We had one last breakfast buffet at Milele, the Presbyterian hotel that had been our headquarters for the week. All of the staff there had been very friendly, from the guys at the front desk Pius and Kevin, to the cleaning crew, to the chefs and to our breakfast waitress Ann, who was always smiling. I taught Ann the nice custom in Hawaii of saying aloha because it means hello and goodbye, in effect meaning until we meet again. She liked that and we said aloha when breakfast was over.
Cynthia helped Merrilee with her online check in for her KLM flight. Each of the rest of us had set our alarms for 11:30 so we could get our seat assignments 24 hours ahead of time and we each got our preferences without any problems. It's nice when it works.
We gathered up all of our luggage and piled it in the two vans we had contracted for the day and shared a laugh or two with Edwin and Humphrey, two familiar friends from our previous trips. As I've pointed out here many times over the years, Catherine has always gotten us the best drivers. Every one of them has been attentive to our needs, friendly and they always have our safety as their highest priority. Edwin and Humphrey are among the best of the best, so we knew we would have a great day.
We got to the Nairobi Game Park and met our friends Barrack, Jordan, Kailey and one of her friends from Texas Tech. Kailey and Jordan had arrived in Nairobi the night before, so they were struggling with the time difference. They will be doing different mission work with kids in various locations while they are here. I'm very proud of them, they raised the money with a fundraiser at Texas Tech and both have a heart for service and mission.
From the standpoint of numbers of major species seen, this had to be my best photo safari in dozen or so times I've been to this park. Depending on rainy seasons, drought, time of year and many other factors, you may not see certain animals at all. We were truly blessed to see lions, giraffes, hippos, rhinos, zebras, hartebeests, impalas, water buffalo, warthogs, gazelles, ostriches, secretary birds, sacred Ibises, herons, superior starlings, Egyptian geese, scissortails, plover and more. We caught a baboon out of the corner of our eyes as well. One bit of excitement came when Cynthia yelled "Leopard!" as she saw an animal crossing the road in front of us. Humphrey stopped the van where it had entered the tall grass on the side of the road and I got several pictures as it went away from us with it's ears pointed rearward at us. The leopard is the most elusive of the big five species in Kenya. I have been trying to get a glimpse of one for years. I had even promised Humphrey a "leopard bonus" if he got me one.
Due to the heavy rains all week, many of the low spots were pure mud on the roads throughout this very large game park. Signs posted at the park entrance warned drivers not to stray from the main roads. We heard over the CB which drivers and park service rangers use to communicate with each other that one unfortunate driver had buried his van up to the drivers side front axle. He had been stuck for over an hour with a Kenyan mother and daughter as his clients. Our drivers showed him professional courtesy and tried to extract him. Humphrey took our van down the side road to survey the situation, while Edwin and the others remained up top on the main road. No sense in putting both of our vans at risk. It looked like the best strategy would be to get around the van and try to pull it out from the back. Humphrey got a tow strap out of the back of our 4 wheel drive van and gave it several tries before breaking his strap. Edwin went and got a chain from our other van and it also broke. I thought we were done trying, but no! Humphrey had one more trick to try. We carefully pulled back around the stuck van and Humphrey pulled up nose to nose while Edwin put a blanket between the two vehicles to minimize damage. We proceeded to get stuck as well. No good deed goes unpunished.
Barrack got out to help with the muddy job of pushing us out. I stayed in the van, since all had our very last set of clothes on for traveling back to the States. A few years ago, Pastor Kevin, Ralph, Charles and I had gotten totally muddied out in a similar situation, but that was on the first Saturday of the trip. After about 6 or 7 tries, we got back on solid ground and continued our safari.
By this time, it was too late with the wet and muddy road conditions to make it to the Elephant Orphanage, something at least half the group wanted to do. Oh well, another reason to come back!
Once we finished with the game park around 1pm, we lunched at the Veranda, a nice restaurant and souvenir shop. I gave Barrack a refurbished laptop for his ministry with Fikisha that mentors orphans and street kids.
He was very glad, and so was I, since I had been instrumental in ruining his previous computer and he had been reduced to doing social media with his smartphone for the last 6 months. I'll expand on that story soon.
After lunch, we made our way to the Little Daughters compound where we saw our friend Sylvester for a few minutes and were waiting for the Salem team to arrive when we found out that there had been a bad traffic accident between the Rift Valley and town. They needed to turn around and go back to Lake Naivasha and try to work their way around the east side of town, so they were heading directly to the airport. We visited with Catherine a little more, got to go to her friend Hannah gift shop and then it was off to the airport.
Now that new terminals are being built, and since the Paris and Belgium attacks, security is obviously at a heightened level. Humphrey took the van through a checkpoint outside the airport and each of us was screened before we were allowed back in the van for the ride to our terminal. We said what we thought was farewell to Merrilee, since her plane would depart from a different terminal. We got checked in with no incidents and had about 3 hours to visit with our friends from Salem. We boarded our 777 and headed for London.
We are in London now waiting for our direct flight to Austin. One more leg and we are home! Stay tuned, more to follow!
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