What an amazing few days in Nairobi! We are staying at an airbnb in Kilimani complete with full kitchen, bathroom, fast wifi, bed with mosquito netting, warm water for showers and a beautiful living area shared with other travelers for $15 each a night! Crazy cheap. It's been perfect. We've met a couple from Canada and a couple from Italy who have all been very friendly.
Our first day was spent getting situated exchanging our dollars to Kenyan shillings and walking to the junction to a place called safaricom to set up our phones. A SIM card for my unlocked iPhone and airtime with data bundle for a month was the equivalent of about $25. Yeah... now we can use Uber, that's right Uber (!) for way less than taxis around the area. I feel so lucky to have Oyana as a contact here. She sent us a detailed list places to go- restaurants, sites, and late night places which we have referenced a lot over the last few days. Unfortunately she's out of town in Zambia (wow) for work this week but we have plans to meet her and another friend Mary from Oxy in Diani beach in a few weeks!
On our second day, Corrine and I took an Uber to the elephant orphanage, which is about a 45 min drive South toward Karen. Every day at 11:00am the baby elephants come to eat and play in the mud. What a site! Corrine and I arrived just in time to watch a line of babies trotting (?) down the hill towards a roped off mud ring where viewers stood. We watched as they were fed with large bottles and frolicked around playing in the mud. At one point a baby stood less than a foot away from me and I was able to feel his rough skin! As we watched we listened to an orphanage worker talk about each elephant, naming them by name, and how it had come to be at the orphanage. Most mothers had died while others had been found in wells or one had been found in been shot in the leg and walked with a pronounced limp. We learned that they stay at the orphanage for at least eight years before being released into the wild.
From the elephant orphanage we overheard a couple asking for rides to the giraffe center which is nearby in Karen. We figured we could save some money and make some friends if we joined them. We started talking and quickly found out the girl was originally from Portland! We had lots to talk about, obviously, from Trump to her move to France and basically how she fell in love with living abroad and had no plans of going home anytime soon. We ended up taking a matatu (a small local bus) the 10 mins or so to the giraffe center.
We paid 1000 schillings (~$10) each to feed, pet and kiss the giraffes (yes, KISS!). We quickly learned that not all giraffes are friendly though, and if we stood close with no food they were very likely to head butt you... which Corrine found out the hard way and I had a couple close calls myself. There were two viewing spots, one was on a high wooden structure that put you face to face with the giraffes while the other was ground level and made you feel extremely small as they towered over you. Corrine and I were probably there two hours- we watched different groups come and go as we just couldn't break away feeding the giraffes small pellets and watching their long blue tongues wrap around our hands. Glad we stayed too because we were able to document some pretty amazing giraffe make out sessions!! Fun fact: giraffes saliva acts as a natural antiseptic so hey, my face was probably almost sterile after the intimate time I shared with Solomon the giraffe.
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