Le Park

Nairobi National Park

Me % K

Two weekends ago I got to do one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life—I went on safari in Nairobi National Park!   It was so much fun and made so much better and easier by the presence of Sonia (are we noticing a theme yet?) and her boyfriend, K.  I have heard a lot about Sonia’s partner over the past two years, so it was great to finally meet such him.  He is such a great person and I can tell they make an amazing team after spending our long day together.  Sonia and K picked me up at 5:45 (!) in the morning and we began our long and arduous journey to the park.  Just kidding!  The park is 15 minutes from my apartment (very unique to have a national park right in the middle of the city), which makes everything we saw and did all the more amazing.  We paid our fees and were in the park by 6:15. 

Mr. Bushback

            We started down a path and Sonia warned me not to expect to see anything too spectacular because things like lion sightings are rare (there are about five in the massive park), but I was really excited anyway just to see Bushbacks right away.  I snapped a million pictures, unaware that I would see roughly 500 of these guys over the course of the day. 

Mr. & Mrs. Rhino

We came around another path and saw a lot of vehicles stopped, so we followed one of the main rule of safari—always go to where the cars are stopped.  To our amazement, we saw two HUGE rhinos hanging out in the grasses.  We stopped and watched them for a while then passed all of the other cars to reach the front of the pack. 

            I was just gazing out of the window when something caught my eye.  A really big animal was relaxing in the grass right by the road.  Were my eyes lying to me?  I felt like I had made a mistake.  This did not stop me from demanding that K stop the car and reverse to the animal.  My eyes were not lying—it was a *&%^$$ LION!!!!  He was just sunning his belly like it was no big deal.  Since we were the first car in the pack at this point, we were the first people to see Mr. Lion.  He was about ten feet from us, which was terrifying and amazing.

Mr. Antelope

After that we came upon the antelopes, then the zebras, which are so funny and stripy and stinky and fat.  We were so close that I could have pet this grumpy, undomesticable creature, but I am slightly smarter than that. 

I think these are the main ingredient in Zebra Stripe gum.

A giraffe for the uninitiated

 The next hill crested and we saw something amazing on the horizon—a little giraffe family!  We had to drive defensively to catch them because they were on the move, but it was worth it.  They were much bigger than I had anticipated.

family version.

            After this we stopped for a bathroom break at a spot where you can get out of the car and walk down a path with a guide.  We were told this was where you could see hippos, which doesn’t make sense.  Why can you get out of the car by the most dangerous animals?  We had a nice walk and saw dik diks and baboons, but no hippos.  Some antelope ran by us and Sonia and I both grabbed K and screamed.  We decided it was time to return to the car.  One the way back we saw all the animals besides the lion and rhinos again, but we were too tired to take anymore pictures.  We weren’t jaded, though!  I still sounded like a babbling child in the backseat.