We're in love with Nairobi....among other things

So we arrived in this lovely place at about 8:00 last night. Exhausted as we were after 25+ hours of plane riding, we were anxious to see if our bags would actually make it and if our driver that was supposed to take us to the hostel would actually show up. To both of our surprise, they did! We grabbed our bags and quickly found our way to "Otis" holding a sign with Emily's name on it. We hopped in his safari van and he drove us quickly to the youth hostel. On the way, though, he answered so many questions for us and made us feel immediately at ease.

We arrived at the hostel and met Joseph the night security man. He lead us to our room, which is the size of a prison cell, but clean and with a bunk bead/lockers/mirror. For $10/night, what more can we ask for? Joseph brought us water and left us alone for the night. We were happy to see that the bathrooms were clean and had showers, normal toilets, etc. We went to bed, a little nervous for what the next day and weeks would bring.

As luck would have it, I couldn't sleep but Emily was sawing some serious logs. The sound of mosquitoes buzzing in my ear kept me up. Luckily the kindle helped me pass the time (thanks Megan!) We were woken up by the strangest sounding bird ever, which we learned was hawk, and the calls from the mosque in Nairobi. We were supposed to meet someone from the hostel at 9:00 to talk about our week's activities. First, though, we went up to the roof of the hostel and did some stretches and yoga. We've got a goal of exercising 4x week here.

Eventually we went to meet with Horence, one of the hostel's guides. He agreed to take us on a walking tour of Nairobi. Thanks to him we got to learn so much about the history of Kenya and different places in the City Center. We got to see most every sight in the city and we even caught the motorcade passing by for the Kenyan president! We enjoyed lunch at a traditional African cafeteria where we met many of Horence's friends, tried roasted beef, ugali- a cornmeal mash, goat liver, and Tusker Beer. We even ate with our hands!

After lunch, we walked around some more seeing the City Market place where you can barter for anything from fruit to African carvings. We feel that by the end of our trip we may just be good at this whole bartering thing. Horence proved to be a fantastic guide. He answered every question we had including those he thought silly like, "Is it ok to wave with your left hand?" We got to know him well and learned all about his wife and son, who is the cutest baby ever. Emily and I are seriously plotting how to bring an African baby back with us (sorry mom!)

After taking a little siesta, Horence helped us book our trip for tomorrow to an elephant orphanage and giraffe center. He then helped us with our safari which will be this upcoming weekend in the Masai Mara/Lake Nakuru. Apparently it's a perfect time for a safari as the wildebeest are migrating and therefore many of the other animals are too! We managed to barter for all of these plans, which we feel good about. Our plan is to stick to about $50/day and so far we're sticking pretty close to this (minus the whole safari thing).

We are, so far, in love with this place. We decided we even like the smell here. People are so extremely friendly, though they stare at us a lot. We saw about nine other "mizungu"-white people today. Oh well, we love it that way! We've noticed that around the streets of Nairobi, we see mostly men dressed well and hardly any children. We also learned from Horence that if he wasn't there, we would be getting hounded by people on the streets to take this safari or that trip. We got to experience it a bit when he was walking in front of us. It wasn't so bad, but we've decided to go into the city only when we have a guide.

Can't wait to see what these weeks have in store for us!