I got a chance to go on a little safari (journey in Swahili) this past weekend. Tim (dutch guy here doing research) was invited by a colleague of his (Walter - also dutch but living here permanently) to go out to Hell's Gate National Park (about 2 hours drive from Nairobi) and had some extra space in the car so Lauren & I were invited along. We set out Saturday morning and made our first stop around lunch time (the drive was very slow because of thick fog that caused several accidents) on Lake Naivasha at Elsamere – former home of Joy Adamson (author of “Born Free”). We had lunch there surrounded by monkeys, colobus, and colourful birds that swooped down to steal your food if you weren't watching. From there we head on the VERY bumpy road - to give you an idea of how bumpy and pothole filled the highway was, people don't actually drive on the road, they drive BESIDE the road because to actually drive on the road could take hours and would probably permanently damage your car (even if it was 4-wheel drive).

The park itself was great – it is said to be the inspiration for the scenery used in The Lion King – and you can kind of see it – lots of gorges & cliffs overlooking vast plains. Once driving around the park we were lucky enough to see tons of zebra (there are so many zebra it gets to the point where you get bored seeing them), gazelle (difficult to photograph because they are very timid), eland (big antelope – also timid), giraffe (most exciting to see – we saw 2 pairs of 2 but they stumbled away after a few minutes), African buffalo, baboons, vervet monkeys, and lots of birds. The number of animals was astounding. This park allows you to walk around if you want because there are no predators in the park (lion, cheetah, etc). The only disappointing thing was the weather – it was quite overcast and hazy which made photography difficult and didn't yield as good of results as I would have hoped. However, it was a great experience. We camped overnight on top of one of the cliffs. The other people camping there told us they saw hyena's the night before. That kind of freaked me out. But we didn't see any. Probably because it was so cold.

The next morning we went for a walk and saw all of the same animals that we saw the day before, except more or less stumbled upon them walking. The zebras are so numerous it seemed almost like they were cows in a field. They seemed to have the same relaxed attitude as well. Even as we were driving out and the zebra were on the road – we had to honk for them to move.

On the way home we took the “old highway” back into Nairobi – stopping briefly to check out a tiny Italian church on the side of the road built by the Italian prisoners who also built the highway, back in the 1930s. We stopped to view the Rift Valley – it seems like you can see forever – and enjoyed some time in the sun, chatting with some locals.