a waterfall (Nyahururu, also known as Thompson's falls -- 237 feet high, for you detail lovers),  where I insisted on the obligatory silly photo.

Once we got to Lake Nakuru, we saw throngs of pink flamingos, as well as pelicans, rhinos, elan (the largest antelope), and one lonely saddle stork.   The flamingos are really quite dramatic.  They love Lake Nakuru because it is a salt-water lake, and the lake is absolutely pink with them.  From a distance, they form a circle of pink around the edges.  My photos can't begin to show you the drama of seeing so many pink flamingos all together.  But I'll include one here anyway, to give you an idea.  (You can make a larger view of the photos pop up in a separate window by clicking on them, by the way).

Somewhere around my 50th flamingo photo, my picture card was full at 1055 photos, with three and a half days still to go on my safari!  Clearly, I've been a bit camera happy.  At lunch, I had to delete a couple of hundred of the less impressive photos to make space for the afternoon and for Masai Mara.

* * * * *

It was worth deleting the photos and making space on the photo card.  We got right up close to a bunch of rhinos -- they were literally right next to the van.  I was actually a bit nervous -- those things are big, you know.  They could overturn the van if they wanted to (or at least, they look like they could).

Nizar's eagle eyes truly impressed me today.  He saw a leopard in a tree that none of the rest of us could see without binoculars.  He also spotted that one zebra in a herd had recently given birth.  Even after he pointed out the blood on her legs, I had a hard time seeing it.

"The baby must be dead," said Nizar, "or else we'd see it."

He drove right up close, and sure enough, there was a sad, wet little splatter of black and white strips in the grass next to the mother.  She couldn't seem to believe it was dead.  She got quite upset at our proximity, so Nizar drove away.  As we drove away, we saw that, while the rest of her herd was gradually wandering away, the mother stayed with her dead baby.  It was very sad. 

Trip Entry 13: Hanging out at the waterhole

This morning Nizar, Karin, Alexander and I drove to Mount Kenya, where we stayed at the Serena Mountain Lodge.  At the Mountain Lodge, you don't go on game drives.  Instead, you hang out on the deck sipping a drink and watching animals come to the waterhole just below.  A herd of elephants and a herd of buffalo hung out there most of the day, plus some waterbucks, bushbucks, an Egyptian goose, and a bunch of sykes monkeys.

I don't even need to go to the deck if I don't want to -- my room looks directly out on the waterhole.  Actually, I think I may have a better (closer) view of it from my window than from the deck.  On the other hand, they don't serve drinks in my room.  But then again, there isn't an annoying loud card-playing foursome in my room, making too much noise and frightening the animals. 

DIGRESSION:  I must say, I have never understood people who go on trips and spend all of their time playing cards.  It's one thing if you're in a ski house in the evenings, curled up in front of the fire.  Then I'd say playing cards or a board game is the way to go.  But on a deck with a beautiful mountain view overlooking a waterhole with elephants? 

I went to Peru with a group of not-very-compatible companions who played Hearts just about continually when they weren't actually walking or sleeping.  I recall sitting in a funky little restaurant in Cuzco with Peruvian musicians playing and a room full of people clapping and dancing, and my companions were in a corner playing Hearts and bitching that everyone was being too loud.  I moved to another table (the tables were communal, and the other table welcomed me happily) so that I could clap and dance without bothering my companions more than need be.  I bought a CD from the musicians -- I thought they were awesome.  I'm not sure who won the Hearts game. 

For what it's worth, I'm not in touch with any of the people with whom I went to Peru, a fact I do not regret in the least.  Whenever people ask how I can travel alone, I tell them I find it a hell of a lot less lonely than traveling with incompatible people.  (I think the same holds true for marriage and relationships, but that would be a digression on my digression, which might be going too far even for me, especially since this digression is already longer than my actual post.)  END DIGRESSION.

Two new people joined our band at the mountain lodge, Matt and Jo (short for Joanna), a young couple from England.  Prior to meeting them, Karin, Alexander and I debated the notion of using the "new people" as leopard bait if we didn't like them.  Luckily, we do like them -- they're very sweet.

Trip Entry 12: a lot of elephants and a Samburu village

Nizar, Karin, Alexander and I set off for our first game ride at 7 am today.  We several groups of elephants, some so close I could almost have touched them from the van.  We also saw a ton of baboons, buffalo and giraffe, a gray-headed kingfisher, a couple of crocodiles, impala, oryx and dik-dik (tiny, dainty little antelope that look like they'd come up to about your knee -- they're named after the sound they make when they're alarmed).  Oh yes, and we saw some grevy's zebra (they have skinnier stripes than the common zebra), vultures, guineafowl and a lot of other stuff.  

After the game ride, we visited a Samburu village, which was quite interesting.  The Samburu wear bright colors and huge necklaces (at least the women do), and they're shepherds.  They live pretty much in the midst of all of their goats and sheep, which were wandering in and out of their huts like dogs.  We went on a tour of the village and inside one of the huts, paying 1500 Kenyan shillings each (about $20) in order to do so.  The money supposedly goes for food, medical care, education, etc. for the villagers.  The Samburu women did a little welcome dance for us, the men also did a dance and showed us how they make fire. 

Then, of course, there was the obligatory village market.  I took Nizar's advice and said I forgot my wallet back at the lodge, so they soon ignored me in favor of Karin and Alexandar, who bought a mask and necklace for far too much money. 

I felt a little bad about buying nothing until we got back to the lodge and I took a little spin through the gift shop.  As I think I mentioned in my last entry, it was here I discovered that the simple villagers and souvenir shop operators were charging us 200-400% mark-ups on souvenirs -- and that's after we bargained them down!  I was somewhat chagrined, but had to laugh.  I bought a giraffe mask for 900 shillings (about $12), partly just to say "thank you" for the education.  I then sent Karin and Alexander to the gift shop to get their own education.

In the afternoon, we went for another game ride, where at last we saw some lions.  They were just lolling around in the bushes, and seemed remarkably unperturbed as, one by one, five vans full of tourists stopped and began snapping pictures right next to us.  Finally, with a yawn, one of them got up and walked away, and we drove away and left the other one in peace (well, as much peace as he could get with four other vans full of tourists still there.

Before dinner, I went to the river to see the crocodiles.  There is an extremely low -- maybe two or three feet high -- wall separating the lodge swimming pool from the river and the crocodiles.  And let me tell you, the crocodiles are pretty huge.  Remembering the crocodile horror stories I'd heard in Australia, this made me pretty nervous.  The lodge staff informed me that the crocodiles could not get over the wall, but I leapt away from the edge every time one of them moved, just to be on the safe side.

At dinner (which was delicious), there was a rather festive guitar player who sang classic Kenyan hits like "Coward of the County."  Actually, he was rather good, but it was funny to hear "Coward of the County" with a Swahili accent.

I went back to my cabin after dinner, exhausted, and pulling my mosquito nets around my bed, settled down to go to bed.  Unfortunately, just as I was about to snap out the light, I saw an absolutely ENORMOUS insect (a good four or five inches long, with antenna sticking out beyond that) that looked like a giant cockroach on the inside of my mosquito net. 

I said, if I'm recalling correctly, "EEEEEEEEEEKKKKKK!!! and leapt out of bed.  This had no effect whatsoever on the insect.  I could live with the lizard the night before, but the cockroach thingee was a deal-breaker.  I wasn't going to touch it, and since it was now on my bed, I wasn't going to smush it either.  

I stepped out of my cabin thinking that perhaps the damn thing might at least leave my bed so I could either throw a shoe at it or else try to pretend I didn't see it.  Luckily, one of the lodge staff was walking nearby.  He trapped the thing in his hat and removed it from the room.  He explained to me that it was not in fact a cockroach, but rather some other insect whose name I can't recall and, frankly, don't care to recall.

The insect banished, I settled down and went to sleep before I could stop to think about what else might be lurking in my room.

Trip Entry 11: Samburu Game Park and some Kenyan shopping tips

  This morning I met up with my safari driver, Nizar, and Karin and Alexander, a Danish woman and her 14 year old grandson, and set off on the long road from Nairobi to Samburu Game Park. 

My instinct that I'd like Kenya better than Egypt is turning out to be quite correct.  Nizar is head and shoulders better than any guide I had in Egypt, and has a great sense of humor, too.   He promptly dubbed me "the American lady", and kept offering to sell me for 100 cows.   (This wouldn't have been funny in Egypt, but it was funny here because everyone was in on the joke, and no one took him seriously.  In Egypt, I have a feeling the deal would have gone through.)   Karin and Alexander are lovely people.  Some 14 year old boys might be a pain to have along, but Alexander is a great kid.  (Also a lucky kid!  My grandmother never took me on safari!)  All of them are quite pleasant to be in a van with for hours on end, and that's saying something.

On the way, we stopped at a souvenir shop to use the toilet and buy some souvenirs for which we all paid far too much.  I'd applied the rule I'd used when haggling in Thailand and Peru -- offer half what they ask, and settle in the middle.  (I'm not sure what rule Karin and Alexander followed, except that they later acknowledged paying way too much.)    However, days later, when I got to Masai Mara, I would find more or less the identical items in a hotel gift shop (in other words, with a serious mark-up attached) for about half what I paid. 

Just so you know if you ever go to Kenya, here's the rule to apply:  offer one-tenth what they originally ask, and settle on one-fifth of what they asked.   Seriously.  That will get you to what they actually consider the fair market price.  Yeah, I know they're squatting next to a dung-covered hut with bare feet and flies crawling on their eyelids, or presiding over a ramshackle shop with mud floors.  Yeah, I know they're really, really friendly.  Don't you be fooled.  The fact is they'll take you for everything you've got if you let them, telling you the whole time that they're giving you a "special price,"  and meanwhile laughing their butts off behind your back at how badly they rooked you. 

OK, OK, I admit it -- I don't have the heart to do it.  I prefer to overpay than to haggle down someone who clearly has so much less than I do, even though I know that person is laughing at me.  I'm a sucker and proud of it.   And I really hate haggling.   So I didn't mind so much paying twice what I would have paid in an over-priced hotel souvenir shop.  (Or at any ride I didn't mind all that much.)

Anyway, I bought a pink soapstone elephant for my eldest niece, who had particularly requested a pink elephant, a purplish soapstone hippo for niece number two, a small ebony statue of a man smoking a pipe for me, and a funny little box that, when you open it, makes a funny little snake attack a funny little frog on the top -- all for a price I probably would have paid for them here in New York, or maybe a little more.

Our next stop was lunch at the aptly named Trout Tree Restaurant.  The restaurant is in a tree house built around a giant fig tree, and there were trout pools all around from which the restaurant gets its trout.  I had some and it was delicious.  (This seems like as good a time as any to mention that the food in Kenya was a lot better than it was in Egypt, and that upon arrival in Nairobi, my bowels rapidly returned to their customary robust good health.  I should note that I ate everything, including salads, in Kenya, and stuck to the "cooked food" rule in Egypt, sticking to bottled water in both places.  Nonetheless, Egypt was the place I suffered.)

I had my next wildlife sighting at the Trout Tree -- there are colobus and velvet monkeys everywhere.  One colobus monkey even climbed into the restaurant and onto the bar, until the waitress shooed him away.

After a bit more driving, we came to the Samburu reserve and had a two hour game drive on our way to the lodge.  We saw elephants, oryx, a somali ostrich, gerenuk, impala, monkeys of various kinds, and giraffe.

Dinner at the lodge was really delicious, and my room (actually, it's a separate cabin) is cute and although a little warmer than I'd like, pretty comfortable, with a ceiling fan, mosquito net and a small lizard that skeddaddled in alarm as soon  as I walked in, never to be seen again.

Trip Entry 10: Recovering in Nairobi

I wasn't in Kenya for more than an hour before I decided I liked it better than Egypt. 

My big surprise is that everyone speaks perfect English.  Even the billboards are in English.  Perhaps that shouldn't surprise me, given that Kenya used to be a British colony, but it did.  Everyone is also extremely friendly. 

Born Free's agent in Kenya is an outfit named Pollman's, and right from the very start they beat the pants off Voyages (the group in Egypt).  A woman named Jacinta met me at the airport (her sign bore my full and correctly spelled name) and put me in a cab to the hotel.  My driver, Jeff, was amusing and jovial and had a delightful booming full-bodied belly laugh that did your heart good to hear.  At a glance I knew instinctively that he would never, ever tell me that I was a very beautiful woman.  I happily jumped into the front seat with him and we jabbered all the way to the hotel. 

I'd used the last of my Egyptian pounds at the Cairo airport to buy an enormous chocolate bar (absolutely the only thing I would have considered purchasing at the Cairo airport).  To Jeff's great delight ("Chocolate!  I LOVE chocolate!  HA HA HA HA!"), I pulled it out as soon as we got in the car,  and although it was not even 8 in the morning, Jeff and I split it and munched it all the way back to the hotel.  I also handed him a wetwipe -- eating chocolate in warm weather is a messy business -- which really amused him.  ("What is it?  It looks like a condom.  HA HA HA HA!"  I guess it does look like a condom at that, in its square little wrapper.) 

Jeff promptly asked me whom I was voting for, and told me that he has a photo of Obama on his wall at home.  Just about everyone in Kenya, from hotel staff to my safari driver, asked me what I thought about the election.  As you might expect (given that Obama's father was Kenyan), everyone -- absolutely everyone -- in Kenya is an Obama fan.  I saw tons of Obama stickers on cars, and I'm sure they didn't belong to American tourists.  I saw Obama posters everywhere, including a souvenir shack with a dirt floor a million miles from nowhere.  Jeff told me that he was as interested in the American election as he'd been in the most recent Kenyan election -- which is saying something, since that election by all accounts was pretty contentious and interesting.

By the way, I saw my first wild zebra ten minutes into the drive from the airport.  Unfortunately, it was a dead wild zebra.  It was by far the most exotic road kill I'd ever seen. 

* * * * * 

I was totally exhausted from my grueling Egypt schedule, not to mention another red-eye flight, and I was still feeling a bit under the weather.   Jeff and Jacinta had both told me it wasn't safe for me to walk around Nairobi alone, and I just didn't feel like going on an organized excursion.  The hotel -- the Serena Nairobi -- is fantastic, with great food and a nice pool.   (Obama stayed here when in Nairobi.  The waitress in the restaurant pointed out the table where he ate dinner.)   After checking into the hotel, I just napped and ate and relaxed all day.  It was heaven.