Kenya 2021/2022

Jan. 6-7, going back home

This morn­ing we could sleep longer for the first time dur­ing this trip. Africa safaris are real­ly not for peo­ple sleep­ing late. There was no more morn­ing gamedrive today. Caleb told us that it would take us about 7 hours to get to Nairo­bi. He said that there was a good road, but since there were many trucks on the road, it was still only pos­si­ble to dri­ve slow­ly. We were pret­ty hap­py to be able to rest a lit­tle longer, the trip home will still take a long time.

We there­fore, after every­one had enjoyed an exten­sive beau­ti­ful last out­door show­er, calm­ly packed up our stuff. Then we met for a last opu­lent break­fast with fresh fruit, egg dish­es, bacon, sausages, etc. and Kenyan cof­fee in the restau­rant of the lodge. After­wards we went back to our cot­tage #5 for the very last time, where Simone checked sev­er­al times if we had real­ly, real­ly, real­ly got every­thing packed. I had already done the check-in for­mal­i­ties for the return flight with Lufthansa online.

At 10:00 am we said good­bye to Michela almost in tears. Caleb was already wait­ing for us at our Land­Cruis­er. After the lug­gage was loaded, we start­ed the long ride to Nairobi.

We ate lunch on the way from lunch box­es we had tak­en with us. In Nairo­bi we want­ed to vis­it a super­mar­ket to buy some Kenyan tea. After­wards we will con­tin­ue to Jomo Keny­at­ta Air­port, where our return flight is sched­uled for 23:00.

On the way to Nairo­bi we saw the famous rail­road bridge over the Tsa­vo Riv­er, part of the rail­road line from Mom­basa to Nairo­bi built by the British a good 120 years ago. There is a lodge here called “Man Eaters Lodge” - that does­n’t sound very trustworthy. 😳

The old bridge of the British can be seen in the fore­ground of the pic­ture. In the mean­time, a new rail­road line has been built by the Chi­nese, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly short­ens the jour­ney from Mom­basa to Nairo­bi. The asso­ci­at­ed new rail­way bridge can also be seen in the pic­ture above in the background.

The famous Tsa­vo Man-Eaters were a pair of man-eat­ing male lions in the Tsa­vo region respon­si­ble for the deaths of dozens of Indi­an con­struc­tion work­ers on the Kenya-Ugan­da Rail­way between March and Decem­ber 1898. This is also the sub­ject of a movie with Michael Dou­glas and Val Kilmer (The Ghost and the Dark­ness, 1996). Nor­mal­ly, lions do not attack humans.

Caleb brought us safe­ly and on time to the Jomo Keny­at­ta Air­port in Nairo­bi. Before that we made a short stop at a super­mar­ket where Andrea could buy her Kenyan tea. At the air­port we said good­bye with heavy hearts to Caleb, who had played such a big part in the suc­cess of this great trip.

After count­less secu­ri­ty checks in the air­port, we final­ly arrived at the depar­ture hall. Here a typ­i­cal Kenyan high­ly auto­mat­ed pas­sage bar­ri­er in the airport:

We, like all the oth­er pas­sen­gers, just went through the middle 😉.

After sev­er­al more lengthy checks at impro­vised “Doc­u­ments Check” coun­ters, we final­ly arrived safe­ly at our Gate 24. The depar­ture had orig­i­nal­ly been planned for 23:00, but cur­rent­ly the machine on the inbound flight was already 20 min­utes late. So we still had a longer wait­ing time ahead of us.

Time to learn some Swahili: “Kwa­heri Kenya” means “Good­bye Kenya” with the wish to come back soon and “Have a good trip” means: “Safari nje­ma”!

After a smooth night flight, we arrived on time in Frank­furt in the ear­ly morn­ing of Jan­u­ary 7th, 2022 short­ly after 6:00am. There we said good­bye to our friends, who con­tin­ued their jour­ney home in their own car. How­ev­er, as at the begin­ning of our jour­ney, we still had a train ride to Düs­sel­dorf ahead of us. First, we picked up our lug­gage at the Lufthansa Air­rail bag­gage claim near the train station.

Since our train did­n’t leave until two hours lat­er, we still had some time to kill. Our jour­ney then end­ed as it had begun: at Star­bucks in the train sta­tion. In the Lumo we had good 30°C, in Nairo­bi last night still 16°C, here in Frank­furt it is 1°C cold, and what does Luise drink???

At Lumo a hot choco­late and here an iced tea 😊

Strict­ly speak­ing, how­ev­er, our jour­ney was not yet over. We were still wait­ing for the Air­port Express to Düs­sel­dorf. The train was sched­uled to depart at 8:42 a.m., so we would arrive back in Düs­sel­dorf at about 10:00.

The train arrived on time as well. On the way, we looked out of the win­dow into a win­ter land­scape in dis­be­lief - yes­ter­day we had still been sweat­ing in Africa under the blaz­ing equa­to­r­i­al sun at 30°C:

In Düs­sel­dorf we took a cab that brought us home, where we were joy­ful­ly await­ed by anoth­er cat, our tom­cat Tom:

Our home­ward jour­ney was now final­ly fin­ished after more than 25 hours. It was again a won­der­ful trip. The orga­ni­za­tion in the fore­front and the trav­el process in Africa worked again per­fect­ly despite the Coro­na pan­dem­ic. We would like to thank espe­cial­ly Mr. Nowak from Let’s go Africa and of course Caleb, our great and very com­pe­tent guide.

Dear Caleb: we had again a lot of fun and a great time with you and hope to see you in Africa again soon!

I brought back almost 18,000 pho­tos from this trip. The pro­cess­ing took a cor­re­spond­ing­ly long time. A selec­tion of some pic­tures from this trip can be found sep­a­rate­ly in my gallery.

I had a lot of fun writ­ing this trav­el­ogue. I was able to re-expe­ri­ence the won­der­ful trip in detail and am more and more amazed about all the won­der­ful things we had expe­ri­enced in such a short time. Espe­cial­ly the two days in Amboseli Nation­al Park with the many ele­phants and flamin­gos as well as the unob­struct­ed view of the majes­tic Mount Kil­i­man­jaro had far exceed­ed all our expectations.

But the Masai Mara once again offered great expe­ri­ences and the Lions Bluff Lodge is tru­ly spectacular.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we were not so lucky with the ani­mals there. This will prob­a­bly be bet­ter in the Lumo in the future, because there will be a water reser­voir and even a pho­to­hide set up, from which you can make close obser­va­tions of the ani­mals at eye lev­el at the water­hole. How­ev­er, one has to ask one­self if this is real­ly still “wildlife”…

I already miss the African land­scapes, the rich African wildlife and the nice peo­ple we had the chance to meet.

Aber:

After Africa is before Africa, we will sure­ly come back…

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Willich / War­burg in April 2022,

Dr. Gerd-Uwe Neukamp

Pho­to­graph­ic Equipment