For 6 days I had my Daddy here with me in Africa, and it was absolutely wonderful! We had all sorts of little adventures and I got to show him around my world a little bit, and though it was a little rough at times, I think he left pretty excited about his trip. So, for a recap, we'll start with the first couple of days...
He got in late Sunday night and we stayed the night at the AIM guesthouse in Nairobi. We slept with mosquito nets - it was pretty fun tucking him in at night! He woke up at about 4 a.m. because of jet lag, so we had a nice early start to the day. At 7 a.m. Monday morning we were picked up by our Safari driver and headed off to Masai Mara, a huge game park in southwest Kenya that stretches into the Serengeti Plains of Tanzania. We passed by Kijabe on the way and stopped at this lookout point to take a few pictures...
After looking out at the Great Rift Valley, we drove across the floor of it for about 5 hours before getting to Masai Mara. The drive out there is.. crazy. About two hours into it the road ends and it's dirt roads the rest of the way, complete with MANY potholes and cattle crossings. We passed by about 20 or 30 Masai villages with their stick fences and mud houses and watched them herd their skinny cows. After turning onto the last road that takes us to camp, we were surprised to see a herd of elephants pretty far from the actual reserve! We were only about 20 feet from them, so with my zoom lens I got some pretty great shots that I love quite a bit.. including close ups of their wonderful wrinkles :)
We got to our lodge which was like a 5 star hotel.. it was incredible to see this nice of a place in the middle of Africa! We had a fantastic lunch and then headed out for our first game drive! We actually stayed out of the park and just stayed in the land surrounding it which had animals everywhere! We immediately saw gazelle, impala, wildebeest, zebra, cheetahs, vultures, hyenas, and then eventually saw a couple hippos and cape buffalos, and finally some lions! We were about 7 feet from the lions that we saw, which was way cool, and they were pretty lazy so it was nice and safe. The hippos definitely freaked me out a little bit - they're the deadliest animals and love to attack just for fun, so when we drove feet away from one I was convinced it would just topple over our little car and crush us, but it didn't, thank God :)
The cheetahs were pretty lazy at that point and hardly moved for us.. boooo... but still way cool to see!
The second elephant herd we saw had a baby with it! So cute!
Stinkin scary...
We headed back to camp and had dinner (the food there was 5-star quality) and then headed to bed. Neither of us slept much that night between all the bugs in the room and the hyenas laughing right outside our cabin. Dad was still jet-lagged too, so that didn't help much. Neither of us were too keen on staying another night, so we decided to do another game drive and then head back. That day we actually went into the Mara Reserve which was absolutely breathtaking. We could see the Serengeti Hills which are actually in Tanzania so we weren't too terribly far from the border. We saw many of the same animals that day, but got a lot closer to the lions and finally saw giraffes too! We saw TONS of them and got pretty close, once again. We also got to see a huge herd of cape buffalo migrating to a waterhole to roll in the mud for a while to cool off.
Before leaving we stopped at a Masai Village to show Daddy what life there is like. Granted, the village we stopped at is sort of a tourist attraction so it's a little bit of a show, but it was still fun. I jumped with the Masai - got about 5 feet up! Not really, but that's okay. Dad sold me into marriage for 50 cows, I was a little upset. We got to see the insides of their mud houses - they're pretty tiny with a little part of it set aside for the baby cows and goats to sleep in the house with them.
The safari was incredible - it was unreal being surrounded by so many animals that you'd otherwise only really see in zoos. Dad LOVED seeing the animals that he's watched on the Discovery Channel so many times... it was a trip of a lifetime! Then after that, we left and headed to good ole' Kijabe.... stories coming soon! :) But it's bedtime for now...
He also brought lots of goodies from home, including ingredients for s'mores! We're convinced the marshmallows here are partly plastic and they don't sell graham crackers or Hershey's, so this was quite the treat! We had a few people over to make s'mores with us and everyone was ridiculously excited, which was really amusing to Dad.
I also happened to get THREE packages from the post office!! That right there is as good as waking up to a room full of presents on Christmas morning! I opened the package from my Aunt Linda and Uncle Art and it had all sorts of goodies in it! I also opened the flat envelope from Mommy which had my favorite pencils, cough drops, a Halloween card (that tells you how long it took to get here!) and Sour Patch kids in it! It was a great birhtday present!!
Daddy brought a box cake mix from America to make me cake on my birthday, and it was delicious! We had cake with candles, which was incredibly exciting in itself! After cake we drove into Nairobi and went to the Giraffe Center to feed giraffes - it was so cool! Its tongue tickled but it was great!
Afterwards we stopped by the mall to grab a couple things and then it was off to the airport. Saying goodbye was a lot harder than I thought it'd be, and it was a lot harder than when I left America. I think we both did our fair share of crying when I left, but he's home safely and I couldn't ask for more! We had a wonderful time - I can hardly believe Daddy visited me in Africa! I am so thankful that God blessed us with the trip and now I'm looking forward to Mommy coming in April!
