Parkside Hotel Nairobi

... br><br> Where Lilian lives is one of the worst living situations we have seen yet. Her and her younger brother share a 1 bedroom shack and all they have inside are 2 small pieces of foam that they sleep on. They have a sheet separating the "bedroom" from the &#8220;kitchen&#8221;, and the kitchen is basically only a bench with a couple pots and cutlery on it. It hit me really hard when I saw this, and Den and I immediately started to try and think of how we could help Lilian. We ...

... a luxury on matatus. Unfortunately I had none of that luxury on this ride, seeing as though I was pretty much sitting on this poor little girl beside me! <br><br> Mondays are our meeting with the women days at the office, so yesterday we headed up to see Kilonzi at the usual 9am, and waited, and waited, and waited for the women to finally show up. We sometimes forget we are on "Kenyan time", meaning you basically show up whenever you please and it's hakuna matata! After at ...

... our flight that same night.<br><br>When we arrived to Nairobi we were all surprised to see a proper city. People dressed in business clothes going about their day with an agenda. Our final destination was a hotel where a number of people were staying before heading home or on to other troubles. After unloading all our bags from the truck Anthony gave Gabe a ride to the post office where he was able to successfully send the package. What a ...

... usually takes me about a week to read. I do have 2 books with me but I feel that I will read them in no time which isn't necessarily bad. I would watch tv but there are some horrible channels here but at least some of them are English. After flipping through the tv channels 15 times hoping for something good, it becomes pointless and I give up hope. <br><br>Today I really do too much. I realized last night that I needed a way to transfer pictures ...

THINGS WE LEARNED &#8211; Although overland tours are convenient, and often the only practical way to travel in remote areas such as Africa in a short time period, they also take away some of the fun and challenges of backpacking and independent travel. And you had better hope you like the people in your group, because you spend a lot of time together! <br><br>INTERESTING FACT &#8211; The endangered Mountain Gorilla, different from the Lowland Gorilla ...

... around 12 C (54 F). This is due to its higher elevation. At 1660 m. (5450 ft.), it is almost 2.5 times higher in elevation than Edmonton which is at 668 m. (2190 ft.)<br><br> First impressions are always notable. The arrival in Nairobi was chaotic. The airport is small with very labour intensive and antiquated processes and few facilities &#8211; kind of like the Edmonton airport when it opened in the 1960s. It ...

... colonial types (all a bit surreal) who'd both lived in Kenya all their lives and seen the train in its glory days - I think they were a bit disappointed by the decline in standards (no custard with dessert and tomato instead of fish soup, shocker) but we loved it all the same. Video from the window of the train attached (hopefully!).<br><br>A boat trip and snorkeling in Mombasa Marine Park<br>Sunbathing on the top deck of a boat, gazing out over the ...

... headed out for breakfast as the hotel doesn&#8217;t do it and had a quick and passable egg and toast deal next door to the hotel and set about arranging theses trips as we had to pay in US dollars which meant withdrawing our money and converting it but there were limits on the daily withdrawals and a 5 % charge if we paid but card. As it turned out it was too messy trying to do it with cash and we wore the charges. However by the end of the day we found out we are on a 7 ...

Sorry for the absence from blogging during our final week in Kenya &#8211; after having the power consistently fail us just as we were about to post a blog, I decided to skip the headache until I was back to America's more reliable internet! We split our time during the last week between the Makina Clinic and Cana. Makina&#8217;s baby vaccination day is Monday, and Cana&#8217;s is Tuesday, so we definitely got our fill of sticking needles into children. Cana was already packed ...