Sunrise Proposals and Moonlit Hickies

8/05/2012
I was missing out, I was starting to get a little peeved that I was missing out, and I was letting our safari guide  know it. Poor Robert, I don't think he quite knew how to handle all the questions I was throwing at him as to why I didn't get to go on the "special" early early game drive.

"Why didn't you ask me? I said last night that I would be happy to get up earlier if it meant we could go game driving for longer".

"Julia, Dave and Jodie went, there was still plenty of room in the vehicle!"

"So, they're not actually on a game drive?"

"They've gone hot air ballooning? Awh, I wanted to go hot air ballooning. Why didn't I get the option of going hot air ballooning?"

"It's a surprise? Dave is surprising Jodie? Oh. Ohhhhhh!"

I'm in the Serengeti, B**ch!

7/05/2012
Following the brown dirt track towards the horizon, marvelling at the endless lines of wildebeest and zebra on their annual migration across the Serengeti plains...... It's hard to get much more magical than that. Then a voice pipes up:

'So, when is this going to get interesting?'

...........Uhhh, Jules, I don't know what you were expecting, but how can anything get better than this? (I was wrong, by the way. It gets MUCH more exciting. But more on that later).

Monkeys Are Evil

6/05/2012
When you pass what is supposedly just another settlement along the road, but are told by your safari guide that the entire village is made up of one man, his ten wives and his hundred-or-so children, you know that this is not going to be an ordinary day. TIA.

Snake Park

5/05/2012
Today is the first day of the new leg of the trip, and four new people have joined us: Calum (Brit), Clare (Kiwi), Charity (Saffa) and Daniel (American). Calum seems to be off to a good start already - they had their pre-departure talk at 8am this morning, and I got Calum out of bed at 7.57am, and he was supposed to be fully packed and ready to go. I wonder how he'll cope with all our real early starts? We discovered that an important key had been lost, so a padlock needed to be cut off! Tom seems to be getting the blame for losing it, but he's adamant he gave it to someone else. Sure thing, Tom! Anyway, it was an interesting first morning for the new four joining us.


Then it was finally time to wave goodbye to Vicki, Amy and James as we pulled out of Karen Camp to continue our adventures. We shall meet again (Amy and James, we'll see you in a few days in Arusha!)

Making Out With A Giraffe

4/05/2012
Today is a very sad day. It marks the final day of the Gorillas and Game Parks leg of trip, and it will be our last day with my tent buddy Vicki, Amy and James (James will rejoin us in 10 days). So it was with a heavy heart that we piled into the truck for the final drive back into Nairobi. Our spirits were lifted somewhat by an impromptu singalong on the back of the truck, kicked off by the Glee song 'Don't Stop Believin'. In honour of final goodbyes to Vicki and Amy, Grace and I started singing 'Don't Wanna Miss a Thing' by Aerosmith, unaccompanied, and surprisingly we knew all the words! Unfortunately for us, I'm pretty sure Julia caught the entire out of tune rendition on camera.

We made our way to the Giraffe Sanctuary in Nairobi to get up close and personal with, you guessed it, a giraffe. Here we were given pellets and were able to hand feed a Rothschild giraffe, as well as pat it. Yeah, I touched a giraffe! Not only that, there's this handy trick whereby you put one of the pellets in your lips, and the giraffe gives you a kiss / licks your face to get the pellet! And yes, I did it twice. Giraffes saliva is a natural antiseptic, so it was perfectly clean and hygienic!