Day 17: Rise and Shine! It's Safari Time!

Rise and Shine! We woke up before the sun in order to get an early morning game drive in. This time we saw giraffes closer then you could imagine and our first lion; a female sleeping in a tree. She woke up every now and then to look at us. We also got quite a few good baboon pictures enjoying family time, which was fun to observe. Pictures below!

After safari we packed up and hit the road again. This time we were headed to Narasha. Muthoga told us we were coming up to some tea farms and pointed ahead. I looked out the window thinking they didn't look like the tea farms in commercials but it was cool none-the-less. Muthoga looked at me, followed my gaze and said, "that's corn." Oops! It was short corn, in my defense.

Along the way we were all given a challenge. When Kenyan merchants see a white person strolling by they automatically sky rocket their price so Muthoga and Gichuru gave teams of two money and items to purchase and what amount is a fair price to pay. Tina and I got 250ksh and were told that a fair price for two watermelons was 120ksh each. We didn't have a lot of wiggle room and I was determined to pay less then 120ksh each. In order to do this I needed to be ready to deal in Kiswahili. Tina and I strolled around the market and finally a guy asked what we were looking for. We told him we needed two watermelons and he quickly weighed them out.

"Pesa ngapi?" I asked.

"350" he replied.

"Ghali sana," I exclaimed, "mbili mia." (Too expensive, 200.)

"Sawa," he said. It was almost too easy! I wanted to go again but thats all I had on my list so Tina and I just continued to walk the market. Once we ended up in the fish section of the market we bolted out of there as the smell and sights of fish not on ice was not pleasant so we waited outside.

Gichuru told us we could head towards the van and wait if we wanted. Tara, myself and a few others began our walk through downtown and immediately became the show. One guy followed me for a while telling my he liked my body and that I must work out in a gym, I just laughed and said asante. When we got to the corner an older boy came up and started asking for money. I said "hapana" repeatedly but the kid would not back off. Out of no where Gichuru showed up and told us to come back and wait by the market. The boy continued to follow us despite whatever Gichuru had said to him in Kiswahili. He touched Tara's arm and with authority she told him not to touch her. Gichuru turned around and gave him a look and the boy squeezed between me and Tara and took off.

We waited for everyone else to finish and in the mean time I practiced my Kiswahili with the locals. Gichuru asked how we did and I told him 100ksh a piece. He smiled and said it was cheaper then the price he gave us. Ndiyo! Was he expecting anything else?

When we arrived to our campsite we immediately walked out to the dock for a hippo seeking boat ride. The driver of the boat would whistle and then throw fish into the water to allow us to observe and take pictures of the fish eagles diving in for a catch. It was pretty cool. We then made our way across the lake to a swampier area where we observed several hippos. It was a fun ride and little scary, hippos can flip boats and I for one, would prefer not to swim with the hippos.

From there we stopped by the Joy Adamson Museum for chai, assorted desserts and an educational video. There were two men, I'm assuming from Kenya, that spotted us from a distance and asked to get their picture taken with our group. It was a little weird.
We went back to camp for dinner. Dinner is sometimes my favorite part of the day because everyone is together laughing and talking. Its a good opportunity also, to ask Muthoga and Gichuru questions about Kenyan culture. During this dinner we learned that the tips that we gave the porters were more then likely going to pay for a trimester of their children's high school education which is not provided by the government at no cost. Muthoga said that paying for high school is doable for most Kenyans but it is very hard.

After dinner we walked down to a lookout tower on the beach and watched for hippos coming out of the water to graze. After 15mins my patience ran out and like many others I left and headed back to camp, journaled for a while and hung out with Sarah and Kate. Others returned later to say there were hippos on the beach but I had already been falling asleep at the table so I just crawled into my tent and fell straight to sleep.