Dirt! 
On Saturday we set off for the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage and the Rothchild Giraffe treehouse. The sanctuary is only open from 11-12 on Saturday so it's worth the effort to get there on time! We arrived to find around 10 elephants under 2 years old on display - admittedly the setting was a bit weird. Although we were in the Nairobi National Park, we were in a corded-off area to watch the elephants roll around in dirt and play with a soccer ball in a makeshift lake. For our 500 bob we did get to take lots of photos,
learn a bit about the orphanage and how they take care of the elephants (milk every 3 hours!). I think the orphanage is one of the only ones like it in the world.As we strolled back to the car we saw two warthogs – the real Pumbaa!
Thanks to the amazing zoom lens on the camera Steve let me borrow, I managed to get a few shots of them before they ran off. If that wasn’t enough, as we drove out of the Orphanage we saw a wild baboon! This time I wasn’t quick enough to catch him, but I couldn’t believe that in the span of 10 minutes I’d seen elephants, warthogs and a baboon!
Next – Giraffes! There are several different types of Giraffes I learned and we saw a type called Rothchild Giraffes. We got to feed them which was a slimy and relatively unpleasant experience, but Giraffes can be really gentle which is amazing given how strong their tongues are! The texture of their tongues reminds me of the inside of an aloe plant after you cut open the center. Check out the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz970RvwpY4
Then we went to lunch at the Rusty Nail in Karen, a suburb of Nairobi named after Karen Blixen . The setting was a lovely garden
with lots of birds and flowers as you can see I snapped a few.
The restaurant also sponsors an organic market on Saturdays. There was one stall selling Amaranth flour, which the packet said was good for the maintenance of HIV and expired in June 2010! Not my kind of Organic market!
After a quick team spag bol cooked up by Liz, we set off for Casablanca… the story goes on until 4am but I’ll leave out the details. Needless to say we had lots of fun!
Baadayye (Swahili for see you later!)
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2 comments:
Amazing!! The elephants are so cute!! They have this "isn't GE so green" commercial on in the US that has a baby elephant running aorund but this is the REAL thing!! Yeah for African elephants in Africa! Continue sharing your adventures with us!
Hey Anna - they were indeed very cute. Going to the Masai Mara this weekend so should be interesting!
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