It was 3 days of pure travel. DEN to NBO via Dallas and Qatar. It was only during that last lag from Qatar to Nairobi that I realized that the trip I was taking landed me almost smack on the other side of the world. In flight movies and the super power of sleeping on planes allowed me to set my ‘sleep schedule’, and when I arrived in Nairobi, was able to sleep when I got to my hotel.
At first when I arrived, I was greeted at the door of the airport by all the taxi people looking to gather me as a client. Thankfully I had pre-booked my taxi with the tour company (Shout out to GAdventures!) and that helped me when the taxi driver who told me she was my ride sent for me, I told her I had my voucher, and instead my GAdventures driver swooped in. Another traveler from a different tour of Gadventures arrived around the same time and we shared the ride to the hotel. Alex and I quickly hit it off and decided that we would venture into Nairobi for some of the fun day things the next day: both of our free day before starting our perspective tours.
The Heron Hotel is a well situated, gated hotel with a lovely outdoor bar/restaurant area. The friendly staff showed us to our rooms which were cozy and stocked with drinking water.
Travel Tip: I had a collapsable water bottle that I would refill and could keep the larger water bottle in my pack, with the smaller one strapped to the outside of my daypack.
First think in the morning we tried to get to the elephant orphanage. It opens at 11 and requires an advanced booking. When I had asked in advance about the elephant orphanage I was told that it was something that would need to be arranged when I got there. Advice: that isnt the case and here is a link to the website that allows you to make the booking. 1. you need to book pretty far in advance, and 2. the uber location for the actual enterance to the elephant orphanage is not the initial place listed.
and the Sheldrick wildlife trust is much further south than what uber lists.
While we were unable to go to the Elephant orphanage, we did get to visit the giraffe centre which allows walk-up tickets. This was a wonderful experience where we were able to walk along a boardwalk and feed a number of giraffes. After about 2 hours of womderful photographs and selfies with the giraffes, we decided to try our luck back at the orphanage to see if we could squeeze in with a group that had cancellations.
Weventured back to the elephant orphanage and hoped to arive early and scope out if any groups had a cancellation, but due to the Uber address being off we ended up getting tere to late. No such luck this time.
If you would like to book a tour that hits both and picks you up from your hotel, Trip advisor does have tours that you can book ahead. I found this one which if I did the trip again, I would probably book with ahead of time.
We ended up being right at the opening of Nairobi National Park, and while we werent able to get into the elephants, we arranged for a driver through the park and was able to spend a good couple hours driving around in private-safari-style. We were a little worried that we souldnt see anything, and we would just be driving around for a couple hours… oh boy, were we happy when we saw cape buffalo within the first few hundred meters into the park!
Inside the park there were rino, hippo, lion, warthogs, ostritch, zebra, andtelope and a veriety of birds. Fred (our driver) was really great at getting us up-close-and-personal with some of the wildlife, and as a photographer, was a GREAT kickoff to the trip.
Next time…
We venture to Arusha with GAdventures!
TravelGypsea 