Last year, my birthday involved a case of Prosecco (thanks Mommy and Daddy B), 20 friends, and late night trips to Cleary’s and CityBar. This year, my birthday also involved sparkling wine (thank you, VolCons!) but in a very different setting.
Saturday morning, that important day, dawned at 5:15, as we sleepily packed and piled into the safari van at 6 to stop at Nakumatt and stock up on safari essentials such as biscuits, cashews, water, chocolate and shillings (this is a cash economy, btdubs). Then it was 5 hours of napping on a bumpy dirt road, the worst part of which was outside a cement factory. Ahh, the irony of Kenyan infrastructure.
Our destination was Amboseli national park, a beautiful panorama of savannah, desert and swamp rolled into one on Kenya’s southern border with Tanzania. It is renowned as a game park both for the landscape (and the animals it attracts) as well as the clear view of Mt. Kilimanjaro that it affords when the cloud cover drifts away. We got to the park around lunchtime, and spent an hour arguing with the Kenya Wildlife Service for various discounts. Unfortunately, we got the ONLY government employee in Kenya who followed the rules and couldn’t be reasoned with, so nothing came out of it except some very terse interactions with the Maasai women who swarmed the car trying to sell us cheap baubles.
Finally, it was into the park, for a breakneck drive past elephants taking baths and giraffes eating from the Acacia trees. We had to make lunch at our pretty little tented camp, with its neat and clean cabins and bathrooms. We barely made the decent buffet lunch in an open air dining hall filled with tourist groups. Then a brief tanning session by the pool in the middle of the savannah, and back into the van for our evening game drive.
Unlike the Mara, which is huge expanses of land inhabited by herd animals, punctuated with spottings of the big 5, Amboseli is a number of microcosms, each with its own particular creature mix. Because the park is smaller, the concentrations of animals were higher. It was also incredibly dusty, which was a bummer for our clothes but awesome for taking otherworldly photos of giraffes silhouetted against the trees. Amboseli also has a fantastic concentration of elephants, which was definitely the highlight. Big ones, little ones, bathing elephants, elephant herds – AWWWWWWWWWWWW.
Saturday night birthday dinner was lovely, except for the fact we all almost passed out at the table and were all asleep by 9:30 to make our morning wake up call at 6. We missed the sunrise in the park, but were able to grab some great photos of Mt Kilimanjaro and the sky changing colors over our camp. The morning game drives were most remarkable for our mad dash through the desert at the edge of the park – eat my dust, indeed! Standing up in a pop top safari van as you dodge the dust devils and leave a trail of clouds while racing through the sand is a pretty exhilarating ride.
After inhaling enough dust to turn us into dust bunnies, we arrived back in Nairobi to long long hot showers (potentially with our clothes on to get rid of the dirt). Then it was off to Nairobi’s only Lebanese restaurant with a sushi bar, which was surprisingly good, All in all, a satisfying birthday – but I’ll still have to throw birthday 2008 redux party when I’m back stateside in September.
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