Saturday at the Nairobi Game Park and more

 I actually felt pretty good for only a little over 4 hours sleep, I did try to strategically sleep at the right times on the flights and limited my napping on the final leg of the trip, knowing we would get in late and I wanted to be dog tired then. We had a quick breakfast of cereal, bread, bananas and hard-boiled eggs along with instant coffee or tea. All of us brought individual serving packets from the States since the standard for instant coffee in Kenya seems to be Nescafe. I brought some Foger's Dark and it was pretty good. The van our group originally was scheduled to used had a bad tire and Catherine had to order another one on no notice. Amazingly enough, we only left half and hour late and our driver, Esther, was very good at both driving and being a guide in the game park. We saw Zebras, several Giraffes and Rhinos up close and personal, Hippos, Impalas and more and I was able to sneak in a few birds. There has been considerable drought in Kenya, it almost always coincides with our central Texas cycle. There had been recent heavy rain and the vegetation was quite lush. This makes for a much tougher safari because the wildlife is more spread out and there are more places to disappear in the tall grass. During drier seasons, the animals are not only more visible but also concentrated near watering holes. Even with a limited amount of species to view, I came back with 930 pictures including a nice flight sequence of a Sacred Ibis.

We ate lunch at The Veranda as it is our tradition to do after this game park. It is all outdoor seating under palm trees and the food is good. We joined a table of folks from St John's and also St. Marks, both in the Houston area. It was a fun group with a good mixture of veterans of these trips, some who had been a few times and others who were first timers. After lunch, we returned and all got about an hour of good napping in. We didn't want to overdo it, we need to start sleeping well here at night and get on track for the start of the vision clinic on Monday. We will have dinner at 7pm and get on the same page with each other for breakfast and when to be ready to go worship with our host congregations. More after our Sunday adventures. Blessings everybody!