Back to Nairobi

It’s now Monday night and I know I haven’t told you much about the ride from the Mara to Nairobi yesterday so I’ll fill you in now.  The ride was supposed to take about 7 hours but we actually made it back in “only” 6.  We took the same road out of the Mara as we took into it but it took us a little longer than before because of all of the Sunday cattle drivers.  And just to show you that the roads aren't entirely uncivilized, in some places it even has two lanes....!



That was the downside, on the upside, the paved road from Narok to Nairobi was beautiful…I mean the road itself and also the scenery along the way.  It is a fairly new road, nice and smooth and even…it felt good and Jonathan enjoyed turning Bullet loose on the highway.

This route took us across a wide span of the Rift Valley.  Unlike our trip from Eldoret, when we crossed the Rift Valley it was filled with lots of sugar cane fields and other farm land.  In the part of the valley we crossed yesterday the soil must not have been as rich because we saw very little farming but many large herds of free-roaming cattle and sheep.  Unfortunately, the cattle cross that beautiful highway just like they cross the road in the Mara….on their own time and at their own speed.  It’s one thing to have to stop on a dime when you’re jostling through the Mara but when the Bullet is speeding down the highway at about 70 mph and a cow decides to mosey out onto to the road…let’s just say I’m glad my seatbelt was fastened or I would have flown from the 3re row backseat to the driver’s seat in about half a second!  We managed to make it across and then it was time to head back up the other side.

I took this shot from the car as we were driving up out of the valley.

We made a pit stop about 2/3 of the way up the side of the mountain and I tried to figure out how to use the panoramic setting on my camera....

The last 90 minutes of the drive was spent climbing back up the mountains on the other side.  The valley is about at sea level and Nairobi is at 6000 feet.  We had some awesome views of the valley but we also had some more hair-raising riding ahead of us.  Imagine passing a line of slow moving vehicles while going around blind curves….thankfully we made it to Nairobi in good shape and only one really, really close call.

Do you see two distinct lanes of traffic here...one going in each direction???

We met our drivers that were waiting to take us and show us around Nairobi and transferred our entire cache of luggage over to their cars.  We then said goodbye to Jonathan, our "expert" driver and wonderful guide.

We arrived in Nairobi on Sunday afternoon and asked our drivers to take us to the city market to do one final round of souvenir shopping.  From the moment our car stopped and pulled into a parking spot we were accosted by Isaiah and his gang of friends (with other biblical names)…who introduced themselves as our official escorts through the market.   I was able to escape about 30 minutes later…about 50 bucks lighter…. and with some really wonderful souvenirs for my family (whom I’m sure will tell me they love them even if they don’t , now that they know what I went through to get them!)

After the market we were ready for some R&R so we went for an early dinner at a place called Carnivore.  As the name implies, their specialty is meat…not just any meat, sure they have beef, pork and chicken but they also serve other exotic meats.  They used to serve meat from the wild game animals but it is now illegal to do so.  That doesn’t mean they didn’t come up with some pretty exotic meats for us to enjoy. 

The meat is all cooked on a skewer or large saber over a very large fire pit.  (if you're a vegetarion you might want to skip this next photo and the following paragraph...)

Here’s the list of what we sampled, in the order which it arrived:

Chicken, Beef Sausage, Chicken Liver…(so far, nothing too out of the ordinary) then came Camel..... Pork leg, Roast Beef, Ostrich Meatballs, Crocodile (this was actually deep fried and no it doesn’t taste like chicken, it tastes like fishy, chewy, rubber), Leg of Lamb, Bulls Balls (yep, that’s right…Mary and I couldn’t finish ours….), Barbecued Pork Rib, and Lamb Liver.  They kept coming around the table asking if we wanted more until we all said we had had enough.  It seems as though the Camel and the Roast Beef were the biggest hits with the three guys….by the way, no one asked for seconds on the Bulls Balls…

After dinner the rest of the team headed for the airport. They are all en route from London to Chicago on the second leg of their journey home even as I type.  As for me, some of you may recall that I actually got to extend my African visit by one day to visit NEGST.  So when the rest of the crew headed to the airport, a driver from NEGST picked me up and took me to Kajiji guest house on the NEGST campus.  More on that in the next and final blog entry….