-
Nairobi, Kenya
-
This place was Average
-
Maasai shepherds in traditional dress
On the way to Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, we spotted a terrific mixture of old and new, traditional and modern, as well as Western and African. The land has, for the most part, been cleared of forest and jungle to make way for agriculture. Where crops won’t grow, the land is used for grazing cattle and goats. Like elsewhere in the world, the countryside reflects the traditions of the local cultures with mud huts, colourful clothing and subsistence agriculture. In cities, we saw a lot more high rise buildings, traffic jams and western clothing.
We finished the tour with WildLife Adventures in a four-star hotel. This was really weird as we’d been fed and transported like it was a discount tour – which it wasn’t – and now they ended it like a luxury trip! We only stayed there one night and then moved to a three-star hotel for a week to await a package of our medications from the US. During this time, we also began the process at the Canadian High Commissioner in Nairobi to get new passports as we were running out of pages in our 16-page originals! Didn’t plan that very well! Another lesson we will include in the How To section of my travel book.
We ended up aborting the passport process in Nairobi as Canada would issue only temporary documents good for one year. As most countries require you to have a minimum of six months left on your passport before they give you a visa, the temporary documents would have been almost useless to us as we would have to renew in only six months. The reason we could only get a temporary visa was that we couldn’t produce our original documents (my birth certificate and Jacob’s citizenship certificate) which are locked up in a safety deposit box in Los Angeles. We got our all the forms and documents back – and luckily some US$300 in fees – and will have to restart the process in India. In the meantime, Jacob will travel to Los Angeles for a few days at the end of August to retrieve our documents, see a few people and then meet me in Korea. I won’t be going with him so that we can save the US$1,500 to 2,000 this will cost us. YIKES!
-
-
Curio shop selling traditional Maasai necklaces
-
-
Maasai shepherd and his camels just outside Nairobi
-
-
Maasai Cyclist
-
-
Rural market
Posted
Aug 08, 2007
by DJ-RTW
Would you like to post a comment?
Sign Up for Free or
Sign In to post a comment