October 29th, 2006 Nairobi – Arusha, Tanzania

October 29th, 2006
Nairobi – Arusha, Tanzania

Last night I did not get to bed until about 2:30 am. It was the latest I have stayed up in a long, long time. I spent most of the night chatting with Jackie and getting my blog updated.

This morning we woke up at 6:15. Once B packed up his stuff we made a quick trip to the ATM. Next, we said goodbye to our Austrian friends. I was sad to see them go. They were totally hilarious and I grew to like them a lot over the last week. Next, B and I grabbed some breakfast and waited with Henry (I just found out his actual name is Enrique) to be picked up for the next leg of our safari.

As we waited we met an Irish couple (from Dublin) that will be accompanying us on the next leg of our journey. They seem nice but it feels as though it will be a much different adventure.

We finally left the hotel just after 8:15 (over an hour late). It was a long, uninteresting drive to the border. I slept for most of the way.

Once we reached the border we had to go through Kenya departure customs. We then made our way to the Tanzanian arrival customs. The area in-between the two buildings was full of locals selling all kinds of tourist items. I did not pay attention to them and made my way to the government building.

After paying the $50 visa fee and waiting for our paperwork to get processed, we met our new driver, Reval, and his vehicle. This time we are traveling in a large SUV that is much more of a safari vehicle than the vans we have been riding in for the past week. He is a large (but fit), well dressed local. He seemed very nice but much less talkative than our last guide, Dixon.

From the border we made our way to Arusha, the safari capital of Tanzania. Upon getting into town we made a stop at a money exchange place. Unfortanetly, we had to transfer our Kenyan Schillings to Tanzanian Schillings and then to US Dollars. In the end we got screwed and each lost about $30.

To make matters worse, it came time to make the local payment on the safari they tried to increase it by $25! We refused to pay the increase and requested that they get ahold of the travel company and our travel agent. After a long (but very civil) argument, we were told that we would not have to pay the increase…

Once all was settled we made camp at a snake park. Basically, it was a reptilian zoo. While somewhat interesting, the habitats were not all that exciting and I had seen all of the animals before (generally with a much better view). Still, very interesting and we got to hold a few baby crocodiles and a small snake!


Next, we visited a very silly Masai exhibit. Everything seemed to be handmade. The manikins looked very alien and the setups seemed very incomplete. Even more amusing, our guide was not even a masai, though he tried very hard to act like one…

After looking through the Masai shops we made our way back to the tents. Upon arriving we discovered that we had a new addition to our safari, a girl named Holly from the USA. She is form Indiana (though she now lives in Austin) and is also 23.

At 19:00 we all had dinner. After dinner everyone headed to his or her tents for an early night of sleep.