Felt very commercial after MBC. The food was very western; meat and potatoes. Food seemed to be processed and pre-prepared; lots of preservatives. Didn't feel as welcome. We were the only people in the car park.

Havings drinks up in the deck in the fig tree itself was quite nice. Just have to watch for the baboons and vervet monkeys. Maasai would walk around and throw stuff at them yet there was a large bird feeder that seemed to feed the primates, as well.

Herds of people were ushered into safari vehices everyday. Yet we completely self-drove at fig tree (we left Kiswe at MBC, where he normally stayed) and saw more animals than were reported in the log books.

Our first navigational experience was with just Willem, Laurie, and Shane. Monika was not feeling well enough to go out with us.  We had no trouble finding everything we wanted to find on our own. We did use the GPS with a rought map to try to find things. Our drive took us out to some very nice river viewings along the Mara River.

Kept seeing maneless male lions -- often only identified after seeing them in pictures. Most of them did look fairly young, but they were also very large. 

The roads inside Masai Mara were much better than the roads to and from Narok. That said, the river crossings definitely required a 4x4.

Pooled our pack lunch materials on the way back from MM to Amboseli. We handed these out to kids, who were very thankful -- in some cases, the parents that may have been nearby were, too.

Nearly every kid we passed was trying to solicit. On one occasion, there was a young boy who wasn't soliciting but was by himself... we handed him a couple of apples -- he was completely ecstatic and didn't know what to do or say. (He also then had his hands full trying to scramble back up the side of the road).

Drove around Narok while Monika and Willem dealt with getting some cash. Quite interesting... the roads were unmaintained and filthy, but life was going on as normal. We definitely got looks -- mostly because we were the only white people in sight.

Tried to take a short cut to skip Nairobi -- ended up next to some military installation. Was told we could take the dirt road around. That led us out a ways where we were told it wouldn't go through but the road we were on would come out at a town still north of Nairobi. This road turned out to be a road for a cement company. Very rough for our 4x4 vehicle and our rattle innards. We got out of the area fine. Considering we saved about 10 km of driving and the roads weren't really that much slower than the main ones, we probably didn't really lose much time at all.

When driving down the first section of the short cut, the road was pretty good. But there was a part that was washed out. We took the route around that looked most traveled. At one point, though, the car got stuck -- the dust was too slippery for it in 2 wheel mode. Willem got out to lock the front wheels -- and slipped, twisting his ankle, while walking on the same dust! Once in full 4 wheel mode, the car moved out fine -- but it was clearly a very slipper climb out of the dust river.

Dust, dust, dust! The closer we got the amboseli the dustier everything got. It was coming in from every little spot it could.

I apologize for the note-like feeling to this post.  That's exactly what it is, but I wanted to get thoughts down and out quickly so I just took our notes and plopped them in.

Posted by Shane on September 10, 2006 7:03 AM | Permalink