2011 » 2Taylors » Page 16

Amboseli National Park

Posted by Elizabeth at 12:36 pm

Jul 242011

We left Nairobi and headed for Amboseli National Park. Once again, the road from the main tar road to the park was horrible and full of corrugations. Most of the time we spent on the tracks that have been made on either side of the road rather than on the road itself. At least this time though it was only about 30km,

The park itself is quite small and at this time of year the animals are all around the swamp areas which means you travel over the same few roads during your game drives. The park is mostly a plain and dry, except in the swamp area. Whilst we saw lots of elephants and the highlight was seeing a cheetah with 4 very small cubs, which we had all to ourselves for ages, we were in general disappointed with the park. I think we have seen so many animals and parks now that we want to see the unusual rather than the regular, along with some varied scenery. If it was one of the first parks you visited then it would be fantastic as you are guaranteed to see heaps of animals.

Whilst we were in Amboseli we decided we would treat ourselves and spend the 2 nights in a lodge. The first night we stayed at Ol Tukai which is right in the middle of the park with views out to to the swamp from your room where we could see elephants, zebra, wildebeest and buffalo as well as hear the hippos. It was great to have a really hot, long shower for a change and the food was great. The second night we stayed at Kilima lodge, just outside the southern park gate. This time we were in a “tent”, well at least the walls and roof were made of canvas, but that is about as close to a tent it got. Again the food was great and we even got a free 30 minute massage each. Both places were expensive but we negotiated them down on the price quite a bit, at Kilima we got just over 30% off. Both of us have to say though that we sleep better in our tent!

We did though finally manage to see Mt Kilimanjaro. It wasn’t completely clear, but we could see the bottom and the top, which has very little snow on it, with a band of clouds in the middle. Most of the day though it is hidden behind cloud and mist and you can’t see any of it at all.

Samburu National Park

Posted by Elizabeth at 6:33 pm

Jul 272011

After spending yet another couple of nights at Jungle Junction in Nairobi, and meeting up again with Jean and Malcolm who were still there awaiting their departure north, we decided to head north to Samburu National Park. The park is definitely worth the visit due to the different animals you will see there, but the entry fees are ridiculous. It cost us $US70 per person, yet if we were a non resident on an organised tour then it would only be $US40 – how does that logic work?? We tried to get them to only charge us the tour rate but needless to say we weren’t successful. At least this time the car was only 300Ksh ($3).

We had not decided if we would camp or not, and seeing as it was our wedding anniversary we decided to check out a couple of the lodges. The first wanted $US560 for a tent in the dirt and wouldn’t budge. We then tried Samburu Lodge who originally wanted $US440 but we ended up paying $US286 after pleading poor and telling them it was our anniversary. We had a lovely large banda with a fantastic hot shower with full water pressure, the food was plentiful and quite nice and the lodge itself was pleasant – they even feed the crocodiles right next to the bar each night. Our park fees only allowed us to stay until 5pm so mid afternoon we thought we had better check out where we were going to stay as it was too far to drive anywhere else. We negotiated at the park gate to let us go out and check out a community camp a couple of kilometres away and then either come back in and stay until 6.30pm, or, if we stayed in the park again, to only charge us $70 rather than the full rate as we needed to leave first thing in the morning to get to our next destination. The community camp was OK, but I didn’t feel quite comfortable enough as we were about as far north in Kenya as you can go and still be “safe” and the camp was pretty much in the village. We decided to head back to Samburu Lodge and see what deal we could strike. They offered the same rate as the previous night so we took it. Long story, but we ended up with a smaller, although still nice room, we had no water in the shower either at night or again in the morning (they did try to fix it and the whole camp had an issue) and then in the morning when we tried to collect our lunch boxes we were told they would be 40 minutes but we had to be out of the park by 9am and did not have time to wait. Not happy! The manager was quite understanding though and tried to appease us. In the end we paid less than the local rate – $US150 which was pretty good.

Samburu had some new animals for us, namely the Gerenuk, Grevy’s Zebra, Reticulated Giraffe and the Beisa Oryx which made it worth the trip. We also saw elephants, lions, dik-diks, impala, buffalo, baboons, vervet monkeys, hare, crocodiles, black-backed jackal, mongooses, waterbucks, warthogs, grant’s gazelles, squirrels and a leopard tortoise. The highlight though was finding a leopard sitting on a fallen tree trunk about 10 metres from the road, elevated just above the bushes with no branches or leaves obstructing him AND we had him all to ourselves for about 10 minutes. A tour van then turned up, sent out the call on the radio and within minutes every vehicle in the park was crowded around him stuck in a traffic jam on a track that was only wide enough for one vehicle at a time. Needless to say we moved off shortly after they arrived and had the rest of the park to ourselves.

Aberdare National Park

Posted by Elizabeth at 7:20 pm

Jul 292011

We were undecided whether to head to Lake Nakuru (knowing it would cost us at least $210) and was quite a drive from Samburu, or head towards Lake Naivasha, knowing we needed to be back in Nairobi by midday Saturday. In the end we changed our mind completely and ended up at Aberdare National Park for the night and then headed to Lake Naivasha the next day.

Aberdare National Park is a stark contrast to the parks we have been in recently. It is quite mountainous and covered in thick, lush vegetation, making animal spotting pretty difficult. In fact, the only way you really see any of them is if they run out on the road in front of you seeing as open areas are few and far between. Whilst we didn’t see too many animals, it was a pleasant change and we still managed to see buffalo, heaps of warthogs, bushbuck, defassa waterbuck, baboons, giant forest hog, elephants and black-and-white faced colobus monkeys. The elephants are pretty amazing as they climb the steep mountainsides eating the whole time. I’m not sure how they manage to keep their balance.

We headed across through the park and down to Lake Naivasha where we spent the afternoon relaxing.

Our car has decided to become very sick. It is struggling to make it up even the smallest hill and will not rev past 2000 revs no matter how hard you try, making the hills on the way to Samburu and through Aberdare quite a slow, tedious journey. It is blowing white smoke when climbing the hills and has no power whatsoever, not that it had a lot in the beginning. It is again booked in at Toyota in Nairobi for some TLC and hopefully a full recovery!

Cairo and Giza

Posted by Elizabeth at 8:46 pm

Aug 012011

On the way to Amboseli we decided we would change our plans again and head to Egypt when we returned to Nairobi, so I called a travel agent whilst we were driving and got things started. Once we got back to Nairobi we dropped in at the travel agent and a few days later we arrived in Cairo.

Our first day in Cairo we visited the Great Pyramids. They are amazing! They are soooo big and it is mind blowing to think the ancient Egyptians managed to build them thousands of years ago. There are 3 large pyramids in Giza and these are the ones that everyone recognises. The famous Sphinx is also located here, again it is the one everyone knows. They are located literally on the edge of Giza town – the town just stops and the pyramids are right there. It was pretty hot and humid, especially compared to Nairobi, but not unbearable. It is also low season, and Ramadan, so there were very few tourists and lots of shops and vendors were closed which means less people to hassle you and no crowds, which was fine by us. One night we went to the Sound and Light Show at the pyramids. It was OK but nothing to write home about, I’m just glad that it did not cost a lot of money.

From the pyramids we visited the Egyptian Museum, which is located in Cairo right next to Tahrir Square, the location of all the demonstrations that have been happening. We saw no sign of unrest. Yes there are still a few tents in the square and some peaceful protesters, but certainly nothing that had us concerned in anyway. Our guide told us that when the riots were happening in January it was very scary and that her family and herself did not leave their apartment for 21 days straight. It will be interesting see what the result of the trial and the election in September will bring.

The Egyptian Museum is huge with so much stuff inside it. Without a guide I think it would be difficult to understand the things that are there as the signage is very limited and it would take you days to see all of it. It could though do with a bit of dusting and maintenance so it looks quite tired and run down, which is a shame as it is full of amazing artefacts. All the treasures that were found in Tutankhamen’s tomb are here and they are truly amazing and absolutely priceless. To think this was a boy king who ruled for a very short time, yet his tomb was filled with all this gold and precious stones, just imagine what would have been in the tombs of the pharaohs that ruled for years and years! We also saw the mummys of various kings, again pretty amazing to think they are thousands of years old yet you can still see their hair and fingernails.

The old town was next on our list where we wandered through the old streets and visited a number of churches including the Hanging Church (a Coptic orthodox church), St George Church (Greek Orthodox) and Ben Ezra Synagogue. All the churches are old, but the Hanging Church is believed to have been built around 690AD with additions and renovations along the way. It is a pretty spectacular church and worth a visit. We also visited the Al Azhar Mosque in Cairo which is huge and can apparently accommodate 20,000 people for prayer. Again having a guide with us made it much more interesting. We took a quick wander through the bazaar, but not being shoppers we didn’t spend too long there as it was full mainly of tourist stuff.

We visited the Citadel by ourselves one afternoon. An air conditioned taxi was easy enough to find, and although I think we paid a bit too much, it was still very cheap. Unfortunately most of the sights within the Citadel were closed – but of course they failed to mention that when we bought our tickets. The only things open were the military museum and the Mohammed Ali Mosque, which was extremely dirty both inside and out and not particularly attractive. We were glad we did not organise an actual tour here as it would have cost 4 times as much as would really not have been worth it. For the amount we paid it was OK and filled in the afternoon, it was just annoying that nothing was open and no one thought it relevant to let you know.

Abu Simbel

Posted by Elizabeth at 8:50 pm

Aug 022011

We were up at 4.15am to catch a flight to Abu Simbel. I had managed to get a dodgy stomach again during the night so was not feeling the best and Abu Simbel was hot, REAL hot. Needless to say I struggled to make it around the temples feeling absolutely terrible and didn’t really get to appreciate them.

There are 2 temples at Abu Simbel that were built by Ramses II for himself and his queen Nefartari in the 13th century BC. When the High Dam was built in Aswan both temples were relocated to prevent them from being submerged. Both temples are fully enclosed so you get to see how the rooms in these and other temples would have looked and both are decorated with various statues, scenes and hieroglyphics. (You are not allowed to take photos inside unfortunately). The site itself is small and that is pretty much all there is to do in Abu Simbel.

We were going to stay the night in Abu Simbel, but the hotel looked like it was straight out of the 1930s and nothing had changed. There was no air con in the reception area and I was feeling so sick I really did not want to stay. We decided it would be better to sit in an air conditioned car for the 3 hour drive back to Aswan and get a modern air conditioned room rather than stay here, so with some help from the local tour representative we organised to go to Aswan. You can only travel between Abu Simbel and Aswan via convoy. The convoy leaves Abu Simbel around 11am and 4pm, so we had to wait until 4pm before we could leave. We had 2 different people tell us that the convoy was originally put in place because the area is extremely remote, there was no mobile phone coverage and there was some security risk. Today though there is coverage and no risk, but the process still is in place because it has always been there.

The rep took us to a local Nubian restaurant where we were the only customers given it is Ramadan and they do not eat until after sunset. They were very friendly and helpful supplying us with bottled water, chicken noodle soup, egyptian bread with tahini, a chicken casserole with rice, desert and fruit juice when all I asked for was some rice and Wayne was having the chicken and rice. There was way too much food and they only charged us 70LE ($11) which to us was very cheap, but we did find out later that for locals it was a bit more than usual, but we were grateful and happy to pay what they asked.

It was then time to meet the other cars for the convoy. There was only one other car travelling with us and a police officer travelled in their car. After exchanging phone numbers we headed off and that was the last we saw of the car that was supposed to be travelling with us as they were going at a much slower speed. So much for having to go in convoy!

The road to Aswan is a good, pretty straight tar road that travels through some harsh desert. There were very few buildings that were still inhabited, pretty much no one around except for a few police here and there and we hardly saw another car. I was relieved to see that our hotel in Aswan was a modern, air conditioned hotel.