Well today was fun, started out in the rain, was pouring at 8 am when we were having breakfast, but by 9:30 when we started was just a drizzle and not so bad. Of course walking into breakfast and seeing all the cheese, meat, etc. sort of has you eyeing other items, but it’s great when I compare it with hotels I’ve had to stay at in the United States and their ‘complimentary breakfast’.
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Well today was actually pretty great, rained pretty hard our last hour or two, but this morning we left around 9 am and it was nice until about noon – but we finally got to use our rain gear and it worked great— having grown up in the Pacific Northwest I didn’t have any worries about our rain gear decisions 🙂
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Well yesterday we left Porto and took a taxi about 2 hours north to Baiona Spain to begin our walk. Very nice drive, reminds me of driving the Oregon coast a bit – not much traffic and very scenic. Once we arrived in Baiona we inspected our hotel for proper “air flow” or air that flows across the bed so Cindy can sleep at night. Unfortunately we’re now in the land of the bed made out of rocks and little to no airflow – so we countered the lack of airflow with red wine at dinner. At this point, starting your day eating fresh cheese and then having the cheese plate, bread and olives at dinner is really becoming taxing. We both said after this a.m. breakfast – “probably will skip cheese tonight…” so we’ve probably over done that part of the trip so far.
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Well today we got up, had breakfast, packed our bags, did the triple room sweep to check that we had everything in order. “Ready to go…” mentally prepping myself to be hiking tomorrow after a 2 hour car drive up north. We go downstairs, start the checkout process, handing in our keys, say our goodbyes and then sit in the lobby to wait for our car to take us on our next leg of the journey…
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I was realizing last night at 3 am that I still wasn’t 100% converted to Portugal time and was probably mid-Atlantic ocean somewhere in my struggle to be fully converted to the Europe timezone. Cindy and I are able to be here sans Hayden & Gavin and boy is it a change. I also realized that when we started this blog we were in South America, the boys were eight years younger (as were we) – now they are both in college and Hayden just had his 21st birthday. How time flies…
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So we are now back in Nairobi after crossing the border from Tanzania, but have spent the last three days on a safari trek to two different parks to see various animals. By far, Tanzania was the most touristy spot we visited with 20-30 safari trucks waiting at entrances to parks and driving around in front of you. We did not see so much of this in Kenya – maybe because the distances are greater. Our first drive was about 2 hours, then another 2 hours to the hotel, then in the morning another 1.5 hours to the Ngorogoro crater. Ngorogoro is like Yellowstone national park – a sunken hole in the earth – miles across – where animals live – none really leave. Mostly wilderbeast, antelope, and zebra. Rumored is rhino’s although we didn’t officially see one up close. On the second day we think Hayden had a stomach bug, so he suffered through a couple of hours of 4×4 (very bumpy) roads – which completely sucks when you’re also feeling motion sick – but he made it through it.
So haven’t been keeping up on the blog post – largely due to non-existent internet. We are now in a nice hotel that has great internet, food, and showers! (Hot). About a week ago we left Nairobi and flew to Rwanda. We stayed at the Mille Collines Hotel (from the movie hotel Rwanda). An unbelievable place, with very nice food, great rooms and lovely staff. We stayed there one night, then the next day went back to “Africa Scout Camp” traveling to the Uganda border then about 20KM into the park for the next day of Gorilla Trekking.
For the past couple of days we have been in the Amboseli National Park in Kenya, which is about a 5 hour drive south from Nairobi. It’s one of the smaller national parks for doing the ‘safari’ which we did and were simply amazed. We spent about 4 hours in the evening, then the following day (all day) on Safari – literally stopping so elephants, zebras, giraffes, etc. could cross the road. Overall a spectacular place, with the backdrop of Mt. Kilimanjaro in the background – which we saw the first afternoon and as we were leaving. We did get lucky on our full day as there was cloud cover, so the animals were out most of the day – usually during the heat of the day they will retreat to shade/cover.
So our story begins yesterday at 4:30 a.m. when we were scheduled to ‘get up’ to meet our car at 6 a.m. for the outing to the Niavasha area. In all actuality, we were still suffering from some jet lag, so 3:30 seemed about right… The night before Cindy explained how this is a pretty easy hike, about 3 km out, and 3 km back, no worries… that’s easy. (More story below). We also went on a great boat ride after the Volcano, and then spent today biking to/from Hell’s Gate National park – all in Kenya. It’s about a 2 hour drive from our hotel to/from this area.
So it’s taken about 2 days to get onto the +9 hour time zone difference, yesterday we were up early (4 a.m.) then by noon everyone was struggling to make meaningful words come out of their mouth, so quick nap and we were better. Basically didn’t do much of anything yesterday, our apartment/hotel is connected to a mall and we went to a Chinese place for food…
Today on the other hand Cindy had setup a drive to take us through the city to explore a women’s facility that makes beads, the Karen Blixen museum (Out of Africa), and the Giraffe center – breeding and education. The traffic was brutal in Nairobi, and I wouldn’t drive here if I had to – wrong side of the road, no signs really and just a game of chicken at about every turn. Even driving in Peru doesn’t compare.
Traveling Outlaws 