Getting to Africa

We’ve been talking about going to Africa for years. For anyone who loves to watch National Geographic or nature documentaries, Africa captivates the world with its unique animals, life and culture. Now that the time has finally come, it all seems a bit surreal. From North America, the continent is far away. We crossed the Atlantic to Amsterdam and flew down across parts of Europe, the Mediterranean Sea and a good chunk of the African continent to land in Nairobi, Kenya.

As we were flying out of Newark, NJ, we headed into NYC the day before. That is my walking the streets in style (!) with this unicorn backpack.

We walked the streets to check out the Christmas decorations and walk by Radio City Music Hall.

I saw the next children’s book I want to read.

And then it was time to board. We weren’t actually sky priority, but we got to have some candy anyway.

Good bye to Newark and all these luggage containers.

We took off first to Detroit.

Which had some interesting aerial landscape features.

I wish I could have got more shots from over Detroit. If there is a coffee table book showing aerial pictures of Detroit, I would love to see it.

Then we took off into the sunset to Amsterdam.

This was some of the prettiest clouds with lighting I have seen.

I just wanted to walk on this layer of clouds and scoop piles of them up in my arms.

The Amsterdam airport was awesome. It was actually under construction, so I have to imagine it would have been even tidier if not for that, but it had a huge area for you to walk around in and free wifi.

So sorry this picture is blurry, but I put it in anyway they had all these shops selling tulips! It was very pretty.

These looked sleek to get a massage in.

Then we arrived to Nairobi, Kenya. We stayed at Kahama Hotel – Economy with Style and it was very nice. Each morning they prepare an awesome breakfast layout.

Breakfast room.

There’s classics like eggs to order, toast, juice, fruit, vegetable samosas, pancakes, creamed spinich, beef sausages, fried gizzards and goat meat.

The hotel was tastefully decorated with African art.

Coffee and tea layout.

It was time to leave Kahama Hotel to meet our group at a different starting point.

Kahama Hotel was awesome and we would definitely recommend staying there if you ever go to Nairobi – you can find the details below.

Peter – our very nice and wonderful taxi driver.

We transitioned to our next destination, Kivi Milimani Hotel.

Neat tree.

This trip is getting real! One of these safari trucks is for us. Oh my!

And that’s what we have so far. We’ve laid low since our arrival in Nairobi. We had a lot of chores to get done and in general, we were tired and enjoyed a few days of lounging and sleeping before we take off. I don’t think our schedule of sleeping until 9 am, taking a 4 pm nap and waking up at 2 am is going to cut it on our tour.

So we lead you and ourselves into the next unknown. We head off to explore Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. If we are really lucky, we will have a chance to see some of the last remaining 800 or so mountain gorillas. From here on out I have no idea how often we will be able to access internet. But don’t worry, for the sake of our parents, we will write every chance we get.

So get ready, load up that compressed zip lock of underwear, slather on the sun screen and grab the water jug – here we go!

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Kahama Hotel – Economy with Style – Awesome hotel! We couldn’t have found a better deal. The staff here has some of the best customer service we have ever had anywhere!! It is very secure, they offer airport pick up, breakfast is awesome, rooms are clean, everything is clean, wifi worked for us no problems. When we arrived after 24 hour flight it was just perfect, nice hot shower, clean bed. We would recommend.

+254 712 379 780 – Murang’a Road, Nairobi Globe Cinema Round About opposite Paramount Plaza

***Note on booking ahead online to pay – as per their policies you need to pay half in advance via credit card online. As making this payment was outside our travel notification dates, I had to call my credit card ahead of time to make sure they would allow the charge. This payment automatically triggers safety screenings on your card, but we paid it without issue once I verbally verified it was me.

Kivi Milimani Hotel – this hotel is also very nice. This is the hotel our tour chooses to use – if we were on our own it would be a bit more expensive than we would normally like to pay. We did have a bit of inconsistent internet access.

Peter our Awesome Taxi Driver – 0722730818