Thursday 25 February 2016

DAY TWO ~ Back at Last!


We had not pre-ordered our visa using the online application system recently introduced by the Kenyan Government and as a result, we passed through immigration much quicker joining the small visa queue, as opposed to the lines of people having their online visas checked, which seemed to take longer than the visa on arrival procedure anyway.

Arriving in Nairobi with Kilimanjaro on the Dawn horizon



We collected our Landrover, rented as usual from Landrover Safaris, and began the long drive down to Voi. Seven and a half hours later, we were back in the Theatre of the Wild – Tsavo East National Park.

It was two and a half years since our last visit and it was a little disconcerting to find how much we had forgotten our way around.


Juvenile Brown Snake Eagle



After a couple of hours game drive, during which we saw plenty of Elephants, a juvenile brown Snake Eagle, Eurasian Rollers and Gerenuk. As exhaustion took its toll, we headed for Ndololo Safari Camp, where we would be spending the next four nights. The staff, very kindly prepared a late lunch for us but we were too tired to eat. After retiring to our tent, we were awoken by Patrick shouting outside to let us know that dinner was ready – we had fallen asleep and they were having great difficulty in waking us up.


Chairman of the Tsavo East Welcoming Committee comes to greet us



At dinner, we were still too tired to eat properly but the cold Tusker beer went down a treat and we went back to the tent afterwards and slept solid and deeply for 12 hours.

DAY ONE ~ The Journey Begins


We left Aberdeen at 2pm, having dropped Tsavo the Husky off at Heather's for his holiday. Neil kindly gave us a lift to the airport. This year, for the first time, we didn't have to worry about excess luggage weight because we were not taking the camping gear.

Leaving Aberdeen


Our flight to Amsterdam was early and arrived 20 minutes ahead of schedule, which was just as well, as our Amsterdam to Nairobi flight was scheduled to leave one hour after the first flight, so this gave us a little more time to dash across the airport to the Kenya Airways flight.

Kenya Airways has recently purchased several Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft to replace their older aircraft and we were pleased to find it a massive improvement. The journey time to Nairobi was an hour and a half shorter and the aircraft itself had more legroom and excellent in-flight entertainment. However, neither of us managed to sleep on the flight.

Friday 12 February 2016

About time!

We are heading back to Kenya tomorrow!

Can't wait to be back in Tsavo...Watch this space! :-)

Going back to Kenya has put a spring in our step ~ just like this Gerenuk :-)


 
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