Arrived in Kenya

After a send off from my mum and boyfriend at Heathrow airport, I set off on my journey to Nairobi. I got one flight to Amsterdam, waited there a few hours, then on to Nairobi with Kenya airways, which are actually really good!

I was met at the airport by Sammy, a taxi driver, who took me to the Aero club where I am staying tonight before I carry on to Ol Pejeta. Nairobi is really fascinating, a cross between modern and quite poor. Nearly everyone walks to work, and the sides of the road are just mud. In fact, Sammy took a short cut to avoid the notorious Kenyan traffic, and went off road, I'm glad he is in a four by four!! We drove past the National park on the way to the Aero club, and I was surprised to see how inefficient the fencing looked! Relatively low and barbed, not much good at keeping people out I expect!

I then spent a few hours sitting in the lounge at the aero club as my room wasn't yet ready. Joy then came to introduce me to Anthony, who would take me around to see Nairobi for the day. Joy works at the Fauna and Flora office here in Nairobi. Anthony was really friendly and we talked a lot on the way to the David Sheldrick elephant orphanage. Poaching is obviously a huge problem in Africa, but its especially dangerous for young elephants, as they suckle for two years, and if they lose their mother, as some do from poaching, they don't have much of a chance at surviving. The orphanage rescues as many as it can, and raises them for four years, and then helps them to integrate into a wild herd which can take as many as ten years! The keepers feed them every three hours, on baby milk formula-like the one we feed to babies. This is because a) you can't milk a wild elephant, and b) because cows milk is too fatty for them.

After we went to the giraffe park, and got to feed the giraffes which was amazing!

Then we stopped off for lunch, I had a pepper steak and rice, delicious!

As I arrived so early in the morning, after stopping off at the office to meet Joy's team, and Michael Gachanja, who directs the East African Wildlife Society, I went back to the hotel and crashed until about six o'clock,  waking up to meet Joy for supper. We ate at the hotel, and had a long chat, about Ol Pejeta, and living in Nairobi, she is such an interesting woman!

I am writing this Tuesday morning, before I leave to meet Sarah Vigne and we start the four hour journey to Ol Pejeta, if I can I will update my blog there!