This visit to Nairobi was longer and better than my previous 1-night stop.
We got our COVID tests in Tanzania and flew to Nairobi. Our connecting flight in Dar es Salaam was canceled, and the airline never bothered to notify us. The next flight was something like 3:30am, instead of leaving at 10pm. Super.
Since I missed out on the safari in Tanzania, we decided to book a day trip safari from Nairobi. The problem was that pick up time was 6am the following morning. We had to message the guide and ask him to move it to 7am.
Once we finally got to Nairobi and passed the health screening + super fast/easy passport control, we slept for 20min at the hotel then headed off for our day trip.
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that we fell asleep in the back of the car en route to Hell’s Gate National Park.
Once there, we took a bicycle safari, which is probably the only place in Kenya (maybe the whole region) where you can do this, since there are no predatory animals.
We saw giraffes and a good number of zebras. While we didn’t see anything jaw-dropping, it was nice to see animals I’d never seen before in their wild habitat.
Our guide was really nice and friendly. He realized how tired we were and didn’t push us to ride faster or farther than we wanted. He didn’t try to force conversation when we were zoning out or dozing off in the car. We liked him a lot.
Next, we went to Lake Naivasha. Our boat took us around the lake looking for hippos. We saw several. One event got aggressive and headed towards us, so we had to move out of there.
It was really surprising seeing how much higher than normal the water level is. It’s overtaken several buildings along the lakeshore. And seeing the hippos was equally impressive, but in a different way obviously. This was the one animal I most wanted to see, so I was really happy.
In the middle of the lake, Crescent Island was the setting for the movie “Out of Africa.” I guess I need to watch it. They imported a bunch of animals to have in the movie, and now they’ve obviously reproduced. There are no predators here, so you can just walk around and look for the animals. It’s pretty cool.
We actually wound up pretty close to this 2nd family of giraffes as they crossed our path, such that the father came towards us in a “back up” sign. We did!
It started raining pretty hard on the boat ride back to the shore, which was hilarious. Back on the lakeshore, we had a …meh…lunch at the restaurant in the hotel. Since it was the only thing around, though, we lacked options.
From here, we drove back to Nairobi. The drive took us through the Great Rift Valley. The views are impressive.
We also stopped at this small roadside church built by POWs during WW2.
The next few days were good but mostly just hanging out and bumping around town. We stayed for 3 days and left late late the final night. We had to get a COVID test obviously and were still regaining our energy from both getting sick.
The next to last night in Kenya, we went to this place called Honey & Dough. We had a tough time finding it, even though it turns out we were right below it. We had no idea it’s on the rooftop of a fancy office building. We had to leave ID at the desk to go up in the elevators!
The food…was…awesome! I had this breakfast platter and loved it.
Our last night, we had time for dinner before going to the airport. We went to Food Train, the place I had dinner at the last time I was in Nairobi (March 2019). We had delicious sushi and filled up our bellies. We weren’t sure if our flights would have the vegan meals we requested or not, so it was better to eat a good dinner.
We liked Nairobi a lot. Despite the chaos of numerous things going wrong during our time in Africa on this trip, it ended on a good note in Nairobi.
This entry was posted in Africa, Kenya, Nairobi
