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Saturday, December 25, 1999: Nairobi
Presents under the tree, pancakes on the breakfast table and "Do They Know It's Christmas" on VH-1 in the living room. In short, a normal Christmas morning (at least for a non-Jewish household). We opened presents for a good two hours. Ivonne and David got Jen and I some cologne and perfume respectively, and a wonderful, handmade photo album for our trip pictures. Courtney and Zoe had a field day, opening most of the suitcase of gifts Jen and I had lugged to Africa, plus a slew David had brought back from London earlier in the week. Ivonne got David a nice, handmade valet she had picked up the day before.
Since there aren't many movie theaters in Nairobi to begin with, to say nothing of ones open on Christmas Day (this was the first Christmas Day in many years that Jen and I would skip the traditional Chinese dinner and a movie), we set out on a cross-country trip to Hell's Gate National Park, about 90 minutes northwest of Nairobi near Lake Naivasha off, appropriately enough, South Moi Road. This was our first and only cross-country trip through Kenya, and it didn't disappoint, though it took some time to get used to seeing baboons hanging out on the side of the highway. Also, the police checkpoints, complete with nail strips in the middle of the road, were also amusing. Hell's Gate is your average national park, if your average national park has zebra, antelope and other assorted animals. We drove through the park for a few minutes while I sat on the roof of the Mitsubishi Pajero taking video. Some rock climbers also made for some entertainment near the entrance of the park.
As the saying goes in Africa, if you're going to lie, lie big. I walked away while Ivonne went to work, explaining that she picked me up on the side of the road hitchhiking and that I told her I lived in Kenya. She stuck to that story even at the gate as we were leaving the park, where we paid the extra $10 for me (they didn't ask about Jen). Seems the park rangers could get in trouble for not checking our residency papers. Ivonne insisted on a receipt, to make sure they didn't pocket the extra shillings.
We stopped for some tea, cakes and beer at the Lake Naivasha Country Club on a lake near the park, where a large waterbuck was hanging out on the grounds. That evening, we packed and played Life (one of Courtney's gifts), over a few too many Heineken's. No one in the house had played Life in a while, and we had a blast.
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We set up camp at the top of a hill for lunch and watched the zebras while we had some beer and ate leftover ham. The low point of the trip came when a park ranger stopped to ask for our entrance tickets. I made the mistake of blathering, unsolicited, that I was visiting from Washington. Little did I know that Ivonne had told the park folks that we were all residents -- and therefore saved about US$10 each on park admission.
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