Vacation in Nairobi has been more adventure packed than I thought it could be.
Last Friday we hired a car to drive us from Malava to Nairobi for our retreat with Sr. Jane. Probably something I won't do again, considering the guy nickel and dimed us until the drive here cost as much as it would have been to fly. The retreat over last weekend was fairly uneventful, but Fr. Gene (we're staying at a retreat center that is also the home of Carmelite Fathers) gave us some interesting food for thought. Staying out in the Karen area of town has given us a chance to explore parts of Nairobi we haven't been to yet, including stumbling on a bronze foundry with some truly amazing artwork (Tom has pictures up on his blog).
Vacation really began for me Monday afternoon. In an effort to start my Master's program next fall, I've been working on applications here, which meant taking my GRE in Nairobi on Monday morning. It went as well as I had hoped, so to celebrate I met Katie, her sister Amy (our first American visitor!), Tom and Michael at the famous Carnivore restaurant. Named one of the top 50 restaurants in the world, the offer more than 10 kinds of meat that waiters bring on swords to your table until you signal that you're through. I honestly can't even remember everything I ate, but I know it include some delicious spare ribs, crocodile and ostrich. Monday I also finally got to see the 6th Harry Potter movie.
Tuesday I wondering around central Nairobi with Tom and Michael. We tried to find a modern art museum that we just couldn't locate, ate at an American like fast food restaurant and went to Nairobi's national museum. The museum is highly rated in the guide books, but I thought it was pretty disappointing. There was an interesting photography exhibit and an area displaying the pre human skeletons found by Dr. Leakey up by Lake Turkana. But for all the historical things this country has to offer, the museum glosses over most of them. I will admit that the space and the land surround the museum are beautiful and it was a nice place to spend the afternoon.
Yesterday we got up bright and early and Tom, Michael and I hit the road in our rental car. We planned to climb Mt. Longonot (a recently extinct volcano offering amazing views of the Rift Valley) and then drive around Hell's Gate National Park in hopes of seeing more animals in the wild. We got to Mt. Longonot around 9 and I'm so happy we decided to climb it in the morning. The whole climb was very steep and challenging, and I don't think I would have made it to the top if it had been hotter. Mostly the climb was challenging b/c with out the rain, the path had the consistency of kitty litter mixed with sand. Think about hiking up a mountain in sand from the beach, and thats kind of what it was like. Despite the physical challenges, the view from the top was worth the pain. Check out my picasa page or Tom's blog for photos. After climbing back down, we headed to Hell's Gate. Thee park is beautiful, with tons of wild life and a staggering gorge of reddish cliffs. I saw ostriches and warthogs in the wild for the first time. I think game viewing for the day included ostriches and warthogs, zebras, giraffes, Buffalo and tons of birds. There might be more, I can't remember. We drove around Hell's Gate, snapping photos and looking for animals until I got the car stuck in deep sand at the top of a hill. The boys pushed the car out, only to get stuck again in a ditch when turning around. This time, all the pushing could not get the car to budge. We tried everything thing we could think of. We put rocks under the wheel hoping it would grab on to those. We tried prying it out of the sand with logs. We tried everything we could think of for two hours with no luck. At this point we were about 10 kms from the ranger station and only had about 3 hours until it got dark. We tried calling all the numbers we could find for the warder at Hell's Gate, but b/c Kenya has been rationing electricity, none of the phones were working. Finally, while I was trying to explain our situation to Kenya Wildlife Services, we decided to start walking to the main gate, hoping it wouldn't take more than a few hours. Unfortunately, each of us had only brought a liter of water for the day, and while the morning was nice and cool, the afternoon had become very sunny, very hot, and we had already drank all the water we had. So the prospect of walking 10kms in the sun with no water didn't sound like much fun. Michael drank a half full water bottle he found on the side of the trail. Luckily, after walking for only about 20 minutes I got connected to the cell phone of the warden for the park. She arranged for one of the rangers to come out with a big truck and pull us out of the sand. We made it safely back to the main gate and headed back to Nairobi after buying several large bottles of water. But, as luck would have it, less than 5 kms out of the park, we got a flat tire and found out that the jack we had in the back of the car didn't work very well. A helpful matatu driver stopped and changed the tire for us in the time it would have taken be just the get the jack in the right place. We finally made it back to Nairobi, covered head to toe in dust and dirt and exhausted.
Today and tomorrow we have sometime to do more laid back touristy things around the city and on Saturday Michael and I will go to the first vows of our friend Lucy who up until this weekend was an SND Novice. Saturday night, Michael and I head back to Malava (Tom and Katie will be on vacation still with their families) and its back to work next week!