Following our wonderful visit with family over Thanksgiving we made the VERY long trip from LaGrande, Oregon to Nairobi, Kenya. The trip consisted of a 6-hour drive, an overnight flight from Seattle to London (8.5 hours), a 6-hour layover in London and a second overnight flight (9 hours) from London to Nairobi. With 30 hours of travel behind us we arrived extremely exhausted at 5:00 am. A visa is required to enter Kenya and can be purchased at the airport upon arrival. The line wasn’t long and we waited less than 30 minutes to get the visa and pass through immigration.
We were lucky our hotel allowed us to check-in very early, giving us a chance for a rest before our 9:00 am tour of some Nairobi sights. Knowing we would be very tired, we booked a half day tour. Unfortunately, the day didn’t turn out exactly how we planned. Read on to find out why…
A driver came to our hotel to pick us up and take us to the meeting point of our tour. The traffic was absolutely horrible and all the drivers were very frustrated. About 20 minutes into our taxi ride, a bus ran a red light in an intersection and we hit the bus right in the side. Luckily, no one was hurt in either vehicle but the car was a little worse for wear. After arguing with the city bus driver in the middle of the street for quite a while, our driver found another taxi driver that could take us to our meeting point. We soon found out that the two men did not know each other and the second taxi driver had no idea who was going to pay him (our ride was pre-paid with the tour). Turns out, he was just a good samaritan. He took us to our destination and wait with us for over an hour until our tour guide showed up. We made sure that the tour guide paid the taxi driver that helped us out.
After what felt like a full morning already, we started our tour at the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage. This organization rescues orphaned elephants from all over Kenya, raises them till they are able to rejoin others in the wild. The elephants range in age from 15 months to 4 years old. The keepers feed them via bottles three times a day. Visitors are allowed to visit the orphanage from 11:00 am – 12:00 pm each day for a donation of $7 per person, cash only. We really enjoyed the experience of seeing all the baby elephants playing, eating and showing off.
Our next stop was Giraffe Manor. This is a very famous property that boasts a very expensive hotel (approx. $1,000 per night) where the giraffes are on the grounds and often visit guests through the windows while they are dining in the restaurant. Since we don’t have the funds for an overnight stay, our guide took us to the visiting area where we got a chance to feed and visit with the giraffes. The entrance fee is $10 per person, paid in cash or credit card. It is the first time we have had a chance to be that close to the giraffes. We could definitely see that each one has its own personality . It is an experience that we would definitely recommend.
An unscheduled lunch stop took more than 2 hours. We were getting very tired but pushed on.
Last stop of the day was the Karen Blixen Museum. If you don’t recognize her by name, you may know the very famous book made into a movie, Out of Africa. The book is the most famous of her works. The museum is inside of the house she lived in outside of Nairobi. It is also the house that was used in the movie. Karen Blixen is highly respected in Kenya for the work she did in the early 1900s with the local people of Kenya and Somalia.
We really enjoyed the tour, but were ready to go straight to bed. Our guide took us back to the city of Nairobi which is about 10 miles but took 1.5 hours. He dropped off the other couple that was with us and put the directions to our hotel in his phone. It said we were 4.2 kilometers from our hotel. We thought great, we are almost there! Ha, we were sooooo wrong!!
Traffic in Nairobi during rush hour is the absolute worst we have seen in the entire world. It took us over 3 hours to go 4.2 kilometers. Our half day tour turned into 10.5 hours. We arrived back at our hotel approximately 7:30 pm. After a shower and a quick snack, we went to bed with anticipation of meeting our Nomad Adventure Tour group the next morning.
Over all we were not impressed with Nairobi. The sights we visited were great but the city is not tourist friendly at all and the traffic is a huge deterrent. We will likely be back one day as Nairobi is the airport hub for East Africa tours. It is just important to allow a lot of extra time for traffic and whatever else might not go as planned.
After meeting our new group, we are headed to the Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Crater. These have been at the top of our bucket list since the very beginning of our travels and we can’t wait to get there!
Oh I loved to get another blog message! You really started to scare me with that whole car accident story. Obviously the traffic was worse than China! What a disaster to have to count on snarled travel in Nairobi. I enjoyed the Out of Africa museum photos!
Those silly elephants! They’re really cute. You don’t think of an orphan elephant—wouldn’t the other elephant mommies adopt an orphan. They seem so socialized. I can;t wait to see you two again! Kenny and I miss being together! I saw your email with R. Fuller. Love, MOMO