Little Plane
We headed out from Siana Springs this morning around 10 AM to go to the airstrip. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 10:15 and we were not sure how many stops we would make heading back to Nairobi. I was excited of the prospect of traveling further into the Mara via plane and get to see some more animals from the air. Well, I got my wish. The only problem was that the plane we were on was an 11 seater and taking off and landing were not very pleasurable.
We left Siana Springs with a gentleman from Scarsdale, NY, sitting right behind us. He was talking about the different places he had been over the past month and we later found out he was an attorney traveling the world to see some amazing sights. About 4 minutes after taking off the pilot turned around and said that this gentleman was supposed to get off at our stop and we were heading back to drop him off. So, we turned around and landed a few minutes later. We dropped the passenger off and took off again. Ilise, the kids and even I were feeling a bit green.
We traveled for about 7 minutes and then landed in the Mara dropping off two other passengers. We realized why we had to turn around, they were picking up 6 new passengers, which combined with our party of 5 used up all of the seats. We have a 40 minute flight back to Nairobi and I could see Ilise closing her eyes trying to not get sick. When we landed Noah looked so green and he was complaining that he was about to throw up. It was a unique experience, but we all survived.
We landed, got our bags and met with David Armstrong, one of the students from Mbale in Uganda. David is the young man studying to become a pilot and we provided him with some funds to take his pilots exam. He was very happy to see us and showed us a letter from a potential employer that will hire him when he gets 10 more hours of flight time. From the airport we headed to lunch at a tourist restaurant that sells Americanized food and had some gift shops. The restaurant was OK and we all started to feel our feet on the ground. After lunch we headed to the Giraffe Center in Nairobi. This is a unique park where you can feed giraffes in a very nice setting. Everyone enjoyed the experience and then we decided to head back to the hotel.
It is now about 10 PM and we are leaving for the airport at 1:30 AM for a 4:30 AM flight. I am trying to stay up until the flight and then go to bed once on the flight to Cairo. That would mean I would be going to sleep around 6:30 PM in San Diego. I will try to stay up on the flights to NY and then to SD best I can and then just go to sleep when we get home tomorrow night. The time zone change should be pretty manageable, but I will let you know more about that next week when I am through it. For now I am looking forward to going home.
‘Til net time ……
Larry Kesslin 