AFRICA, HERE WE COME!!
Here is our itinerary...
Wednesday, February 1st, we depart Seattle at 1:30p, it's 10 hours to Amsterdam where we catch our plane to Nairobi, Kenya. Then 8 hours to Nairobi where we grab a final 1 hr domestic flight to Mombasa. We get to Mombasa at midnight Feb. 3rd. 19 hours of flying! I bet we'll be looking pretty rough! I hear they feed you A LOT on the planes, I look forward to this. We bought some "No Jet Lag"at REI(thanks for the tip Bill!), we'll let you know how that goes...
We are staying with a good friend, Jen Balkus (aka Mitten, Mitts) who is in Mombasa finishing up her Phd and making the world a better place. She has been in Mombasa working for a year now, she moves home to Seattle at the end of February to finish up her studies and graduate! So great! We will be staying with her checking out Mombasa till the 9th.
Then we head down the coast to a tourist destination called Diani Beach(just a little south of Ngombeni on the map above and on the beach).
We take a ferry to get there and are staying at Asha Cottages in the Bush Baby cottage. The southern Kenyan coast down through Tanzania has the second largest barrier reef in the world. We hope to do some serious snorkeling and maybe a Dhow(little boat) trip through the off shore islands. We are staying on the beach for a few days, Jen is going to meet us to play for our last day there!
The Kenyan currency is a Kenyan Shilling(Ksh) with a current exchange rate of $1.00=85.00Ksh. The ferry to Diani costs about 3500.00Ksh or $41.18 USD.
On Feb 12th we catch an early flight to Nairobi from Mombasa to leave on our SAFARI!
Here's our Safari low down...
Depart Nairobi 8:30a and take a scenic drive through the floor of the Rift Valley to Lake Nakuru National Park situated at the heart of the rift Valley.
Arrive in time for lunch. The Lake is ringed in a swathe of pink flamingos(Gma, I'll be thinking of you here). This is home to one of the most amazing ornithological spectacles - the flight of the flamingos(I'll be the judge of that).
Scheduled game viewing drive in the afternoon, the park is also a sanctuary to the great endangered Black Rhino and abound with other game such as buffalos, tree climbing lions and the elusive leopard.
Dinner and overnight.
Feb 13- Early morning breakfast(they better have coffee on this thing or Tommy and I are in trouble, oh wait, we're packing some instant Starbucks...you can never be too prepared!)
Check out. Game drive enroute. Proceed to Masai Mara, one of the worlds last remaining ecosystems harmonizing animal and nature(I didn't write this, its straight off the brochure my friends).
Arrive in time for lunch. Afternoon game drive. Dinner and overnight.
Feb. 14- Depart with picnic boxes for a full day game viewing drive.
Game drives are delightful and our informative guides ensure that you sight the most, if not all of Kenya's big five(first person to name them all in the comments gets an Africa present!). The Mara is the preserve of the big five and the nomadic Masaai tribe, where the unique balance between man, beast and wilderness has remained unchanged for centuries(except the Range Rover with 6 sets of binoculars peering out...)
Dinner and overnight. Enjoy the post dinner entertainment whilst sitting around a log fire(sounds like a party at the Hofland's!)
Feb 15- Early morning game viewing drive.
Return to lodge for breakfast. Check out and depart for Nairobi to arrive in the afternoon
Safaris are VERY expensive. Luckily it includes food, lodging, and all the fees for the parks but, just to put this in perspective, this costs $1100 per person. Totally worth it, no doubt, but ouch! We bought some extra memory cards for the camera and packed my binoculars!
Then a few days in Nairobi!
We are staying at the Fairview Hotel, an expat hot spot.
Nairobi is the largest city in East Africa with a population of about 3,138,295. We plan to go to Nairobi National Park which is home to a bunch of animals, if we aren't all animaled out. The Nairobi Nat'l Museum is on the list as well as the city market and the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust where you can pet and feed baby elephants(Tommy is most excited about this part).
On Feb 18 we depart at 4:30am(ugh) to Tunisia! We have a little layover in Cairo, overall the trip will take 10.5 hrs. We arrive in Tunis at 12:45p.
A quick note on time zones...
When its 10a in Seattle, its 9p in Nairobi and Mombasa. 11 hours ahead.
When its 10a in Seattle its 7p in Tunis. 9 hours ahead.
Please keep this in mind when you call me...(I will have a phone once I pick up a sim card in Nairobi, when I know the number I'll let you know!)
We are staying in downtown Tunis, which was built around 814 BC! Needless to say the downtown hub is more like a maze of walkways instead of streets, all downtown cores throughout the cities in Tunisia are called Medinas.
The Tunisian currency is the Tunisian Dinar with an exchange rate of $1.00=1.50TD. Our room costs 90TD a night, or $60USD.
We are staying in the heart of the Media with a Tunisian family that rents out a room in their home as a B&B called La Chambre Bleue.
I am excited to see how the initiators of the Arab Spring are doing! As you know we like to follow the news(to a near obsessive point) and we have really been following the political changes in the area, we're excited to see it first hand(but not too close if you know what I mean!). I will get to practice my French as Arabic and French are the most common spoken languages. Oui! We are in Tunis for a week, we hope to visit some Hammams(steam rooms), Sidi Bou Said which is a town just north of Tunis on the Mediterranean said to have lovely beaches and some neat museums.
We will of course be visiting Carthage and overall relaxing and taking in the culture!
On Feb 24th we head back to Seattle. We depart Tunis at 9:15 with a layover in Paris and Detroit(what a combo!) and arrive home at 10p on the 24th.
I plan on keeping up on the blog throughout the trip so please check in on us!
xo Jill
