Back to Nairobi

It was back to Nairobi on Friday to catch our Saturday evening flight back to London. It was all coming to an end. We checked into the Norfolk Hotel once again only to find our room upgraded to the Presidential Suite. What a great room! Saturday found us hanging out in Nairobi with a guide. We visited the Railway Museum, The Karen Blixen Museum and had an interesting lunch at a restaurant called Carnivore.

The trip in from the airport on Friday night was long (about 2 hrs.) due to heavy traffic. What was interesting about the journey was that the road was like a shopping mall. Along the roadsides traders offered all sorts of goods right at your window as your car crawled along. Our driver bought a hat and one person was even selling pillows. What a great way to shop! No, I didn't buy anything!

A bit about Harry: Somehow we charmed the check in clerk at the hotel for upgrade. We weren't happy about our room when we stayed there before. We pretended to know who Harry Thuku was and were honored to stay in a room named for him!. Harry was born in 1895 in Kenya into the Kikuyu ethnic group, one of the groups that lost the largest amount of land to white settlers during the British takeover of Kenya. In 1921 Thuku founded the East African Association, the first multi-ethnic political organization in East Africa. This led to Thuku's arrest in 1922 and sentencing to ten years' imprisonment. He remained politically active in the 1930s and 1940s.

The Karen Blixen Museum is located in Karen a suburb of Nairobi named for the Danish author of Out of Africa. She lived here between 1914 and 1931. It is set in a lovely garden and you can see her beloved Ngong Hills from the back garden. Proudly displayed are articles worn by Meryl Streep and Robert Redford (trousers!) in the film Out of Africa.

The Karen Blixen house
The Ngong Hills

Carnivore (in Langata) was a much sought after tourist restaurant (for good reason!). It is a nyama choma(BBQ) restaurant. It is the national dish of Kenya. Vegetarians need not apply. We sampled ostrich, crocodile and the normal run of the meats like pork, lamb, beef and chicken. We walked into a room with a huge grill and were given a table where the server set down a lazy susan filled with various sauces and two plates. Servers walked around the room and carved the various meats right onto to your plate.

The Grill
Jo with a server
Jeff and the guide

The Museum is housed in an old railway building. The relics of by gone railroad days are in the yard. There was a seat that was attached to the front of the engine that Teddy Roosevelt shot animals from (don't know why I didn't take a picture of that). We shared our experience with a group of really cute young schoolchildren. Also we saw the train used in the movie Out of Africa.

Entrance to the Museum
Kenya Railways sign
Trains

Group of school children

Mnemba Island

Mnemba Island!
This is the part about the relaxing part of the African adventure.

The trip from NCL lodge to Mnemba was memorable. We made the drive to Lake Manyara Airport via a large souvenir store. Like Costco for tourist. Everything you ever wanted. I shipped. As you can see from the pictures our take off from Lake Manyara airport to Arusha was an interesting one. It was not a good weather day and the unexpected drop off at the end of the runway was heart stopping!

The plane from Lake Manyara
The runway at Lake Maynara.
The Cliff at the end of the runway

We connected in Arusha for our flight to Zanzibar. Once again there was a bribe paid (about $20) to get my luggage aboard!

The airport in Arusha

Jeff be a blackberry addict at Arusha
The plane to Zanzibar

We flew to Zanzibar, drove across the island (and the roads were the worst yet!), and took a private boat for the short trip to the private island! Yes, it only had 10 rooms spread out on the western side on the whole thing!

The place we took a water taxi to the island
Jeff on the veranda working hard
The view to the beach from our room
Our bed

The bed came with a netting that was let down at night. One night a small green lizard took up residence on the top net.

The dining room
Breakfast and lunch were served here with a great view. Dinner every evening was served directly on the beach lit by a string of laterns.
The daily menu board

The food was terrific. Every meal was better than the previous one. Every day we would watch the local fisherman pull up their boats and sell the catch of the day to the kitchen.

The bar!

Every night guests and staff would gather for pre-dinner cocktails. It was a very nice way to end the day.

A bit about Zanzibar: it is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean 25–50 km off the coast of East Africa, which is part of Tanzania. The archipelago was once the separate state of Zanzibar, united with Tanganyika to form Tanzania (derived from the two names – get it?) The capital of Zanzibar, located on the island of Unguja, is Zanzibar City. The city's old quarter, known as Stone Town, is a World Heritage Site.

Zanzibar is sometimes referred to as the "Spice Islands," on the way to the water taxi we were given a lesson in island spices by our informed driver. Zanzibar's main industries are spices (which include cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and pepper), and tourism.

A very rocky drive to the coast we decided that we were not going to Stone Town. I didnt want to spend another two hours traveling over these terrible roads. Good choice!

an old fishing hut on the beach

So what did we do for four days on this island paradise? Not much. We never wore shoes for one. Not for meals or anything we did. Lovely! Jeff had his first scuba diving experience. I read 4 books, collected a lot of shells, walked around the island (took about 20 minutes!), worked on my tan, ate great food, and enjoyed the guests and staff. Oh yeah I had one of the best massages I ever had! Every dusk Jeff and I would sit on the beach watching the sun go down drinking champagne. I don’t think anything will ever be as good as that! We have taken away some fond memories of island life and the staff who get to live and work in this paradise.

The wildlife
me reading
Us on the beach

Happy Hour

Enough said. It was absolute Heaven! Here are the pictures!
This was the staff doing the wave to say goodbye.

The Shifting Sands

A few kilometres from the Oldupai Gorge Vistor’s Center was a large black dune known as the “Shifting Sands”. The dune made of black ash is fall-out from Ol Doinyo Lengai ("Mountain of God" in the language of the Maasai) a nearby active volcano. The fine ash is constantly blown by the winds and you can see the telltale signs on the ground where it is heading next. Small cement monuments mark the movement of the dune from year to year. In the past local Maasai use to worship at the dune. The Mountain of God was also giving some trouble while we were in NCL. We experienced a few very small tremors while staying there. Geologists suspect that the sudden increase of tremors is indicative of the movement of magma through the Ol Doinyo Lengai.