Latest Stories

Most likely I'll post some pics as part of whatever update I give, and given that there is no way all three of my daughters will think that they look good in the same photo at the same time, pics will likely be pulled and right there is your incentive to check back every day to see how things actually went before something gets taken down.This section will contain the running commentary from the trip, in regards to the most recent country we have been in. But once I'm able to start the next country, I'll put the historical posts in the "Old Updates - XYZ" tab above. This all assumes I (or one of my kids) will be able to figure out how to make this website work.

If you want to read about the first 28 days and our time in Italy, then click here.

If you want to read about our time in Turkiye, then click here.

The Journey Continues - Kenya

Click here to jump to a specific day.

I've had a bunch of people ask where we are going and some even pulling out a map to see exactly where we will be so I had the wonderful people at Midnight Media Group put together some animation to show everyone. And yes, this is an homage to a great adventure, largely because I've been told so many times that I look like Harrison Ford. Or was it Chevy Chase...

DAY 33

After a lazy day in the hotel where we did little except eat (I woke up starving at 11am and ate some food, but the rest of the family didn’t get up until 2pm). The lunch buffet had a lot of interesting food, but I immediately noticed that little of it would appeal to Liam and Keira had little on her plate (they both had some rice and some bread). Keira’s fall back would usually be a salad, but we were wary of anything that could have been washed in water, so she was even more limited than normal. But Liam ate about 20 oranges, and once I convinced him that red velvet cake tasted pretty much like normal cake, had about 3 pieces of cake. The lunch of champions, and putting us in line for the parents of the year award. I just hoped he wasn’t starving.

Lily and Elenna did some school work, and the rest of us read and I blogged a bit. Liam was playing Minecraft on his ipad and would periodically tell me things about what he was doing. At one point, he wanted to switch to creative mode, and asked where the “k” was on the keypad. I told him it was a “c”. And then an “r” and he asked what an “r” looked like. Then I told him an “e” and he asked me if the “e” was the almost circle with line in it. Then I told him it was an “a” next, and he asked what I “a” looked like, and at that point I decided we had had enough and Keira should teach him how to read. So they did that for a little while.

We went to dinner at another restaurant in the hotel and Megan and I stayed up for Robin, her mom, who was flying in that night to go on safari with us. He plan landed a little late, and it took a while for the bags to get off, so she arrived sometime around midnight. She was sharing a room with Keira, and when we went to her room, there was a strange smell. Megan thought it might be gas, but it didn’t smell like that to me or Robin, but after about 45 seconds, I had to leave the room because I was getting a headache. We asked to switch rooms, and when the man came up to investigate, he said it was insecticide, and in retrospect that is what it smelt like. So we got a new room for them. Meanwhile, Keira likely would have slept in that room the whole night if she was left alone, which made us wonder what it would take for her to have switched rooms.

The next day we got up for the free buffet breakfast (which ended at 10am- a common hotel trick to offer free breakfast, but then end it early so fewer people take advantage. Or maybe its just our family who can’t normally get its act together before 11am. After that we went to the Kazuri Bead Factory, which was a small shop where a group of women (usually single mothers from impoverished areas) took clay, made beads, painted them and then turned them into jewelry. On the way, we had our first experience with wildlife, as a herd of cows walked across the street and slowed us down for a few minutes.

Our first wildlife encounter in Kenya!

It was interesting to see the steps to making beaded jewlery, and the tour guide took a liking to Liam and let him paint a bead. Later, when we were in the shop looking at things to buy, the saleswoman came over and gave him a bracelet for free (worth about $15-20) and then sized it to his wrist.

Liam got to make some beads.

This was actually a running theme for our trip. Liam is objectively cute with blonde hair and blue eyes and he is generally well behaved and happy. So he often gets given things for free. In addition to the bracelet, he was given a shiny bead for free, but when he couldn’t decide, they gave him two. Shopkeepers and waiters would often single him out and give him a little something extra. Meanwhile, when we were deplaning in Nairobi, it was an outside staircase we had to walk down and I was carrying by my and Liam’s suitcases, so Liam had to walk down the stairs on his own. I was a step ahead of him, but a stranger came over and saw this, and then held his hand down the stairs to make sure he wouldn’t fall.

The attention isn’t always so wellcome. There have been a few instances where a stranger would randomly pat him on the head as they walked by. Or a couple of times where someone would come up and put their hands on his cheeks. I was reminded a bit of our trip to Asia 6 years earlier, where Lily, in particular, had blonde hair and people would stop by and reach out and touch her. Some people wanted pictures with her, which we put a stop to, unless they wanted their kid to take a picture with her. When this happened, we would then take a picture of that random stranger kid with Lily too. So this stuff was happening even in Italy to Liam, so I wonder what will happen in Asia, where he is likely to stand out even more.

After the bead shop, we came back to the hotel, and Liam really wanted to go back to the buffet for lunch because he wanted more oranges and red velvet cake (so I guess we didn’t starve him the day before). When it wasn’t open, he cried and was inconsolable for about 15 minutes as we walked to another restaurant and waited to order. When we saw that pizza was on the menu, he perked up and after a little food returned to himself.

We had promised Liam that we would go to the 10th floor pool, but it closed at 4pm and we were running out of time as lunch was taking a while. We managed to get up there and Liam splashed around in the pool, while the rest of us took in the beautiful view. Earlier in the day, we were able to se some antelope from the window of the hotel. It reminded us a lot of Animal Kingdom Lodge, which I guess means that Disney knows what its doing.

Liam got to swim up in the clouds. And we got a beautiful view.

At dinner, we struggled to find a place where Liam would eat anything and once again he ate some oranges and some bread, but was generally in good spirits as we played cards during dinner.

After that, we packed, and it was a difficult process getting all of the stuff we would need into a small bag to take with us for 8 nights on the Safari. This was particularly true when it came to Liam who seemed to have no clean clothes (unlike the rest of us, he can’t re-wear shorts because they are covered in food). This was further compounded by the fact that we weren’t supposed to wear black or dark blue on the safari, because apparently those colors attracted mosquitoes. Essentially, I hadn’t been paying attention as I got him dressed and he had a bunch of clear dark clothes, and dirty light clothes. So we spent an hour hand cleaning and then hand blow drying an outfit for him to wear, so we could have enough clothes to get him to the first stop, where they would do some laundry.

But the big event of the night was that Keira, Megan and I voted for the 2024 presidential election. Robin brought our mail-in ballots to Kenya and we filled them out in the hotel. Pretty cool that Keira’s first time voting, was in Africa. Unfortunately, Keira won’t let me post the picture because she had already gotten ready for bed by the time we told her we were voting.

DAY 34

We got up early (6:30) so we could eat breakfast and then drive to our first stop on safari. Breakfast was a buffet, and is the only meal where everyone eats something, so it was a good way to start the day. The trip to Tambarare on Google maps said 4 hours, but given that the safari jeep wasn’t allowed to go more than 50 mph, it took 5.5 hours (including a stop). The stop was a tourist trap, where they tried to sell you stuff. The problem was they didn’t tell you the prices of anything until you got to the register, no matter how many direct questions you asked. Robin wanted to buy something, mostly to be nice, and tried to buy three little wooden animals and they told her (at the register) that it would be $105, so she didn’t buy anything. I guess this high pressure tactic works on enough tourists that it pays off, but not this time. This type of shopping is Megan’s least favorite type of thing - someone following you around, pressuring you to buy things that you don’t particularly want, at prices that don’t make any sense.

We got to become intimately familiar with this keep for the next week.

We got a view of the city of Nairobi and the countryside. It was a mix of buildings that looked run down (only a couple of those areas where there were tin roof homes) and buildings that looked pretty new. Most of the shops we passed were closed but the driver told us it was because it was Sunday and most people were either at church, or didn’t open the shops because they knew the customers were at church.

I was a bit surprised by how much activity there was along the roadside, given we were largely going down major highways. In addition to the cars, people were just walking up and down the highway. Every time you passed train tracks, people were walking down the tracks (we never saw any trains). As we got to a more residential part, it was clear that people were walking to church - all dressed up. But at this point, we were going up into the mountains (Tambarare is about 6,500 ft elevation) and I felt bad as people were walking up huge hills with no obvious home nearby, and likely far still to go. Our driver estimated that maybe 30% of households in Kenya own a car (vs 91.7% in the US). But that was probably why everyone there looked like they were in better shape than the typical American.

We got to Tambarare around 2pm and first we stopped at the main gate to check into the reserve. Our guide explained that this place first started out as a cattle ranch, and there were still groups of cattle that were being herded in the park. The park itself was 90,000 acres of land.

As we drove into the reserve, we had another 45 minutes from the front gate, until we got to our hotel. On the way in, we saw giraffes, elephants, rhinos, gazelles, zebra, impala, cape buffalo and warthogs, and we hadn’t even gotten to our hotel yet!

The pictures will get better than this with tomorrow's post. But it was still cool to see a bunch of animals, even if were weren't always too close.

After a month of AirBnBs where we were prioritizing space and location over comfort, our kids were really happy to be staying in the fancier hotel we stayed at in Nairobi, and they were a bit wary of the idea of staying in tents in the park. They shouldn’t have worried, as we were technically “glamping” and the rooms were beautiful.

Megan, Liam and my room, and the view from our back porch..

Each room had a porch with a great view of the wilderness. There is an electric fence around the hotel grounds to keep out animals. The hotel people told us that we can walk to our rooms alone in the day, but at night we needed to be escorted, because the fence doesn’t always keep out things that “jump or slither.”

The guide said he would take us on a 4pm safari trek, but Liam and all the girls (including Meg and Robin) just wanted to relax after being in the car for 6 hours, so I grudgingly went back to the room. We face-timed my mom when we checked in and she asked Liam what animals he saw. And of course, the one animal he said was “cows.” So I guess he wasn’t as impressed as we were about the other animals. As we were on the facetime, a few gazelle wandered into our backyard. About 10 minutes after that a rainbow appeared. The place was pretty magical.

The view of gazelles from our back yard.. They were pretty, but it made you wonder what else might be walking around. Meanwhile, Liam wanted to taste the rainbow.

At 7pm we went out for a night safari drive. There was a driver and a “spotter” who carried a giant headlight and swiveled it around trying to find animals. We saw more rhino, elephants, gazelle, zebra as well as a few new animals: hyenas, jackals, rabbits, mongoose and although I didn’t see them, others in the car saw a bushbaby.

Very cool to see the lions. Made me a little glad that we were in a jeep with walls and not a wide open jeep.

At this point, we had seen 3 of the “Big 5” (lion, leopard, rhino, African buffalo, and elephant) and we were all hoping to see a lion. Amazingly, the guide found 3 of them. I’m really not sure how they were able to spot these things in the dark, but I’m glad that they did.

Being on safari means seeing a bunch of cool animals, but it also means driving around for a while and not seeing much. So Keira, Lily and I spent the down time making bad animal puns. Want to hear some? I know you do.

Why shouldn't you play poker with African cats?

Because they are cheetahs.

What do you carve while on a safari to celebrate Halloween?

Jackal Lanterns

What animal celebrates 4/20?

Hyena

I'm a dad, so I have plenty more, but I'll leave it there. Feel free to send me any you have.

DAY 35

Our first full day on safari. We got up early again (6:30) to eat breakfast and be on the road by 8am to go on safari. The plan was to drive out to a rhino sanctuary where we could see the last two remaining white North African rhino in the world.

The issue was that on the way out, we were delayed. Robin’s favorite animal is a giraffe, so although we had seen giraffes the day before, they were pretty far away and there were trees in between, so we were hoping to get a better look. I was sitting in the front seat, which gave me the best view of everyone, and my job that day (and the day before) was to try to spot things, and point them out to the guide who would tell us what they were. It turns out that I am much better at spotting things than I am at telling what they are, as almost everything looks to me like a rhino when it is off in the distance. But at least I saw it and we would get closer and see what it really was.

Everyone was on the lookout for a giraffe.

So I was excited when I thought I saw a giraffe, and I told the driver to slow down. We moved ahead more slowly and sure enough, it was a giraffe. As we rounded a corner to get closer, there was another one. And then another, and another, and before we knew it, we were surrounded by giraffes.

Its hard to express how cool it was to see this many giraffes at a time.

In total, we counted 26 giraffes in this tower (a group of giraffes is called a tower). We probably stayed there for about 25 minutes as our driver was pretty good at moving the van to be where they were going to go and we got quite close. But there were also zebra and warthogs walking around. It was a very cool spot. I think that the video below does a great job showing just how many animals there were.

I think this video shows well how it was just non-stop animals. And not just giraffes.. .

At one point, the driver noted that we had a time set to come by the rhino place and he seemed a little worried that we might miss it. But we kept running into amazing spots where we were right up close to animals. My guess is that we got to the place probably about an hour after he had planned to be there. When we did, there were about 6 army jeeps and white helicopter there with some people in army fatigues, ranger outfits and what looked like tourists in a circle. Something was going on. Our guide talked to them and explained that there is some sort of operation happening and they weren’t going to let us see the rhino. But, we could go see Baraka, a blind rhino, so we did.

We got to feed him some sticks and branches and take pictures. Liam was a bit afraid of him, but Lily did a good job of holding him and getting him close. Keira isn’t much of an animal person, but did enough to get the obligatory picture.

Neither one of these is Keira.

As we walked back to our jeep, I was excited because there were a bunch of monkeys running around. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to interact with them. I’m a huge monkey fan, but Megan and the girls are scarred for life from our experience at the Monkey Forest in Indonesia (Liam wasn’t born yet). You walk through this old temple area where monkeys run around. It was an awesome experience, except for some reason, the tour guide told Megan a story about how a year earlier, a monkey tried to take the cell phone out of the breast pocket of his dress shirt, and he flicked him away. The monkey fell and cried out, and then about 100 monkeys turned and attacked our guide and he had to go to the hospital. Since then, none of my girls want to get too close to a monkey, but I am unfazed.

The good news was that when we got back to the jeep, our guide had called the main tour office and they talked to the conservatory and convinced them to let us see the rhino. There really was no reason we were being told no - whatever the operation was, it wasn’t in that area. But we got to go into the rhino area and see them. They walked right up to the jeep and Megan actually got to pet one.

The rhino came so close that Megan actually pet one..

After that, we drove around and saw more animals. Even though we had seen so many animals the day before, most were from a distance (I was spotting things way out from the road), but this day, I wasn’t really needed because the animals were much more plentiful and much closer to the road. We weren’t seeing 2 zebras and 1 buffalo. We were seeing herds of animals, and most of them were within 50 feet and most often within 10-20 feet. We went back for lunch and then a little rest before going out again at 4.

This trip was to a chimpanzee sanctuary. Chimps aren’t native to Kenya, but Jane Goodall and a couple of foundations started this place in Kenya because of civil unrest in parts of the world where they are endemic. They basically rescue chimps that were being abused or taken as pets but then abandoned when they got to be too big/strong. Our guide said that the place might close early, and we got there around 4:40 and the sign said it closed at 4:30, and looked to be closing down. So it wasn’t as much them closing early as our guide not planning well. That said, he talked them into letting us in and we got to see one of the chimps (Max). The rest of the chimps had moved away from the viewing area because it was close to dinner time and they were fed somewhere else.

It was still interesting to see him and learn the history, but it felt very much like going to a zoo. I guess technically, the whole safari is a 90,000 acre zoo, but this was much more of a pen/viewing area - if you go here you are guaranteed to see this animal, type experience.

Now we had had some up close experiences with giraffes, zebras, gazelles, impalas and rhinos, but lions and elephants were still more at a distance, so I was on the lookout for them. We had seen a couple of elephants at water holes, but on the way back we ran into a group of them. There were easily over a dozen, including a baby elephant. Very cool stuff.

Whenever there was a baby anything, it stole the show..

Our last stop on the safari was a spot marked on the Equator. We got out and took a picture on the line and I got one with one foot in each hemisphere (we didn’t realize that we had been in the Southern Hemisphere when we were in Nairobi, so when we go back, we have to watch the toilet water and see which way it flow when you flush it).

I was kind of excited because this was the second time I was in both the norther and southern hemispheres at the same time, having previously done it in Ecuador.

'

Its probably hard to tell which picture is of me today, and which was taken 26 years ago..

We got home in time for dinner, and once again Liam ate very little, and then he wandered off to a little seating area near the dining room and then just went to sleep. After dinner, we went back to the rooms and packed because tomorrow we were to leave for our next hotel/safari conservatory. That night, the night sky was clear and the stars were out. The one problem is that the deck lights are always on, so it creates a little too much light to see the stars well. I debated going out around the house to get a better view, but given the wild life, thought better of it.

We had just gotten Liam to bed when we heard screaming from Keira and Elenna’s tent next store. It sounded like they were scared, but then they laughed and yelled. So they probably weren’t being murdered. But then they did it again and we called them. Apparently there was a giant bug that was freaking them out. I couldn’t walk over there in the dark, so I had to radio a guide to get me and bring me over there (they gave each room a radio, there were no phones in the room).

So we went over there, but Keira and Elenna had lost track of the bug. The guide and I walked around the room for 4-5 minutes - hitting curtains, trying to make it fly away or something without luck. Both Keira and Elenna swore that if we didn’t kill it they wouldn’t be able to sleep. Just as I was about to leave, I saw it crawling across the floor - it looked like a longer, thinner cockroach type thing and the guide stepped on gently, and you could hear it crunch. It kept moving, and he did it again. Then it still kept moving, so he picked it up and threw it into the darkness. I guess this was the type of place where you didn’t want to hurt nature - even if it was a bug.

We had the girls close the door and close the curtains on the door and just as Keira locked the door, the guide’s flashlight showed that there was another large bug - this one more like a praying mantis, hanging on the curtain to the door (the guide said, “oh, those ones have little stingers). I told Keira to open the door for a second. She asked why, but I wasn’t about to tell her that the curtain on the door she is standing next to has a giant bug on it, so I said, “just open the door”. She did, and then the guide grabbed that bug and threw it into the forest. The guide seemed to have been stung as he did that - I couldn’t tell if it was for real or if he was angling for a tip, but by this point I had already decided to tip him anyway.

DAY 36

We got another early start because we were moving to another camp. As we were leaving, the manager of the resort said they had a surprise for us, and led us outside and around a corner. In a patch of woods there was a marker with “Fischbeck Family” written and they planted an olive tree in our honor. They let Liam help plant it and we all watered it. I guess we now have to go back in a few years and see if its still there.

They planted a tree in our honor in a moving ceremony.

On the way, we were supposed to stop at an island where you could walk around get close to some animals. The only problem was, that our tour company never coordinated with the hotel to pack us a lunch, so we didn’t have food. Going there and then to the hotel would have put us eating lunch around 3pm, and that was a non-starter after seeing how we held up walking around on tours in italy while hungry.

It was a bit annoying, but we ended up paying for our own lunch along the way (the trip was supposed to be all inclusive), and after about 6 hours in the care, headed to the island. We took a small motor boat to the island, and the tour guide showed us some of the local wildlife. As we got into the boat, we could see that a lot of the area was flooded, and apparently about 6 months earlier, the water level rose after a shift in the tectonic plates below the earth. The shoreline moved about 40 feet further back and caused severe damage and many people lost their homes. Pretty sad.

There was significant flooding in the area.

The one piece of wildlife that Megan and the girls were not keen on seeing was the hippopotamus. We had heard that they were actually the most dangerous animals in Africa (or at least they killed the most people each year), which is strange since they are herbivores. This led Lily to decide that hippos just kill people for sport. There were a bunch of hippos in the lake, but every time we got near one, someone would freak out, so we never really got close, so I only have far away looking pics, that aren't worth posting.

When we got to the island, our guide told us that a number of movies were filmed there, such as Tomb Raider 2 and Sheena. The animals were actually brought to the island during the filming of “Out of Africa” - most of the animals weren’t from that region. Fun fact, because of the recent increase in water level, if we had come 6 years earlier, the island would have been a peninsula, and we could have driven there.

The walk around the island was neat, as we were able to get very close to a zebra and feed an ostrich

For some reason Lily and Keira didn't feed the ostriches, but the rest of us had a good time - especially Liam who wanted to fee other animals (but we weren't allowed to).

We also got pretty close to a giraffe (or as the video below shows, the giraffe got pretty close to me) and saw a number of new animals like the water buck and a dik dik (which looks like a pygmy gazelle).

I wasn't sure if this giraffe was going to charge me or not.

There were also a few types of monkeys on the island, but I don’t have to tell you that my family wasn’t interested in getting too close.

After the trip to the island, we had another hour in the car to get to our next camp. We got there around 7, or almost 11 hours after we left and we were all exhausted.

DAY 37

We got up early to have breakfast at the lake. The rooms were much more rooms than tents, so a lot less like camping than our last stop, but still pretty neat. The back patio of our rooms looked out on the lake. Robin opened her curtains and there was a water buck just standing right outside. Apparently, it wasn’t clear who scared who more, and the buck ran away.

The breakfast was nice, and usually the lake was full of flamingos, but apparently the migration had largely happened the week before so there were only a few birds around. Off in the distance, we saw a flock of what appeared to be flamingos come in and land at the far side of the lake (can you land on a lake?). And you can’t tell us that they weren’t.

The view from the hotel. And the lake that we ate breakfast next to.

The kids were all tired after the full day in the car the day before so Lily and Elenna did school work and Keira watched Liam while Megan, Robin and I went on another game drive. Our tour guide said that flamingos and potentially big cats could be seen there.

Even on the way to the camp, we saw a bunch of animals - gazelles, antelope, impala and cape buffalo were now so common that you would look at the briefly before looking to see if something more interesting was coming down the road. Zebra were also quite plentiful, but they were still cool because they were zebra. Even by the end of the day, giraffe were starting to become normal sights. This was part of the reason that we let the kids have a day off - if you see the extraordinary too often, it starts to become common place.

Zebra were pretty common now. But these merited a picture because they were all snuggling.

That said, the 3 older people in the group appreciated how we likely weren’t coming back, and this was our shot to see everything we could see. We got into the camp and our driver asked around to see if anyone had seen a lion recently. As we went into the park, he used his binoculars (the first time he had used them all trip) but didn’t see anything. Megan and I were somewhat skeptical that we would see a lion, since they were much more likely to come out at night than in the day, but we kept our eyes peeled. No lions on the way in, but we did see some cool giraffes up close and personal.

We got close to some giraffe.

The cool thing about these giraffe was that they were fighting. Seemed more like they were goofing around.

I assume that they were just playing around, because if not, they need some fighting lessons.

The highlight for me was seeing all of the baboons. Again, I’m a huge monkey fan and we probably saw about 200 of them throughout the day. As always, the babies were the stars of the show. Every time we came upon a group of them, there was always a lookout, (either in the trees or at the edge) and then the group itself.

A group of baboons, and their lookout.

We went to another lake and this time we definitely saw flamingos - both the greater (white) and the lesser (pink) flamingos. The lesser flamingos were just smaller, but since they were pink they seemed greater to us. There were also hippo in the lake and bunch of other (now common to us) animals. From there, we stopped at a waterfall, and then headed back to the gate.

We definitely saw some flamingos.

Every time we passed another truck, our guide would ask if they had seen the lion, and finally someone said yes. So we kept our eyes out and saw another van parked in the road (a parked van is usually a sign that there is something there to look at). As we pulled up, the guide said “there’s the lion, you can see the ears popping up out of the grass.” Even with the binoculars, I wasn’t 100% sure that what I was looking at was a lion. But then the lioness popped her head up and looked straight at us for a few minutes. Was pretty cool to finally see one in daylight.

We finally saw a lion during the day.

When we got back, we met up with the kids by the pool. Apparently, while Keira and Liam were playing Uno earlier, a zebra walked by several feet away. We all had lunch together and I played monopoly with Liam for almost 2 hours (he called it “monocoly”). After that, the girls and Liam did water color painting, while I canceled our T Mobile service and verified that our health benefits were still in effect (they are). As a side note, T Mobile was horrible - we bought a mobile hotspot there and then through some miscommunication between Lily and me, left it in Cinque Terre. When I called for a replacement, they said that they couldn’t get me a new one and had to get me another phone line (which meant I would be double billed for one more billing cycle). Since Robin was going to meet us in Kenya, they said that she could go to a T Mobile store and pick it up (40 minutes from their house). When OJ got there, there was no device there, and the store said that they couldn’t get us one. So OJ had to get a wireless hotspot in his name and Robin brought us that. So I’m never using T Mobile again (I was using it now because I had heard that Verizon and T Mobile were the best and since our phones were Verizon, getting a mobile hotspot with T Mobile seemed like a good move. But I certainly don’t recommend losing your device).

Sorry about that T Mobile rant. Here were the kids at the pool when we got back.

We then went to a cooking class that the hotel did, but it largely turned out to be a demonstration. We all had to wash our hands and wear hairnets (I’m not allowed to post pictures) but we weren’t allowed to do any of the actual cooking. But that was fine by me, and the beef stew was quite good.

DAY 38

This was another travel day. So maybe I should explain the travel days. A couple of things came together to cause these days. First, flying was an option to pretty much all of these camps.. However, Megan doesn’t like flying, and she especially doesn’t like flying in small airplanes. So when planning this trip, the default was not to fly. Second, the travel agent said these camps were pretty much all about 4 hour drives from each other or 1 hour or so flights. Our thought was that wherever we were would probably be half an hour from the airport, and then the next hotel would be another half an hour away from where we landed, and if we had to be at the airport 2 hours before the flight, then the timing would be about the same.

The problem with this line of thinking is that there is a difference between the google maps time between places and the actual time. Once you factor in the traffic and the bad road conditions in many places were you have to slow down and maneuver around potholes. So the 4 hour trip was actually 5.5-6, especially with stops for bathrooms. So without that information, driving seemed like the best option. But now, we have had 3 days that were largely taken up by driving down highways and back roads to our next stop.

So we got to the main gate of the preserve around 1, and although we had gotten packed lunch from the prior resort, the family just wanted to go ahead to the new resort and be done with the driving. At the gate, there were a bunch of women trying to sell the types of things that the roadside stands sell (bracelets, wood carving, etc) and the driver warned us that we should roll up our windows because they will come out and stick their hands into the vehicle to try to sell you things, and who know if they take anything when they reach in.

Luckily we had that warning, because they were VERY aggressive in trying to sell things, and even though we consistently said no through the closed windows, they continued to tap on the windows and tried to sell things. At one point, one of the women actually tried to slide open Megan’s window from the outside to shove some knickknack into the vehicle. We went through the gate, and then went to the bathroom connected to the gate, and when we started to walk back to our van, the women followed us (we didn’t realize that they could travel back and forth between the gate, since we had to show our passports and pay a fee to get in). We quickly jumped into the van, but our driver was nowhere to be found. Worse, he left his window all the way down and a woman leaned into the vehicle and tried to sell us things. Eventually, she got the hint and left, and our guide returned.

The next hour was a drive through the preserve to get to our camp and we saw all sorts of animals - zebras (which were now common and barely warranted a second look), giraffes (which were common but still merited a look), as well as buffalo, gazelles and other gazelle like animals (it was hard to keep gazelle, antelope, Thompson gazelle, impalas, water bucks and now topis (the new antelope type animal in this reserve) straight). We did see a rhino, from somewhat of a distance, which in this location was a rare thing to see.

When we got to the resort, we had a repeat of the prior long day of driving where the kids just wanted to be out of the car, and although the adults did too, we still felt the pull of a game drive as something that you couldn’t pass up. So we went out again.

We saw all the standard animals again, but were on the lookout for cats - with leopards and cheetahs the last thing that we hadn’t really seen. On the way into the camp, the guide pointed to a warthog carcass that was hanging from a tree, and said that a leopard likely had killed it, and then dragged it up there so it could eat it without being bothered. I was the only one who would look at it. So although that was interesting, it wasn’t seeing a leopard. I'm not going to post this pic, but if you want to see it, just email me.

After about an hour in, we got to a point where 3 vans were parked in a row (usually a good sign that there was something worth seeing). Eventually, our tour guide said it was a cheetah and pointed it out to us. The problem was that we needed binoculars to see it and it took us about 5-10 minutes before we saw something that was probably a cheetah, but my testimony wouldn’t stand up in court.

On the way home, we saw a group of elephant and drove over in their direction. On the way, there was a hyena just lying the road, and it didn’t really move as we approached it or drove around it. Its friend jogged over from a little ways away, and then just lay down in the road too about 10 feet from it. Strange, but they looked cute.

This first hyena was just laying in the road, then his friend came over and did the same thing.

We drove over to the elephants and it was a group of 3 adults and 2 baby elephants. Our driver went over there and in our opinion got too close to them (our driver had previously told a story about how an elephant could ram a van, but likely only would if they thought a baby was in danger). Then, one of the babies came running up to the van, which made for a good picture, but scared us a bit. Even the driver started to pull away, but he more or less circled around them, rather than away from them and we told him that we just needed to get away.

Baby elephants steal the show every time.

After that, we drove back to the camp and saw a few more animals and a beautiful sunset.

I love these trees, especially against a sunset.

DAY 39

This was our first full day in Masai Mara. Our hotel is right on the Sand River, which is the natural border of Kenya and Tanzania. This means that our view out the back of our room was on the Serengeti.

The left side of this picture is Tanzania (Serengeti) and the right side is Kenya (Maasai Mara).

We got up and had breakfast at 7:15 and were on safari by 8ish. The goal was to see more big cats in our 4 hour game drive. We had driven around for 2 hours and hadn’t seen much new beyond some elan and some mongooses (FYI, I googled it, and that is the correct plural form of mongoose). And it wasn’t for a lack of trying - our guide seemed to know where in general the cats should be, and we drove all over and would ask other guides along the way if they had seen anything, but to no avail. t this point, I was starting to get resigned to the fact that we wouldn’t see anything. We had been on something like 7 game drives, and if one of them didn’t pay off, that would still be a pretty high hit rate.

But then, we got a tip and drove to an area, and we saw a bunch of jeeps parked together. I started to think of the jeeps as animals themselves - whenever there was something to see, they all gathered together, the same way that animals might all converge if there was fresh water. So we headed over there.

We came up to the jeep on one side of a patch of bushes and the driver pointed into the bushes, where it was a bit of a culvert, so the view wasn’t good, but the driver kept pointing like there was something obviously there. We couldn’t see anything, even our driver, who was usually able to see things well before any of us could. So we went around to the other side where another jeep was.

We still couldn’t see anything, but the first jeep was in between us and apparently the best view, as someone in the other jeep was talking about how spectacular it was. Eventually, they moved away and we took their spot and we got this picture of a leopard.

Very hard to find, but impressive once we saw him.

After that, we went hunting for lions. We had already seen 4 lions in previous trips, but some were in the dark and the other one was kind of far away (and the kids weren’t with us for that one) and we didn’t get a good look at all at a cheetah. After about 15 minutes, we came upon another group of jeeps and saw these two. Pretty impressive animals, even if they were just lying around.

They weren't doing much, but they still commanded our attention..

From there we went looking for the lionesses, and we found them about 10 minutes later, but our guide quickly moved us away before we got too good of a look because the rangers were coming, and all of the jeeps were apparently a little closer to the wildlife than they should be, so we moved on.

We drove around for about 20 minutes and after getting some directions from a couple other drivers, we came upon a spot with a bunch of jeeps already there. And that is where we saw the cheetah.

Lily said that she could beat this animal in a race..

At this point we were feeling really good. After about 2 hours of not seeing anything new (we saw a lot, but all animals we had already seen), we saw all the big cats in the span of about 1 hour. So we headed home. But we had to stop when we saw this giraffe who was essentially hanging out at a photo spot.

I think that this giraffe knew it was in a photo spot.

When we got back to the camp, Keira was feeling a bit light headed and went back to the room to sleep while we had lunch. The plan was to have a “sun downer” - a sunset picnic in the savannah and take some pictures. Keira was still not feeling well when we went out, so the 6 of us went out with our guide. Our resort had the right version of Captain Morgan, so I was all set.

So far, I've found the "correct" Capital Morgan in Rome, Istanbul, Nairobi and on safari.

It felt a little bit weird to be out of the jeep and eating food when there was wildlife around. Our guide brought us to a place that was mostly clear, and some water buck and an ostrich were out. We had passed by areas where there were elephant and buffalo, both animals that could get aggressive. I felt somewhat reassured by the water buck and ostrich, feeling like if they were ok being there, then there probably weren’t lions around.

The sunset was even more amazing than the night before.

DAY 40

We didn’t really have anything on our agenda, so we decided to sleep in an extra hour. The night before was quite windy, and there were a lot of animal sounds through the night. When we got to breakfast, the waiter asked if we heard the lions kill the wildebeest last night, in between tents 7 and 8? By the way, Keira and Robin were sleeping in tent 6!

At this point, you are probably asking - what does he mean “tent”? Its more than just canvas, right? Well, not really. For pretty much all of these places, there has been a wooden platform that the structure is built on. From there, it varies a little about how permanent the structure is, but its usually a wooden frame, but with canvas tent walls and/or mesh tent walls, with canvas flaps that come down at night to keep the light out in the morning. But there are a lot of gaps, and so whatever the outside temperature is, is pretty much what the inside temperature. At this location, your “door” looks like a standard tent door - it has a zipper that goes from ceiling to floor, and then there are two zippers at the bottom that go in either direction to allow the door to open more broadly. The “security” comes when we use a carabiner to lock the 3 zippers together. This is mostly about keeping out monkeys and baboons, who apparently have figured out how to unzip the tents. A lion, meanwhile, would just claw through the tent if it really wanted to get inside.

The latest in anti-lion technology.

Apparently, after they killed it, one of the lines crossed the river in Tanzania and the other two went back into Kenya. The staff then dragged the carcass away from the camp so the hyena and other animals that would be interested in carrion wouldn’t come into the camp. The manager said that was the first time in the 2 years she had worked here where a kill happened on property. So I guess we are lucky? It certainly was lucky we did our sundowner last night, because there is no way Megan would have let us do one tonight (we were only about 10 minutes from our camp, out in the plains…)

Robin wanted to go to a spot she heard of that was on the border of Tanzania and Kenya and get her picture taken, so she could add one more country to her travel list. So we left on what was supposed to be a quick trip there. Unfortunately, no one thought to ask how long it would take to get there.

On the way, Lily asked “What’s that?” pointing to something I had seen and disregarded as likely some sort of old piece of wood. But the driver said “Lions!” and we drove over to get a better look at these guys.

From further away, they didn't look like this.

This one looks pretty fierce.

Actually, he was just yawning.

It was so funny that we spent 2 hours looking for lions the day before, before we saw anything, and then we just happened on 4 lions the next day without even trying. We kept going and got Robin her photo on the border.

Checking another country off of the list.

From there, the guide told us the river was a few minutes away, so we drove over there and saw a mongoose, about 11 hippos and a couple of crocodiles.

The pictures of the crocodiles didn't come out well. You can see a bunch of hippos in the river too.

Then we drove back. It seemed to take a bit longer getting back than getting there, and it wasn’t clear if we got lost or if the driver wasn’t on board with our quick safari plan, and wanted to see more. We did see some jeeps parked together and went to investigate and saw 5 cheetah.

Don't play cards with these guys.

We continued on, and saw a few more jeeps, and our driver said it was probably lines, so we went to investigate and saw these guys.

Definitely a lot more lions around than we thought when we did our sundowner.

It was still another hour back to camp, and our 2 hour excursion (in our mind) was well over 4 hours). But we did see some cool stuff.

After lunch, Liam wanted to swim in the pool so we went over there. We took a pit stop, walking down in the riverbed between the two countries, where Liam found a Wildebeest bone and used it as a microphone.

My guess is Megan didn't (and still doesn't) know that this was going on.

Back at the pool, I was playing a game with him, pretending that I didn’t want to go into the pool because I was afraid of crocodiles. After he swam the length of the pool to prove nothing ate him, I told him I was afraid that there were baboons in the pool. And then I saw an elephant on the other side of the river. I kept saying, “there’s an elephant!” to Megan, Robin and Keira and they just kept talking to each other, and I wondered if elephants had now become common, until one of them said, “oh, there’s an actual elephant, I thought you were still playing the game.”

But there wasn’t one elephant, there was actually 3 including a baby elephant. We watched them for a while, and Megan said to Liam, “Are you looking at the baby elephant?” and the points off in the wrong direction and says, “Do you mean that one?” And just when we were ready to correct him and point him in the right direction, we look where he was pointing and there were another 3 elephants. And then they just kept coming, we counted 14 elephants in total.

The elephants came over to watch the humans in the pool.

After that, we back to the room and rest for a little bit, and an antelope walked past our back porch. Such a cool place.

Later we ate dinner. Breakfast and lunch are served outside, but dinner is in a little building similar to the rooms - a wooden frame, but mesh/canvas walls and zipper door. But the inside is made up fancy. After dinner, the manager came over to see how we were doing and there was an animal that had been swooping around the ceiling from time to time - I thought it was a moth and Elenna thought it was a bird. The manager corrected us - apparently it was a bat. So that’s another animal we can add to our list, but not really one we want to.

DAY 41

Another day of long travel to our next hotel. We were sad to leave Masai Mara, which had become our favorite place (although a close call with Tambarare). Once again the trip was long, about 5 hours with no stops. The country side was beautiful - plains for as far as you could see. Then there would be farms, and you would see a person, often a little child - maybe 7 years old, holding a stick and watching over 20 sheep by the side of the road. Then you would get to a town, where there were people walking up and down the main street and buildings selling goods. Usually they were a bit run down - there were a lot of buildings that we passed that seemed half built and then abandoned. There were also a number of tin-roofed shacks that people lived in, especially as we got closer to Nairobi.

Usually the roads were one lane, so what would often happen is that if we were stuck behind a truck or a slow car we would pass it. Every once in awhile, there would be oncoming traffic that would make doing so a little scary but our guide was generally pretty good about not cutting it too close. The one exception was we went up the mountain, where there were a lot of trucks, which required passing a lot of vehicles or driving 20km/h and tripling the time on the road. But when you go up a mountain, the road often curves, lowering visibility. And if you don’t try to pass the truck in front of you quickly enough, then the car behind you tries to pass both you and that truck. So it was a very crazy set up of cars trying to pass trucks on winding roads on the side of a mountain. I think Megan had 4 near heart attacks.

Beyond this, there was plenty of nature to see. At the beginning of every drive out of a camp, we were still in a camp, so we could see zebra, giraffe, antelope, etc. Once we got to the dirt highway, you usually could still see some of those animals. Then you would see cows, sheep and goats along the side of the road. And occasionally some baboons. There was no shortage of things to look at it.

We arrived at Giraffe Manor, which was easily the most expensive stop on the tour, which in part was why we were only here 1 night. The manor itself was quite fancy, but the draw, as you might expect, was the giraffes. When we checked in, they had us sit in a little grassy patio section and gave a brief introduction. We were going to be able to feed the giraffe, but always from head on. Trying to do it from the side could result in lacerations or a broken nose if the giraffe decides to shake its head. There were warthogs on the grounds, so don’t feed them. Although there is a little wall, stay away from them because they can jump if if they want to, and then charge you. So that put us on guard a bit.

The warthogs quickly became Robin's second favorite animal on the safari, based in part on how they run. Bur really, it was based on how cute the babies are. Did you know that the Swahili word for warthog was Pumba - the name of the warthog in the Lion King?

We went to our rooms which were great - we had a family room with a giant living room, where Robin and the kids stayed and a separate room where Megan and I were that also had a balcony. The hotel left a little kids basket of activities in the family room for Liam with giraffe ears, colored pencils, dice and “Snakes and Ladders”. They told us to come down at 4:15 for tea and giraffe feeding, so we did. The cakes were good as waited for the giraffes to come at 5pm.

We got to have tea with the giraffes.

Then we were able to feed giraffes for the next hour. Their tongues were rough, but not quite sand-papery. There was a good amount of slobber that was left on your hand when you were done, but it was a great experience.

Pretty cool to be this close to giraffes, even if your hands get a little slobbery.

Then they took us to a photo spot where you could stand on a swing and feed the giraffes. Honestly, it felt a bit awkward, but some of the pictures came out well.

Nothing is more natural than feeding a wild animal on a swing.

Keira and surprisingly Elenna (who usually loves animals) were a bit afraid of the giraffes. Keira called it a “once in a lifetime experience”, but meant it like “now that she had done it, she never wanted to do it again in her life” kinda way.

Keira isn't an animal lover (to say the least) so her reaction wasn't a surprise. Elenna is an animal lover, but decided not so much a giraffe lover. And who knew that giraffes had such long tongues?

I think that Robin was in heaven.

I think that Robin would still be there, if she could be.

In a lot of the pictures, we have silly grins on our faces, and given that I can take 100 pictures and then delete 90 of them, you won’t see them, and I certainly wouldn’t be allowed to post them. In the olden days, with actual film, I might have taken 10 shots and then those grins would have been the only pics and would have been immortalized forever. So we were doubly lucky, first we don’t have pictures where we look that silly, but also lucky to have the experience that was cool enough to inspire those kinds of smiles.

I'm not stupid enough to try to post the pics with the silly grins, but they are there.

DAY 42

They told us to get up at 6am and feed the giraffes who would come to our window. They left a little basket of giraffe food in our rooms, so we got up early and did that. Our rooms were on the second floor and only the tallest giraffes could be fed from our balcony.

Giraffes are tall, but not so tall then can easily get up to the second floor balcony.

We eventually coaxed him around the corner so we could feed him from our room, which was also similarly high.

We invited them into the room, but they preferred to eat outside.

After that, we went down and ate some breakfast. Then they opened a window and a couple of giraffes poked their heads in.

Giraffes were very polite breakfast guests.

After that, we went to a baby elephant sanctuary. Our guide had told us to get there early and stand at the front of the line, so we got a good view of the elephants and could put them. So we put our years at Disney and rope dropping to good use. We got there when the park opened, which was an hour before they let people into the viewing area. We stood by the entrance, but as always happens in situations like this, people who arrive a hour later start pressing up and trying to get to the front. When they opened the area for us to walk about 200 meters to the viewing area, it was a mad dash. As we were jostling, Lily got put in charge of Liam and they were falling behind and I fell back a little between them and the others. At one point, Lily loudly said, “C’mon Liam, lets catch up to daddy” when I was a few feet ahead, but then a woman cut them off and then her family lengthened the distance in between us.

This was a bit of a running theme so far on this trip and was trule in Italy, Istanbul and Nairobi. People seemed to have little interest in whether what was clearly a family traveling together got separated from each other and largely would jostle and separate us. This could just be that we were in touristy areas, so there was a large mix of people from all over the world with different views on this, but as far as I’m concerned, if a family with kids is traveling together, you make way for them.

We ended up getting to the viewing area in good time and had a space where 6 of us could stand. First came a baby rhino, but it was malnourished and maimed when the rescue people found it, so it looked very little and sickly.

It was a bit sad watching this rhino, who was still a bit malnourished, even if he was clearly better off here than in the wild.

Then they brought out a group of elephants and gave them baby bottles of milk - the elephants under 2 need milk to survive and elephants will drink milk up to the age of 5. The majority of the elephants there were brought because the mom had died and the baby would have starved otherwise.

The elephants got good at drinking out of a baby bottle.

Then they brought out another round of elephants, slightly bigger - more like 3-5 years old vs the 2 and under group earlier.

Megan and Robin enjoying the experience.

It was neat to be that close, but it was also a very “zoo-like” experience - not at all like seeing the other elephants in the wild.

Liam was bored and asked to walk away to another area and then promptly fell and hurt himself. Lily quicky noticed and picked him up. After a few minutes I switched with her so she could get a good look at the elephants. A few minutes after that, Keira was bored and she took Liam. After that, we went to a restaurant that was in a sculpture gallery. Very realistic sculptures of animals, including a crocodile, that we will call a gator.

The African cousin of the Fayson Gator.

From there, we tried to go to the Karen Blixen museum (the woman that “Out of Aftrica” was based on, but the only way to buy tickets was on-line and the website wasn’t working. Despite us standing at the ticket office, no one could take our cash or credit cards to get in. After Megan, Robin and I all separately failed to get the website to work (on two browsers), so we just gave up and walked away. The man at the gate didn’t seem to understand our frustration, and kept saying that we were moving our phones when we pushed submit, and the website was a bit sensitive - but that’s not really how the internet works.

From there, we went back to the Kazuri Bead factory, because Liam’s bracelet broke a few hours after we left there the first time. They fixed it and Robin bought another souvenier. While we waited for them to fix it, we started teaching Liam how to play “President” a drinking game that Megan and I played a lot in college under a less appropriate name for kids. We have taught it to the other kids, and Keira played it with her friends virtually every lunch of her high school career (but without the drinking part). Liam picked it up pretty well, but was on Elenna’s team. He was quite happy when they were president, but as soon as I won, he jumped over to my team so he is a bit of a bandwagon fan.

After that, we went in search of an ATM. I needed more money to tip our guide and we had stopped at an ATM earlier that offered dollars, euros and Kenyan shillings, but wouldn’t pay out much of any of them. So I tried about 7 times and only got about $200 equivalent and was worried about a fraud alert shutting down my card. So we went to another ATM that had a $250 withdrawal limit, but by then I was able to use it to get the money I needed. The biggest problem was that the largest denomination of the Kenyan Shilling ws 1,000, which was the equivalent of $7.75, so paying a tour guide for 8 days of showing around 7 people, ended up being a huge wad of cash.

From there, we went to the airport. One of the strangest security systems I have seen. We got to the main gate of the airport, and they had the passengers all leave, and walk into a room where we put our stuff through a metal detector, but since we left our bags in the car, didn’t really add much security. Then the car drove through the gate and had some sort of cursory inspection. The driver said that they had sensors and looked under the truck. I guess its better than nothing.

From there,, once we got into the airport building, we had to put our bags through xray machines and then got our tickets and checked our bags. From there we went through customs. After that, we had to put our carry-ons through ANOTHER metal detector, and its really not clear why.

Robin’s flight was leaving 4 hours after ours, but she said that she didn’t mind sitting in the airport, so she came with us. The problem was, we were there 7 hours before her flight and the KLM counter hadn’t opened yet. So you CAN get to the airport too early. So we said our goodbyes before going through customs. It was a nice boost to have Robin there, who is welcome any time, but particularly as another person to talk to after spending a month only with the 6 of us. She also brought us some resupply of things when she arrived and took some things home with her, lightening our load, which was a nice positive.

We got to our gate about 1.5 hours before the flight was scheduled to board (which was an hour before the official time it was leaving), and the girls all wanted snacks, but I wanted food (I usually do), because I figured we wouldn’t eat again for 18 hours. About half an our before we were to board, our flight was delayed 2 hours. 2 hours later, it was delayed 2 more hours. Now our flight was scheduled to leave the same time as Robin, and she eventually got through security and met up with us.

Keeping Liam entertained for 7 hours in the airport normally would be easy if we just gave him his ipad, but because he is now a card shark, he wanted to play cards instead. Megan and I took turns playing Crazy 8s with him for 4 hours. He likes to add new rules to the games and most of them make sense (making 4s wild draw 4s to be more like Uno, and making Kings also wild). About 4 hours in, Liam would get up and rub his eyes obviously tired, but then challenge me to another game. He did this three times, and then in the fourth game, he just stood up mid-game, and then crawled into Megan’s lap and went to sleep. After a little while, she picked him up and laid him out across a bunch of seats.

Playing 4 hours of Crazy 8s is enough to tire anyone out.

After a 5 hour delay (and 8 hours in the airport), our flight finally started boarding. The boarding process was unusually slow, as they checked passports. Our airplane had changed, so people had to be given new seats and boarding passes. The whole process probably took 30-40 minutes which is long for a small plane, but then we were taken to a bus, which brought us to the plane.

As we got a look at the plane, I laughed a little apprehensively. Megan doesn’t like small planes, and we knew this was a small one by our seat numbers (the rows were 2 on each side). But what we didn’t realize was that it was a propeller plane, with a giant propeller under each wing. Liam was dead tired, so I was carrying him and our two back packs, and we needed a little room for everything on the bus, so we moved over and were somewhat separated from everyone, but I could certainly imagine Megan’s reaction.

We boarded, and the overhead compartments couldn’t fit my or Liam’s backpack and they could barely fit stuck halfway between the seat in front/half under our feet. But it was only a hour and 40 minute flight. Liam promptly lay down on my arm and fell asleep, while I read Lord of the Rings (I had seen the movies but never read the books before). When the plane landed, Liam woke up and then asked if we had taken off yet, so he had a good flight. The flight was actually pretty smooth, so propeller planes might not be so bad.

We got through customs (which required us to buy travel insurance as well as pay for a visa), but I did all this on-line prior and it was pretty smooth, albeit there was a line. When we got to the baggage carousel, we only saw 3 bags (mine, Lily’s and our stroller that we gate checked). When we asked when the next round of bags would be out, they said that they were all out and if we were missing bags, we had to fill out a form and they would be here the next next day. It was now about 3AM, and by the time we filled out the forms (there was a line to do this) we didn’t get into our car until about 3:30AM.

Our guest house had arranged a car, and it turns out that our driver was basically the manager of the house, and the person that we should contact if we needed anything. We got to the house around 4:30AM, at which point Liam, Elenna and Keira went to bed (Liam went into his room and just passed out on the couch he was sleeping on without even taking off his shoes). The air conditioning in Lily’s room wasn’t working, and in our room it was working too well (and we couldn't turn it off). By the time we got all that sorted out, it was about 5AM. Our place serves breakfast, but we knew that no one would be up in time, so I arranged for our driver to take me to the grocery store the next day at noon.