Hi blog. The last three days have been extremely long. We took a flight to Istanbul (12 hours ish), a flight to Nairobi (8 hours ish), and then drove from Nairobi to Arusha (6 hours ish) and finally to the Ecolodge (2 hours). I have not slept for a decent amount of time since that first flight when I slept for four hours. I am extremely sleep-deprived, and I think nausea and hallucinations are some of the side effects of this extreme lack of sleep.
It was a lot of fun to stay in the Istanbul airport for five hours. Carina and I tried Turkish coffee for the first time, and then after we finished the coffee, we mixed cold water into the grounds and drank it. Bad idea. It turns out the water was provided as a palate cleanser, not a mix-in. We learned our lesson the hard way after we drank cold water with gritty grounds suspended in it. The airport itself was quite beautiful architecturally, and I appreciated all the greenery decorating the inside of the terminals. Carina said she wanted to find the architect who designed the airport so she could give them a hug.
^Carina with some of the Turkish coffee we ordered in the Istanbul airport
I did not enjoy the airport in Nairobi very much. Customs was a huge hassle because the family in front of me was having a lot of trouble getting their eight children through into Kenya. We ate at a cafe attached to the airport, and it was quite pleasant. Most of the Nairobi airport process took place outside, so I didn’t have the chance to appreciate the airport.
When we started the journey from Nairobi to Arusha, we immediately saw a giraffe and some zebras right outside of the airport. Since we’ve seen the giraffe, that’s â…“ of my taxon animals spotted with only two more to go! However, I’m not too hopeful about spotting a pangolin or an aardvark on this trip because they are quite elusive.
I’ve never been to Africa before, so driving through Kenya was definitely a memorable experience for me. I guess I’ve never really seen pictures of Africa before, so the layout of businesses/buildings, the commute of people to work, and the lifestyles, clothing, and language of people overall was surprising to me. I found it interesting that the majority of business signs and advertisements were in English when a significantly larger number of people use Swahili as the primary language in their household instead of English.
Customs to get from Kenya to Tanzania was again annoying. After we entered Tanzania, we went straight to a mall in Arusha for a meal. It was extremely overwhelming because as soon as we sat down, servers from all the different restaurants were fighting over which menu we would order from. Four of us chose to order chicken shawarma because we did not want to choose while 10 people stood over us and yelled at us and moved menus around so we could not read anything. The shawarma was bad. It was extremely unflavorful and way too wet, so it immediately fell apart. After we ate, we went to go exchange money, but I could barely hear the exchange worker because there were one million children sprinting around the mall and screaming. Every child in Tanzania decided to come to the mall and wreak havoc, and it was extremely overwhelming.
The drive to the EcoScience Lodge was very bumpy, but I slept on the way over and hardly noticed.
Trying to catch up on sleep,
Kacey
