The end of our tour!
Trip Start
Oct 24, 2009
1
16
26
Trip End
Mar 08, 2010
Nairobi,
Kenya
Saturday, November 7, 2009
A quick ask at the Boulevard revealed they wanted $165 US per night which is way beyond our budget! Plus it looks like a pretty average hotel and is not central
Our tour group - last morning
. Quentin and Julie who we’d met in Jinja recommended a place called the Wildebeest Camp to us but we weren’t sure and Sue our guide knew nothing about it. We had a look at their website though and prices were within our budget and interestingly had deluxe tents which had en suites, 2 kilometres from the centre of town so it sounded promising. A phone call revealed they had availability so we jumped in a cab and headed off.What a great decision that was. The Wildebeest used to be a residential property but has now been bought by two Australians. It has lovely gardens with permanent tents nestled under big trees in a tropical garden. It’s like a little oasis in the middle of Nairobi. Our tent is fantastic, nice wooden floors, a proper double bed with duvets and nice pillows and an en suite bathroom with an electric shower and proper flushing toilet. This is much nicer everywhere we’ve stayed so far and some hotels we’ve stayed at – and it’s the same price as the fairly scummy hotel we stayed in on the first night of our tour. The property also has two large turtles – one male and one female - which are funny to watch as they race around the property. They actually do cover an amazing amount of ground given how slow they move. There also some kites (a type of hawk or small eagle) which sit in the trees but if you throw food up in the air they will swoop down and pluck it out of the air, quite amazing to watch
Luxury at the Wildebeest Camp!
.In the afternoon we headed for the market. It was a very hot afternoon and with hawkers constantly hassling you when all you want to do is look, it was very easy to get pissed off, queue grumpy Helen. We did manage to haggle quite well for some nice flip flops for Helen, paying about half the price for two pairs for what she normally pays for one pair in London.
Tonight went to dinner at the famous Carnivore restaurant with a few of the others from the tour and to also watch the All Blacks v Wales game. We weren’t sure what to expect of Carnivore as we’d heard mixed reports. It used to be famous for serving up proper game meat like Wildebeest, Zebra and Antelope but the government has outlawed the sale of meat from such animals, no doubt to stop poaching which ultimately is a good thing. We had a great meal though - the format is similar to Brazilian barbeques in London where they cook the meat on big skewers over a bbq and then walk around slicing off what you want. The BBQ here is massive and the restaurant looked like it sat about 200 people. The meat we ate was great and very tender - on offer was lamb, beef, chicken, pork, spare ribs, crocodile, ostrich and ostrich meat balls which were very tasty. Helen even tried a bit of everything (except chicken offal) which was pretty amazing.
We stayed in the bar afterwards having a few drinks with everyone and decided against the club next door. They had early on been playing okay music but as the place got busy the music went down hill.
Finally we said goodbye to everyone from our tour – some were heading home but the majority are carrying on to Cape Town and travelling for 2 months. They’ve been a really nice bunch of people to travel with – no-one was annoying and everyone got along really well. We’ve exchanged email addresses with everyone and there are quite a few who live in Melbourne so we may well catch up again when we’re there.
