So friday ended up not really being our last night in Isinya. In typical fashion everything took about 6 hours longer than it would otherwise for no particular reason and by the time we were ready to leave for Nairobi it was way late and we decided that it would be better to drag ourselves out of bed at 5 in the am instaed. Unfortunately for the world of goats yet another one died in our honor for a grand total body count of 4. And so these things go. It was served to us cold.
Saturday morning we got dropped off at the safari company, Primetime Safaris. After the delays that we've come to expect (at least they had cartoons on in the office), we were introduced to our driver, Joe Faka (we weere informed americans get a big kick out of his last name- har), our cook, Chris, and the other person on our safari, Ravandi, a medical student from the colonial empire who had been working in western kenya doing HIV work. We were piled into our van, a slightly rattier version of the van we had been renting for work and off we went to Masai Mara Game Park. Yeehaw.
almost immediately i became convinced that joe had been a matatu driver in a former life based on ballsy and borderline insane driver maneuvers. he was gruff, of some indeterminate older age, chain smoking ciagarettes and not afraid to put his hand down on the meek horn to move cattle and other cars out of his way. he wore a green khaki safari outfit, tan loafers, and a white kangol cap that turned into a shade of dirt by the end of the trip due to all the dust blowing around in the van. joe was very knowledageable about the wildlife in the park and would proudly show us the animals in an old collier animal book. he wanted to show us as many animals as possible and informed us over a beerthat his job was to make people's dreams come true. this was in response to me asking if he liked his job or not-he said that is we were happy than he was happy, and that people have to work for their meat. i take that as a no, but its better than the other options.
The park itself is incredibly beautiful, with the sunrise and sunsets hitting at all the right angles. The first evening we arrived we saw the standard variety of gazelles, some wildebeast and zebras, adn then came the traffic jam. wondering how the hell there could be a traffic jam in the middle of a national park as we headed over, we soon discovered that the cause was lions. we saw them lying in the grass cleaning themselves and rolling about. twas quite exciting. eventually we headed to our accommodations and out of the park for the evening. some people have lots of money and stay in fancy game lodges where they serve you things and fan you and fluff your pillows. these people are not us. we stayed in a small camp site with permanent tents and some rowdy folks from northern ireland adn a family from the netherlands who didnt like germans. the food was plentiful and tahts all i'll say about that.
up early in the morning -aubree took off for a hot air balloon ride over the park, while ravandi and i headed out in the van. aubree had fun, and her ride ended up with a champagne and quishe brunch which sounded loveley, but she missed the highlight of the trip-lions eating a freshly killed buffalo, and far more rare apparently, lions gettin busy in the middle of the road. aw yea, cue the poorly synthesized 80s porn music.
all in all we saw lots of animals, tooks lots of pictures, which at my mother's request i will actually edit and remove the bad/unfocused/finger in the shot ones before posting them this time, and had a delightful adventure. unfortunately we did not get to see any leopards (they are very shy) or rhinos. next time.
coming back we have checked ourselves into a "nice" hotel, meaning toilet with running water int he room and also hot water. score. tomorrow night, tuesday. we hop a plane for amsterdam, followed by a plane ride for the homeland.
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