Nakuru to Amboseli

 Morning rhinos.

 Lesser flamingos in Lake Nakuru.

 Donkeys in pjamas as Joseph calls them.

 Thompson's gazelle.

 Baboons.

 African fish eagle.

Vervet monkeys.

 A market in a town we passed.

 The first view of Kilimanjaro from the van.

And from the hotel while having a beer.

Wednesday, October 4^th.

After breakfast this morning we went for a two hour game drive through Nakuru National Park and back to the exit gate. We saw another family of three rhinos (or maybe the same family, who can tell?), waterbuck, cape buffalo, warthogs, flamingos, pelicans, zebras, crested cranes in flight, Thompson's gazelles, Egyptian geese, sacred ibis, baboons, a fish eagle and vervet monkeys. Not bad for a short drive.

Then we commenced a full day drive from Nakuru to Amboseli National Park. We had to drive all the way back to Nairobi and then through it to the east side before turning south towards Tanzania and Mount Kilimanjaro.

I had realized that I need a sleeping bag for the next couple of trips and was planning on buying one in South Africa, but I leave on Friday at 8:50 pm and fly to Johannesburg where I don't arrive until midnight and the trip starts the next morning. So I told Joseph my problem and he said let me think about it. A couple of hours later we pulled into modern mall, complete with guards armed with rifles, and Joseph took me to a general store where I was able to pick up a bag for $20, problem solved.

En route we climbed back up to the top of the rift valley lookout again, following lines of slow moving trucks on a single lane road with no guardrails. The view was spectacular and we could see for miles. The road we were driving on is the main highway from the port of Mombasa, Kenya to Nairobi and Kampala, Uganda. There are hundreds of trucks going in both directions and the traffic is very heavy. We had to pass carefully many times but still we wound up behind trucks. Later on we saw a brand new railway line and asked Joseph about it. He said that the Chinese are financing it as a means of moving frieght more quickly between those capitals. We agreed that China doesn't invest in a country to help that country but to help itself to that country's resources. Joseph said that that is one of the issues in the election that is happening later this month (after the last one was overruled by the Supreme Court as being illegal).

After we drove through Nairobi we stopped at a petrol station and Joseph gave us all a box lunch of chicken, a sandwich, yogurt, an apple, banana, orange, a juice box and a hard boiled egg. So we happily munched on that as we continued our drive.

Finally after a whole day drive we could see Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance. The sun was in the wrong position, but it looked very impressive and I couldn't help but remember climbing with Emmanuel back in 2011.

We arrived at our accommodation in Amboseli NP by 5:30 and checked into our very nice permanent tents. Then Alan, Blaize and I went for a beer and carried it up to the lookout where we could see over the plains to Mount Kilimanjaro. As we drank our beer we talked about my climb of the mountain and we watched as rain clouds blew in over the summit and I was thinking about how miserable it would be to be up there in the rain.

Then we joined the rest and we had another decent buffet dinner before retiring to our rooms.