A leisurely start to the day as our journey had been shortened by driving to Arusha the day before.
A very comfortable drive to the border where our driver had lunch and we indulged in cokes having had a large breakfast – but this was our first visit to a non-tourist eating place. It was basically a place for local food – very simple but hot food prepared in an instant. In the warming cupboard there were samosas and puris, which would probably have been very good, too – but we had no need to eat at that stage.
The move back to Kenya was a similar easy process as the move into Tanzania had been a week earlier. No visa was needed as we had only been out of the country briefly – so if you go to Kenya from the UK you simply need a single entry tourist visa if you intend to go into Tanzania and back into Kenya.
However simple the process, I was destined to be in trouble – going into Tanzania I didn’t have enough dollars in my purse and they wouldn’t take sterling; here, I took a photograph in the hall and one of the officials followed us out to ask what I had taken. I offered to delete it but he said there was no problem. For us two countries represented in the same building is quite a novelty – I wonder if we’ll have land borders here in future!
Charles was waiting with the luggage moved across to his van. He just needed us to get our ‘personal’ stuff – cameras and the like – from our Tanzanian vehicle and we would be on the way to Amboseli.
Five minutes later, having battled with the ladies selling souvenirs, we were off, looking forward to seeing Amboseli with views of Mt. Kilimanjaro, huge elephants and giraffes.
Needless to say, the weather had other ideas and the cloud stayed low so there was no mountain peak to be seen, though I did get some nice elephant shots with some of the foothills and there were some fun evening shots with gazelles prancing about in the dusk.
We were soon on our way to Nairobi and looking forward to a night in the new Hilton – confirmed just a few days earlier. It was a shock, then, late in the afternoon, to find ourselves with no bed for the night as the hotel had not yet started receiving visitors – a big failure on the part of Hilton Honors and one I haven’t given up on yet! Charles had a solution and we stayed in a very nice hotel – the Lazizi – within the airport perimeter. Then home early the next morning.
And so I can move on!
Living the Journey 