Our first free day: Helen and Dan seek out fun

On Sunday, having finished our training, survived our first week at work, and worked hard to get everything sorted in our flat,** we decided it was time to have fun.  It’d been a while and we were out of practice but our new friend (feels like an old friend) Monica suggested the perfect solution: Nairobi National Park.  The only national park in the world to border a capital city, this 117 square kilometre area of grasslands and lush gorges is home to some of the animals for which Kenya is famous.  And it’s only a local bus ride away from our flat.  We took a ‘safari walk’ (like very cool zoo) in the morning, and then in the afternoon, headed off into the park for a kind of budget safari, in which Kenyan families and backpackers (and 3 lovely VSOs) are driven through the countryside in a bus.  If the bus itself didn’t scare the wildlife away, it gave us an elevated view of the park’s inhabitants (albeit through grimy windows). 

With apologies to Mike (sorry you couldn't be there), we hereby post a few choice pics…

A very lucky shot in the safari walk... there's glass between us :o)

We nearly missed this lion up a tree





Monica and I bagged the front seat!



The weirdness of being in a national park right by the city

This was so exciting to see

It was so good to relax, explore and have fun.  We even saw Maasai jumping and singing for the tourists, next to a bouncy castle for the kids. And we drank cold beer.

Special thanks go to:  Monica for a fab day out; Mama and Papa Trenchard for buying me a clever compact camera for my birthday which has the zoom of destiny; the park guide who showed us where the Kenya café was after we balked at the colonial, wazungu lodge.

** not to bore you but we now have hot water in our shower, internet, everything unpacked, and dining table and chairs.  Each of these was a bigger achievement than you’ll ever know, so no teasing us, ok?