Masai Mara!

Entry #7: 9/17/10

So this past weekend I went on a Safari (Masai Mara)!! It was SOO fun!! I have always wanted to go on a safari and it was great!
We traveled from Nairobi to the south of Kenya (close to the Tanzanian border if you look on a map)...our drive took about 6 hours. It was 6 hours of driving along some paved roads, but the majority of the trip was over dirt roads that had many, many rocks and potholes in them. So our driver was constantly swerving along the road trying to stay on the parts that were packed down from previous drivers. There were many occasions when I thought our van (9 passenger) was going to tip over, because he would go all the way to the edge of the road and then over it, so we were half on the road and half in the ditch driving! Haha, I am SO thankful that I do not get car sick--otherwise that would have been a terrible drive! Yeah, so I am sure that if the roads were paved it probably would have only taken 2 or 3 hours to get there, haha, TIA though (that is Africa).

Yeah, so that was our adventure getting there. Once we (there were 7 of us, the lady in charge of exchange students-Sylvia and Janna, Nick(who is from Bethel), and the three Korean exchange students here) arrived we ate a quick lunch (which was great food compared to the dinning hall food here at Daystar!) then we went out on our first mini safari. We road around in one of those safari vans were the top pops up and we drove around the grassland looking for animals! We did that for about an hour or two then headed back because it was getting dark. On that outing we saw wilder-beasts, lions, and some zebra and gazelles. It was great. That night we ate a great dinner and then went to bed!


On Saturday we woke up early for breakfast...then left for our daylong safari at 8AM. We were out on the grassland from about 8-4 or 5. It was SOO Great! The scenery is all pretty much the same, but I still thought it was so beautiful and the animals were so great! We saw almost every kind of animal we wanted to see: Lions, giraffes, cheetah, elephant, zebra, wilder-beasts, antelope (the smallest there is and the largest there is), and more that I can't think of right now. We also saw a wilder-beast migration..., which was crazy! There were so many of them all moving in a huge line! And then around lunchtime we had a picnic lunch, which was good:)

Then that evening we just hung out at the hotel...it was nice and relaxing. I hung out by the pool for a little bit and read. While we were there some monkeys were hanging around the pool too. Sylvia gave one of them an orange peel and it took it and ran off with its prize. Then she gave another one an apple core and it gabbed it and ran off to eat it. After that more monkeys came wanting things. So she gave them a juice box and a fanta bottle. They were all wanting to get a hold of something and they would just come right up to you! I even saw a momma monkey with her baby hanging onto her stomach, ah they were so cute:) (There are more pictures on my facebook page...)

Then Sunday we made the 6 hour drive back and we stopped at a look out point to see the Rift Valley, which is just a really huge valley (I'm sure you could google it if you are curious), but I think it is well known. At the look out point there were a few touristy stands set up and the owners came up to us and were trying to sell us anything they could. At one point, Nick was looking to buy one of those wool hats (like those Russian wool hats) and so after he bought one, the owner came up to me and kept trying to get me to try on the hat. They are very fond of letting you know that looking is free… haha. He didn’t get the hat on me, but he did get it in my hands and wouldn’t take it back from me. So after telling him no-I am not interested, several times I just handed the hat to someone else standing nearby and went to our van. Haha, they can be quite persistent!

But, yeah so the weekend was a long one and I was quite tired when we got back, but it was such a fun weekend!