A late breakfast at 9am. Mind you I still feeel knackered, obviously too much rest. Today is a very long and dull day with nothing but clock watching. Kim, Paula and Rolf went rhino hunting in Kenya National Park, to no avail. A cloud of Germans and a Canadian (a new collective noun?) went down the road to buy postcards and string(!) and saw two white people. Things have abviously changed in the last ten or fifteen years as I'm sure there used to be lots of whites [based on what knowledge, I'm not sure]-- maybe they're all hiding.
The rest of us sat round the pool on an overcast day -- though there was a few moments of sunshine in the afternoon. I think they put the pool in the wrong place in this hotel. Shorter Heiko left at 2pm for the plane we [originally] wanted to be on. He's wangled a 3 night stopover in Dubai. He's given us some Maldives tips so we'll let him off filling our plane.
[The hotel offered a] haircut for US$10, no way! [Time to buy some] shears! Kim managed to continue his reputation for being last minute by getting a standby ticket to India at 4.30. The flight was at 5.30 and the taxi takes an hour when the traffic's busy. We'll assume he got on it as he didn't return...
We bade farewell to the majority at 8pm as they were packing one flight back to Heathrow. Tracey and Terry-Lynn were then facing an unlikely chance of a standby flight to Canada -- her internal access to the Air Canada staff standby system showed 40 overbooked passengers and 13 other Air Canada staff standbys before them. We did pick up some useful tips on how airline overbooking works and how to get round it or better, for us, what the benefits of being hauled off [the plane] are.
That left four of us who ate dinner then went to bed -- party on!
Heron Court Hotel, Nairobi S1.28925 E36.80719 Elev. 1705m. Less than 1.3 degrees from the Equator!
We think Georgie has taken to his bed with malaria. He says he gets it every three months. His cure is nine pills over three days and plenty of rest. Our FedEx parcel doesn't appear to have gone anywhere so there's a couple of anxious calls and use of the Internet. It magically appears [on the website] whilst we search but we'll get Paul to pop into Arusha on his way home and see what they have to say.
We have a final own expense meal in the hotel restaurant [own expense wrt the Drifters tour, obviously it's all own expense from now on!]. The usual African thing of the orders getting mixed up and some people finishing before others have been served ["pole pole," slowly, slowly]. An Indian woman who purports to be the owner keeps asking if everything is OK. Nobody says a thing.
We lounge around after the meal expecting Paul to go to bed early (he's leaving at 5am tomorrow to drive back [the 7000km] to Jo'burg in 4 days (3 if he's quick) then 3 days off [before he starts the next tour, to Botswana]!) but he's supping a couple of beers so we fall back into funny stories from the trip (a few Herman moments included). Paul says that there's nothing to be done about the Serengeti guides. Drifters are using the last one on the list having been through the lot. Only Tanzanian citizens can become guides and the qualification is a driving licence. Paul, himself, was on one safari where he had to start telling people what was going on around them. And the journey back [with the Serengeti guides] always takes half the time [of the outward trip]! Finally, at 11, my eyelids drooping, Paul's off. We thank him and stuff his pockets with tips.
Copyright 2002 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.