Travel Thursday: Kenya {Safari}

Okay, to be honest, I don't know if what we did counts as a safari, but our friend Syano's dad hired a car for us (and I should point out how appreciative we are that he did that for us!) and we drove around Nairobi National Park looking for/at animals for an afternoon.

Nairobi National Park is pretty close to Syano's family's house (where we were staying). Syano and the driver paid in Kenyan shillings, but Jonty and I had to pay in US dollars! Isn't that bizarre?

We got there mid-afternoon after running around town getting dollars and whatever else.

Right upon driving in, a bunch of baboons (a congress of baboons, to be technical) was blocking our way.

They took their sweet time moving out of the road. But we didn't mind because we loved watching this little one.

I was snapping photos right and left.

Our next obstacle was a couple of giraffes having an afternoon meal. We were able to get very close to watch them because they were definitely not scared of us.

Giraffes are such beautiful animals. I loved watching their bodies move as they walked.

We saw loads of giraffes, no doubt more than any other animals. They were everywhere, usually in small groups. Of course, they are the easiest to spot!

The park is only 7 kilometres from the city! Some of our shots had high-rise buildings in the background, and airplanes from the nearby airport flew overhead. (These are waterbucks. They tended to shy away from us.)

A few hippos were out for a swim in this pond. Our driver told us that hippos are quite dangerous, since they're strong and, contrary to appearances, can run very fast (up to 20 miles per hour; they can run at the bottom of a pond too!). We stuck around for a while, hoping they'd do something exciting (and ready to drive away like hell if they tried to involve us in the excitement!). They yelled at us a few times, but didn't do anything else all that interesting. And they were a bit too far away to really take proper photos.

We then saw some male ostriches get into a little squabble over a high maintenance female.

There was a rhino sighted by others in the park, and we could see it in the distance, but we could never find a road that would get close to it. We started a bit too late in the day to see everything we wanted, but we did get to see a few amazing animals and have a little adventure. I did just discover this blog though, which has some more exciting pictures and stories in Nairobi National Park. And the sunset at the end was worth it.

<3