We departed Houston on October 20, 2002 at 4:00 P. M. on KLM on a long flight to Amsterdam. The Amsterdam Airport is very large and has plenty of shops and cafes to keep one entertained while on a three hour layover there. We then boarded another KLM flight to Nairobi; this was about an eight hour flight. It was interesting flying over the Nile River Delta and recognizing it from how I remember pictures of it in textbooks in school. This flight landed at the airport in Nairobi about 8:30 P. M. We went through Customs at the airport without any problems, and then met our driver and guide in the lobby of the airport.

We spent the first night in Nairobi at the Safari Park Hotel which was quite nice. There was no air-conditioning but the temperature was mild and comfortable. We did have to use mosquito netting over our beds during the night. However, the mosquitos were really no problem.

The first night, at a meeting in the hotel lobby, our guide Antonio Marangabassa (Tony), spoke to us about where we were going and how to handle the trip. He mentioned that we must always drink bottled water and use bottled water to brush our teeth unless we wanted to be taken home in a box!

The next day, after a very nice breakfast at the hotel, we left in our van for a lodge near Mount Kenya called The Mountain Lodge. Our safari group was made up of five vans and most of them had six people in the van. Ours had only five and was very comfortable except for the third-world roads of Kenya. Anyway, The Mountain Lodge was fairly nice, had a nice dining room and very nice meals. Each room faced Mount Kenya and had a balcony. There was a tunnel from the basement of the hotel to a bunker which was near the water hole behind the hotel. This allowed nice close-up shots of the animals as they visited the water hole.

We also had a nature walk one afternoon and were accompanied by two armed guards. We ended up at a clearing where tree trunks had been cut into seats, and we were served coffee and tea and cookies. That was a pleasant outing; enjoying afternoon tea in Kenya where wild animals roamed. The outing proved uneventful but enjoyable.

The next day we drove to a place in Samburu National Reserve called Intrepids Lodge where we stayed in "tents" that were fairly comfortable and also had bathrooms. We had to fix the "doors" when we left the tent during the day so monkeys could not get into the tent. It wasn't a problem at night because they are not nocturnal (the same as us) and kept about the same hours we did.

We went on game drives at 6:30 A. M. and 10:00 A. M. and 4:00 P. M. and each lasted about two hours. We had breakfast and lunch between the drives, and then, if we were lucky, we could try to take a nap before the 4:00 drive. The drives were spectacular; we were close enough to some of the animals to reach out and touch them (which we did not do). We stayed at the Intrepids two nights, and then drove to another "tented" camp called Sweetwaters. It was not quite as comfortable as the Intrepids Lodge, and we did not see as many animals there as we did in Samburu.

Our next visit was to Lake Nakuru, where we saw hundreds of thousands of lesser flamingos. We could never get closer than a certain distance to them because the closer we moved, the further out into the lake they moved. We also saw common zebras, rhinos, cape buffalo, and many other animals. Unfortunately, the weather was not good at Lake Nakuru.

Our next stop was the Serena Mara Lodge in the Masai Mara. This lodge was the best of all that we visited, and the Mara offered more animals than the other sites. Here we saw many lions, giraffes, wildebeests, hippos, hyena, rhinos, cheetahs, elephants, and many more.

At the end of our trip we returned to Nairobi for our flight to Amsterdam and Houston, arriving home on November 1, 2002.

Kenya is a beautiful country and the people we encountered were very nice. They are quite poor, but they try to make the best of whatever they have. We visited a Samburu village and a Masai village and also a Samburu school. I have been fortunate to travel to many places in the world, and this trip to Kenya was exceptional.

The camera equipment I took on this trip was my Nikon N80 (purchased two weeks before the trip), a 60mm closeup lens, a 28-80 zoom, and a new lens purchased for the trip which was a Sigma 28-300 zoom. That lens performed well but at 6.3 it was too slow for a lot of the low-light situations. I used mostly Fuji 100 ISO slide film plus a few rolls of Ektachrome 200 ISO, and a few rolls of print film (including one roll of black and white). Altogether I shot 44 rolls and had fairly good luck.

I have really enjoyed looking at my pictures and working with them to put them on the web. I sincerely hope you enjoy them as much as I have. Thanks for visiting.

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Copyright © 2003, 2006 Sherman Robinson
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