Kenya

Having decided that Nairobi looked rather boring i decided to splash out $260 to go on safari. We headed off on the 7 hour van journey to Masai Mara at 7.30am - which is way to early for a trip which is supposed to be a holiday. Getting out of Nairobi was a nightmare and i have decided that Nairobi really is not as nice as it seems in the centre. There really are hundreds of slums on the outskirts and the main road out of town barely qualifies as a track.

Well the 7 hour journey was definitely worth it. The views of the rift valley from the top of the hills surrounding it were breath taking. We were driving down on a cloudy overcast morning but it was still pretty incredible.

There was a lot of wildlife on the way to the national park, but inside it was incredible. There were whole herds of elephants, giraffe, zebra, gazelle, Lions, Lionesses etc...

We even saw a crocodile when we went down to a river to look at the Hippopotami. I'm kicking myself that i didn't take binoculars with me because the cheetahs were really hard to spot in the long grass.

Our camp was just outside the national park which was a bit scary, but it was really cool because it was actually run by a masai village, so the masai men guarded the camp and sat round a campfire and had a chat with us during the evenings. They invited us in to their village one day, gave us a tour and made us dance with them which was really embarassing. I drank some of the Masai beer they offered me aswell and boy was it strong! It was more like whiskey than beer.

On day 3 of the safari, we decided that jeeps were for tourists and hit the mara on mountain bikes instead. Not wanting to risk being eaten alive we thought it would be safer to explore the area just outside the national park. It was incredible, without the jeep the animals all seemed intrigued by us interesting creatures travelling on 2 wheels. The best part was when we rode right past a sleeping lion. We had no idea it was there until our guide at the rear of the group pointed out that we were about 5 metres away from the lion. The picture is truly awesome, but i was cacking myself, cause it turns out it wasn't really sleeping. Needless to say we got away fast.