It's raining in paradise

I am currently sitting in the Island 'paradise' of Zanzibar and it's cloudy and rainy...oh good, just like home! I'm a bit disappointed with this bit of Zanzibar actually. Stone Town (the capital) was awesome - loads of tiny little streets and little shops which you could wander around for hours and get lost (which we did, many times). There was also this great night market there were they sell Zanzibar pizzas in all flavours (basically an omelette wrapped in a really thin pancake) and loads of barbequed meat and seafood. They also had this sugar cane juice which was super sweet but tasted great. We also went to a spa there and pampered ourselves with full body scrubs in preparation for the beach. I'm in the north now and as I said it's raining. We're staying in a really cool little hut right on the beach which is cool but the beach is not as great as I was expecting. I guess we had really high expectations as everyone talks about Zanzibar being paradise but I have definitely been to better beaches in Greece and Vietnam. Oh well, I shouldn't complain - I could be on the beach at home (or even worse, just at work) right now!

So anyway, back to Kenya. There were only a few of us who didn't go to Nakuru National Park so we decided we might as well take advantage of there not being many people around and made a roast for lunch (this is a REALLY big deal on the truck as we don’t have an oven so we have to use a makeshift one and there's no way you would be able to do it for 30+ people ) which was awesome.

We spent the next 3 nights by Lake Navaisha at a really pretty campsite with electric fences around to keep the hippos out (yes I thought they were joking as well until we got an early morning visit by an interested visitor!). It was nice weather so I spent two days relaxing at the lake. The big draw about Naivasha is Hells Gate National Park which is unique as you can walk/cycle around it even though there are (apparently) lions there. The park was really cool, we didn't see any big predators (which was probably for the best....we did see big cat footprints which freaked us out a bit) but there were loads of zebra, giraffes, warthogs (PUMBAS!!) and antelopes and you could get really close so it felt better than the big game driving where sometimes I feel you're just chasing a lion in a van. There was this big gorge there as well which we climbed down and burnt ourselves in the hot springs at the bottom. It was really impressive though and apparently Tomb Raider 2 and the Lion King were both filmed there (yes, according to our guide, the Lion King, the animation, was filmed there). The cycle back to camp was hard, long and uphill so we were pretty exhausted by the time we returned. That afternoon we went to the Joy Adamson memorial which is at her old house on Lake Naivasha. Joy Adamson is the 'born free' woman and basically spent her whole life working with big cats, doing rehabilitation and releasing them back in the wild. You can go to her old house and there's a little museum and documentary you can watch about her and then you get all you can eat afternoon tea on the grassy lawn. Obviously it was no Betty's but I managed to fill myself up on scones, cakes and biscuits. Awesome. The next day we left early and drove to the Masaii Mara arriving around lunchtime. We did an afternoon game drive, we were in a separate van with Mandy driving as there wasn't enough space in the truck which worked out quite nicely for me as I got to sit in the front. We saw all the usual stuff (zebras, giraffes, elephants, warthogs and wildebeests) and then we found two male lions chilling out under a tree which was cool as they were the first male lions I'd seen in the wild. That night we stayed in a Masaii campsite which was cool although nowhere near as good/authentic as the place we'd stayed in Samburu. We were up early again the next morning for another game drive...this one was a bit more successful as we saw loads more lions (one female sitting next to her kill which we just missed, a family gauging on a wildebeest and a female stalking some wildebeests) and cheetahs which was cool as I hadn't seen them before (one lot were just lazing under a tree but we saw one in the middle of nowhere who was still out of breath as he had just caught an antelope).We left the park satisfied and drove to Narok to camp on the grounds of a nice hotel.

We arrived back in my favourite place, not, Karen Nairobi on Saturday lunchtime, we spent the afternoon hanging out at the mall sending post and getting waxes etc. That evening, it was Amy's birthday so we ordered pizza and then headed to Simba (mzungu disco place) which was alright but the music was rubbish and it wasn't a patch on local discos we'd been to in the past. The next day we didn't do a lot (which is basically all there is to do in Karen) although in the evening me, Alice, Charly and Steph went to the local Indian restaurant which was awesome. It was really weird being back in Karen as the last time we had been there it had been to say goodbye to Briar, the twins, Scott and Tris and Kate and Chris so we went back with mixed feelings wishing all those guys were back on the truck.

The next day we crossed the border to Tanzania with no dramas, the borders in Africa have been nowhere near as bad as I was expecting which is good because it was something I wasn’t looking forward to - there are no huge queues and long walks across no-man’s-land like there always seemed to be with borders in Asia. We drove all day and arrived in Arusha late afternoon. The camp we were staying at was actually out of the main town which was cool as there were way more locals around than previous mzungu places we had been staying. The majority of the group went to the Serengeti for 3 days but a few of us stayed behind (I decided it wasn't worth the money - I didn't come to Africa for the animals and I feel I’ve seen all the animals I wanted to see) and chilled out at the camp.

One day me, Amy, Louise and Katie decided to take a camel ride from our camp to the local village. Riding a camel was on my top five things to do in Africa so I was super excited although everyone warned me that it would be incredibly uncomfortable. Apart from feeling like I was going to fall off it was very pleasant and the village was cool as I don't think many mzungu try to go there and for once they actually didn't try to sell us anything. We also went to this really sinister Masaii museum which had loads of creepy lifesize Masaii models doing stuff like building houses and hunting. There was a snake farm as well which was quite random but we were allowed to hold the snakes (the lamest grass ones which don't even bite), turns out I'm pretty scared of snakes as I freaked out when it came close to my neck...I'm glad I did it though. That afternoon Amy and I went into town which was fun as there are loads and loads of second hand stores so we passed quite a few hours searching through all the western clothes (which were mainly knitted jumpers and Primark stuff) and then just wandered around the markets. We also found a great ice cream place where we had fudge sundaes and it was probably the best ice cream I've had since Egypt. The final day we tried to go to the UN tribunal for the Rwandan genocide (it's held in Arusha because the African court of human rights is here), but after a pretty long journey (in a mattatu which was so busy a random lady picked me up and sat me on her knee so we would have more space!) we were told they were on holiday at the moment so the trials weren't on for the next month...oh well TIA.
We also had to say goodbye to our truck in Arusha which was sad as I'd been living on it for the past three months but it was good because we got a new truck which is much bigger so there's much more space for us all. We had two long driving days from Arusha (we stayed overnight in a very unremarkable campsite with mosquitoes all over the place) and arrived in Dar es Salaam (the capital of Tanzania) late Saturday evening. We took the very uneventful ferry (although we did see whales and sharks on the way) to Zanzibar Sunday morning which is where I am now.