Travel with JoY

I While it's still fresh, I need to note the highlights of an amazing day.  Some of the highlights were a family of lions with two young cubs, a couple of cheetahs, many elephants, gazelles, hippos, bat-earred fox; but Yata and I both really enjoyed the giraffes.  After a full day of driving the most spectular landscape;probably the furthest panorama ever, over rolling grasslands; we then visited a Masai village.  The young men did a welcome dance with song for us. They demonstrate some of their native skills and took us into a dung and stick home.  It was very dark and cramped. They say the whole village leaves and builds a new one every nine years because the termites cause their homes to fall down.  There are large termite mounds around, in fact one of the cheetahs was sunning himself on one this morning. We are doing the safari with an international group: Paul, Ukrainian world traveler (fifty countries so far), Slim and wife from Tun...

We finally got out of Nairobi. Ella and Ken's place is so luxurious that it got quite  comfortable and made it literally hard to get out of our comfort zone. Last night we took the big coach overnight bus to the Indian Ocean coast town of Mombasa.  We were picked up by a reserved taxi driver who took us to a short ferry ride and then down the south coast a short distnace to the town of Tiwi.  Ella and Ken have stayed at this little resort, the Swahili House and recommended it so  we landed here this morning at 7:30 am.  The roomrate  includes your own private chef so after a quick coffee we made up a grocery list, encouraging him to cook in the local style which is Swahili-coastal seafood with Arab flavoring. Lunch made us realize that we had hit it big.  Calamari salad and fruit. Humphrey the chef, said he cleans the whole calamari, retaining the 'wings' for flavor, salts and peppers and cuts up.  He pan sears which releases liquid.  ...

Over the weekend the four of us took a tour of the Nairobi National Park, our own little Safari.  We weren't in the best car for the wet rutted roads and once we got stuck but we  used our snow driving tricks of rocking the car while another pushed and we managed to get out, meanwhile keeping one eye peeled for a lion.  We also lost a bumper and a tail light.  It was a rental and cars in general aren't in the best of condition to begin with, so it was not a big issue in the end. But, to the wildlife.  Entering the gate we immediately faced a pack of Yellow Baboons. They are known to be aggressive and we kept our windows tightly closed.  There was an abundance of bird life but the most exciting sighting for me was the Serval, (picture above).  The Serval is about twice the size of a house cat with a cute little face.  I posted the photo of the back due to the interesting identifiable white bars on the back of the ears.  First we saw her an...