One day, I mentioned to my mom "wouldn't a Safari be fun?" I was not being serious, though of course I thought it would be fun. She agreed, and said we should do it together. Since this would be a big deal, I did not really think it would happen.

Months later (January 2000), my mom called me, somewhat out of the blue, and said that we should go on the Safari soon; she had time off from work during the third week of February. I was busy with graduate classes, but I could miss one.

So we made it happen. I found Twiga-Tours on the web, which had an appealing itinerary. To make a long story short, though it wasn’t easy, we found a flight from Newark that fit our schedules and was reasonably priced. Each way had a stopover in London (12 hours on the way there and 5 hours on the way back). Since I'd never been to London, I was also excited about that. We planned to explore London during the 12-hour stopover.

When we arrived in London's Heathrow airport, we purchased all-day transportation passes. We then got on the subway (the "tube" or "underground," as the English call it). My mom had lived in London for a summer a few years ago, so she knew some interesting neighborhoods to visit.

Our first stop was the town where the Rolling Stones happen to live. Our next stop was Greenwich, which I’d been interested in visiting because it’s the location of GMT. We saw many sites in London, though I don't remember all the names. The streets weren't as crowded as usual, according to my mom. At about 3, we found a pub. It wasn't quite the authentic pub we had wanted, but it was nice.

A few other things I remember about London are the gossip in the daily newspaper, Big Ben (a clock near the palace), Shephard Market and Buckingham Palace. Soon, we returned to the airport and were off to Kenya.

On the flight, my mom kept stressing about whether the tour people would meet us. We finally arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, after a ten-hour flight. Someone was waiting there to greet us on our side of customs. He introduced us to our driver and went over our itinerary. We learned we would be the only ones in our Safari vehicle, which we found strange, especially since the tour agency had pressured us so much about getting there on time. My mom was uneasy about our being the only ones in the vehicle, but it turned out well. According to our driver, Joseph, this was not uncommon.

A few minutes after leaving the airport, we decided to stop at a supermarket to get a sufficient water supply for the entire trip. The country is poor and unemployment is high; it was easy to see that. According to many the government is corrupt. Despite the poverty, many people seemed to be well educated. Everyone we encountered spoke English. The language situation is interesting. I searched the web, and got to the bottom of it. "English is the official language while Kiswahili is the national language. That means that government and education are in English, while everything else tends to be in Swahili. And, in actuality, most of government is in Swahili also."

We were now off to our destination. The first place we stayed was Mountain Lodge. There was a pond-like area behind the lodge where animals (like the Rhino) could drink. We relaxed and had lunch. The food was fantastic and would be the entire trip. Just about every meal had freshly cut fruits and vegetables.

After lunch, we went for a walk to get some exercise. That's when we first saw monkeys, walking on the fences right outside the lodge. Seeing monkeys would be common, but the first time was a shock. I walked around looking at them and taking some pictures. They liked hanging out near the trash.

When we got back to our room, it was a torn apart! We must have left the porch door unlocked. The monkeys raided our room and drank the OJ, ate some cheese we had left on the table and rummaged through my mom's suitcase. According to someone sitting nearby at a different porch, one monkey had Cremora all over it. In the late afternoon, I hung out by the roof, where I teased monkeys. A couple of times, one of the protective males charged at me, and I had to turn around and run. The monkey kept making faces, and I knew I was annoying him. My heart would race when he jumped down from the ledge and chased me for a few steps before stopping.

That night at about 4AM, the hotel staff woke us up to see a Rhino that had come to the lodge to drink water.

Day 2 (Monday): We awoke at 7 with Monkeys looking at us through the window. <--actually, we saw this after opening the curtains -->After breakfast we were off to our next destination, which would include game drives.

It was a bumpy ride, and we then realized many of our 4-6 hour drives would be extremely bumpy, like you couldn't imagine. We stopped at a shopping area, right by the equator. There was a sign there that said so. . You have to bargain when you purchase. It is fun, but you have to have the right mindset. I'd recommend starting out at 15% of the asking price, and not going higher than 25%. They actually ask you to bargain, and may explain how it works. Sometimes there would be a paper, and the vendor would write her price, and then you would write yours. I noticed that paper was often reused because of the short supply.

We arrived at the lodge in Shaba after a six-hour drive. The lodge had a nice pool. According to some other tourists, this was one of the nicest places to stay. We had another good lunch, and later in the afternoon went on our first 'game drive.' We didn't see the big cats ... but we did see lots of elephants, zebra and giraffe.

We didn't sleep that night. The beds were nice, and there were mosquito nets (though not many insects anyway). We didn't sleep Tuesday or Wednesday night either. Somehow, we didn't end up getting tired.

Day 3: Tuesday morning we saw our first cat, a leopard sleeping in a tree. We saw many elephants, zebra, giraffes, ant hills, gazelle. We would see those pretty much every day. There were interesting things about each animal. The baby elephants were tiny, and stayed close to their mom (I think). Zebra would roll over onto their backs to clean. The Anthills were about 5 feet, and there were so many of them (though we never got to see the ants). There are different types of giraffe, and I think the 'reticulated' one is particularly pretty. Lions rarely attack giraffe, I think because of the giraffe's strong kick.

During the afternoon game drive we saw the long sought after lion. Mr. stud, strutting around with his hair on the face. We watched him for about 5 minutes and saw him change position a couple of times. The Lions we saw on the trip seemed restless.

That night as we were going back to our room (after some entertainment that actually consisted of lodge workers dressed up as tribe people), a huge flying roach fell in front of my mom. We were startled, but luckily that did not happen again.

Day 4: On Wednesday, we left at 7:30AM for our next destination, Lake Nakuru (known as a bird sanctuary). There were blue birds singing when we arrived at the lodge. I went for a swim before our afternoon game drive. On the drive we stopped by Soda Lake and saw flamingos and hawks, though they flew away when I got close. We may have seen a lion that afternoon. We saw lions practically every day. As we headed back to the lodge, a van we passed told Joseph about a leopard, and we turned around to find it. And we did; it was eating a gazelle in a tree. We heard it biting on the bone! We couldn't get that close, as it was high in a tree. I wanted to stay watching forever, but the driver can get fined for staying too late, and it was already 6:30. . We later found out that while we were enjoying a view of the lake and looking at some rats, some people got to see the leopard's chase when it killed the gazelle. The leopard is just like a regular cat, licking itself and its paws in between bites. We learned that leopards can be domesticated. On our drive towards the park's exit we saw a male lion eating a zebra. Female lions do most of the hunting; they can run much faster than the male. However, the male has the right to the food.

Dinner was nice, and there was an entertainer that was singing "welcome to keeen-ya, eeen-joy you-er holy-day" -- meaning "welcome to Kenya, enjoy your holiday." I remember the tune, but have no way to communicate it here.

Day 5: Thursday. In the morning, we saw a lot of baboons as we ate breakfast! After breakfast we were off to a tented camp at Maasai Mara -- another long drive. We arrived in time for a late lunch. We went for a jog, but insects kept bothering us. There was an area to watch leopards, where the camp used to feed them. But we heard that a leopard killed a sheep one-day, so the nearby tribe killed one, and the leopards never returned. I don't remember what we saw on the game drive before dinner.

At the camp, next to the dining area, the lodge put food out for a wild cat. And we got to see it. It is very wild. I forget what it's called, but it's colored like a wild cat (lion/tiger, etc.).

The tent was comfortable, and slightly cooler than the other places we had been, so we finally slept. These tents had showers; they were two rooms, separated by a curtain. There were baboons all over the camp, and on the tents.

Day 6: Friday. This was the day we would do an all-day safari, bringing along food for a picnic (prepared for us). I remember seeing hundreds of zebra. We saw the cheetah. It was tough to spot, and our driver broke the rules, and drove up right next to it; we only stayed there for a minute. Then we went to the border of Kenya and Tanzania ... there's a river. We saw crocodiles, and hippos in the water and on the shore. The crocodiles really blend in. It's amazing what our driver (and probably all the drivers) could spot. We learned that the hippo and crocodile leave peacefully together. If a crocodile were to eat a baby hippo, he'd be killed, though the baby hippo would have no way of surviving either. During a certain season, the river is the site of a massive wilder beast migration. I think this area was called the 'Great Rift Valley.'

We saw a pride of lions later in the afternoon, which consisted of a few mothers with their cubs (no males). One walked right by our car, about 10 feet away!

We got back to the camp at around 5, and thought that was it for our Safari. But I decided we would go on a night drive around the camp. My mom was hesitant, especially since the way someone described it did not make it sound exciting. It turns out we saw some neat animals, and a male lion walking around marking his territory. And a minute later, we saw a human (from a tribe) walking around, right near the lion! Amazing. He had a spear, which he can supposedly use to kill the lion. He was about 15 years old! I'm never going to think I'm tough again. We saw giraffe, and many gazelle. And some small animal that hops like a kangaroo.

Day 7: Saturday. This was our last day. No more game drives. We left the camp early in the morning and got a private tour of Nairobi. We enjoyed the day bargaining with street vendors and checking out Nairobi. We ate at the Carnivore restaurant, which was not particularly tasty. The restaurant was about 20 Km from the airport, but my mom insisted we get to the airport at least 2 hours early. It's a good thing we did. The flight was overbooked and we were very lucky to get on the flight. I'm not sure how it worked out. That's it! My brother picked us up at the airport, 25 hours after we left Nairobi. He brought me some spicy wings, only he said they weren't spicy. After eating them way too fast, my mouth was burning and I was sweating.