July 22, 2007 – Kenya

We planned an early morning departure from Il Ngwesi because everyone has told us that the wildlife in Lewa National Park (which is on the way to Lewa airport) is worth a few extra hours. We were sad to leave our favorite lodge so quickly, but were drawn to Lewa by talk of guaranteed rhino sighting. Our bags were already on the way to the car when James announced that a staff member just spotted a cheetah down the road. All the guests hopped in the car with us and our luggage was abandoned back at the lodge. We drove just seven minutes and there he was: lying down on a little hill overlooking the surrounding domain, just 10 meters from the car. We stayed as quiet as is car-ly possible and inched closer and closer until we were just 25 feet from the cat. I was in awe…the cheetah just sat there, stretched, scratched, and lazed about for ten minutes. Then it calmly stood up and surveyed its surroundings. It wasn’t until it heard the sounds of people rearranging and trying to get a better view that it became spooked and ran away.

It was time to leave for Lewa airport, so we came back to the lodge and loaded up the luggage. It’s a two-hour drive to get from Il Ngwesi to Lewa airport and our flight was scheduled from 12:30PM. Just inside Lewa park, we stopped and had a picnic brunch on a rocky shelf overlooking a river valley. As we ate our hard boiled eggs and sipped our juice boxes, a herd of giraffes ran into the valley, followed by a rhino and its baby. We knew it was a ¬white rhino (and not a black rhino) because the baby was leading the mother (black rhino mothers lead their babies), their rear horn was smaller (black rhinos’ horns are the same length), they were quite large (black rhinos are smaller, though more aggressive), and they were eating grass (black rhinos eat a variety of bushes). There must have been a cat in the area which initiated their run for the valley.

Just as we neared the airport, we came upon a whole family of black rhinos: father, mother, and child. The father looked very unsettled about our approach and after contemplating a charge, turned around and began walking away. We passed a few more pumbas and antelope and then we arrived at Lewa airport—a slightly bigger strip of gravel, but still no infrastructure for check-in, metal detecting, or other formalities.

We hopped onto AirKenya…next stop…Nairobi.

Nairobi has become our second home in Africa. We are back again at the Palacina Hotel and already feel like old-timers (perhaps because it’s the only place we’ve been for longer than two days). We enjoyed one last dinner at the Palacina restaurant where we now know the whole menu by heart, and we talked about the influence of rap on today’s youth.

While Charly relaxed, Alex and I used the rest of the evening to catch up on blogging. Even though we’re technically operating in the future (by 11 hours), our blogs are approximately one week in the past…