Our departure day finally arrived.  Our visas were in order (I had taken care of that online, through the e-visa program), our bags were all packed, Mittens was safely nestled into her hospital cage (see the last post), and we were ready to go. 

It’s a very long flight to Nairobi:  14½ hours. I had selected our seats for the flight online.  There were many seats available, suggesting a flight that wasn’t all that full.   The seating arrangement on the plane was 3-3-3. I took the risk and booked Mark into a window seat on the right side of the plane, and I booked myself the aisle seat in the same row.  I was hoping that, if someone was going to choose a seat after us, they wouldn’t deliberately choose that middle seat, and this would give Mark and I some extra room to spread out on this interminable flight. 

At check-in, I asked the ticket agent if the seat between us was still empty, and she said sorry, but someone will be sitting there. Oh no!  I asked if there were any other rows in the plane where there was a three-seat section that was unoccupied, so that we could again get two seats with a single empty seat between us.  She said yes, in the middle section, she could put us both in the aisle seats, and leave the middle seat empty. Perfect. 

We found our seats, stowed our bags, and settled in.  As we sat there, I noticed that the three seats in the section to Mark’s left were all unoccupied.  We kept our eyes on that section as passengers filed in, and those seats continued to remain unoccupied.  I said to Mark that it looks like we’re done boarding, and told him to zip over there and grab the middle seat of that section.  He did, and we waited nervously, expecting someone to show up eventually and claim one of those seats. Then we heard, “Flight crew, prepare for take-off”.  Yeah!! Amazingly, Mark now had those three seats to himself, and I had our original three-seat section to myself. Although Mark is a great sleeper on land, he cannot sleep on an airplane.  I’m a terrible sleeper, on land, in the air, wherever. Being able to stretch out across three seats on this super long flight at least maximizes the chances of getting some sleep, perhaps. Although both of us spent a fair amount of time laying down, neither of us really got any significant sleep. My brain simply will not power down.  Even though I meditate regularly, I still can’t get into a sleepy, relaxed state on a plane. On this flight, I tried silently chanting to myself, “relax and sleep, relax and sleep, relax and sleep”, but after laying across the seats chanting like an idiot for 20 minutes, I said to hell with this and sat up, bleary-eyed and exhausted, and just listened to music on my iPhone instead. Still, having all that room made it one of the more comfortable flights I’ve taken. 

We arrived in Nairobi, got through passport control and customs pretty easily, and met our driver (pre-arranged) who was holding a sign with my last name horribly misspelled.  As for where to stay in Nairobi, my well-traveled veterinary school classmate, Howard, advised us to NOT stay in Nairobi proper. It’s dirty and dangerous, he warned. He recommended staying in Karen, which is more suburban, and is closer to the main attractions we’d be visiting.  So I booked us into a hotel in Karen called The Margarita House. After a relatively quick (35 minutes) drive, we arrived. 

The grounds of the hotel were pretty nice.

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Our room was pretty spacious. 

The hotel was pretty quiet.  I don’t think we saw any other guests the entire time we were there.

Because we’d be getting in after a very long flight, I didn’t have much of an itinerary planned for the first day.  I read that there were a couple of markets downtown, but I wasn’t sure what exactly they sold. Both markets were relatively close to each other, so we took an Uber to the Hawker Market first, and then we’d walk to the Masai Market after that.  Nairobi is a well-wired city, and Uber is absolutely essential if you plan on going anywhere in Kenya. 

The Uber driver left us off on the street and pointed to where the market was.  We didn’t really see much at first, but we kept walking, and a ramshackle market came into view.

It was a local  fruit and vegetable market and was exactly the kind of authentic, unglamorous, no-frills market that Mark loves to explore. 

Lots of stalls, many different local varieties of produce, and very friendly people.  

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To keep the blazing sun (and rain, if it occurred) out, a makeshift roof of burlap bags had been constructed, and it added an interesting character to the market, especially in some uncovered sections, where the deep blue African sky could be seen peeking through.

The deep bluesky, the varieties of fruit, the clothes that people were wearing…. It was an explosion of color everywhere.  

People in Nairobi have seen many Western tourists and tended in general to not make a big deal when they saw us, but at this market, we were very conspicuous.  It was clear that they don’t see tourists much at this particular market. We were being treated like Elvis.

Normally we tend to keep to ourselves, but recently we talked about trying to engage the locals more often.  In Kenya, it was so easy, because the people were genuinely friendly to tourists. 

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The new iPhone, the 11 Pro, has a terrific camera, and the portrait setting is amazing.  I took an online photography class specifically for iPhone photography, (here’s the highly active iPhone Photo Acedemy Facebook Group where I post my own photos all the time.) and I’ve gotten very good at portraits.  Here’s one of my best, of an adorable little boy in the market. 

After visiting the first market, we decided to stroll to the second market.  We stopped at a convenience store to get some water and decided to hit the restroom and then grab a snack before heading back out.  Then we tried walking to the other market, based upon directions given via Google Maps. Along the way, we passed another market, The Figtree Market, where people were selling all kinds of wares on the street, like clothing and sneakers.  Nothing really worth stopping for. 

It was a pretty hot day and I was drinking a lot of water (kidney stone paranoia) and I had to pee.  I had no idea where I was going to do this, until I spotted a public bathroom. My excessive drinking has led me on an unexpected yet enlightening tour of Nairobi bathrooms.  A public bathroom has the potential to be pretty gross, and although this one wasn’t the porta-potty at a Slayer concert, it was pretty close. 

After searching in vain for the Masai Market, a security guard nearby (there are lots of them in Nairobi; security is a big issue here) said that there was no market today.  Sigh. So, with no other real plans on the agenda, we decided to mosey on into downtown Nairobi, something we were warned to be careful about. 

We passed some crowded city streets,  and saw the building housing the National Archives, where I recorded some kids in the square out front doing a little dance routine. 

We were hungry, and I was looking for a specific restaurant (I forget the name now, but I had read that it was a great place to eat), but no matter how close I seemed to get on Google Maps, I just couldn’t find it.  Finally, we asked a local guy and he said that the place had closed. We hung out at a coffee shop for a bit, and then Uber’ed it back to the hotel. That evening, we had a really great meal and a well-known local restaurant called Tomambo. 

We sat at an outside table, under a sconce that was mounted on the wall. 

On the wall adjacent to the sconce was a lizard, sitting patiently.  The nearby light was attracting a few winged insects. A small moth flew nearby, and the lizard flicked out its tongue and nailed the moth pretty handily.  I wish I had recorded it on video, but I did get a picture of the lizard proudly displaying his catch.  

We went back to the hotel and prepared for an exciting day filled with giraffes and elephants.

Part 3