Day Twenty - Preparing to Leave

Having a couple of days at the Backpackers has given us a chance to wind down, do some souvenir shopping and to catch up with Dave, who stayed in Nairobi for the last week whilst we were in the Mara. Dave visited Nairobi National Park whilst we were away and had a great time. He managed to photograph Black Rhino and Lion and decided to go back again this morning. When we returned from souvenir shopping he showed us the stunning Lion shots he had managed to take today in Nairobi National Park. He loved it so much he says he would happily come back for a week in the Backpackers and just go to the Nairobi National Park every day.

We spent the morning in Nairobi shopping for souvenirs and have now packed ready for our early departure at 8am. We should arrive back in Aberdeen at 10pm on Saturday night after a five-hour stopover in Amsterdam. We may have to try out the weird water-massage thingy again!

We would like to say a big asante sana to all of Kenya. Once again you have been spectacular, beautiful, friendly and welcoming. We would like to say a special thanks to Tiju Aziz for helping with the internet access and to Patrick at Roving Rovers, who got a replacement vehicle to us in Tsavo West all the way from Nakuru by 7.30am after we called him at 4pm the day before. We would also like to thank the staff at Milimani Backpackers, who have been great again and also the people of rural Kenya, who make the sacrifices that enable the wild animals we came here to see and photograph to continue to live their natural lives. Last but by no means least, we would like to thank the men and women of the Kenya Wildlife Service, who put their lives on the line daily to protect the wild animals of Kenya from poaching.

We hope you have enjoyed the blog and will continue to enjoy the updates we will be posting in future.

If you haven't already, please do consider making a donation to Save The Elephants through our Just Giving page. They do a tremendous amount of work to ensure that these magnificent creatures (and everything else in the ecosystems they are part of) can continue to live in an ever-changing human-controlled World, by thinking “out of the box” to find new ways of managing Human-Elephant conflict that benefit, rather than penalise the communities which have to live with them.

Kwaherini

Karen and Howard