Fort Collins to Denver 1-1/2 hours. Denver flight to Frankfurt, Germany - 9 hours, 40 minutes. Frankfurt to Nairobi, Kenya - flight was delayed, then 9 hours to Nairobi arriving at 9:30 pm on June 24. THEN we had to adjust to the time change. It is 9 hours later in Kenya than Colorado!! It took us forever to get through passport control but we FINALLY made it and connected with our guide, Simon, about 11:30 pm - more than 24 hours after leaving home. Another 30 minutes to the hotel and we were finally able to go to bed about 1am on June 25!
June 25
We had an early wakeup call - 6:00 am! Breakfast at the hotel, then loading into the van to begin our adventures.
First stop was the Karen Blixon Museum. Karen Blixon is the author of the book, Out of Africa. She lived here from 1917 until 1931. After Blixen's death in 1962, the house was donated by the Danish goverment in 1964 to the new Kenyan government as an independence gift and was opened to the public in 1986 as one of Kenya's national museums, following the popularity of the movie, Out of Africa. It was interesting to see the house, some of the old coffee plantation equipment, as well as photographs and some of her artwork.
The next stop was the Giraffe Center. It is located in an area that was the landing strip from the Blixon coffee plantation and farm. The Giraffe Centre was established in 1979 in order to protect the Rothschild giraffe that is found only in the grasslands of East Africa.
There are 10 giraffes and we got to feed them. Their tongues are really rough - and they are quite greedy about being fed! We also had a short presentation about the giraffes. The males can reach over 17 feet tall and weigh up to 4000 pounds and their tongue is 2 feet long. 
We headed next to the Daphne Sheldrick Animal Orphanage to see the orphaned elephants being fed. After parking, we watched a troop of babboons.
The "warm-up" band, so to speak, was an orphaned hippo. I have a little video of him following one of the handlers.
https://youtu.be/qaNVGAV8Hb8
Then the elephants came in from the reserve. The first group was the youngsters - up to three years old followed by the older group. It was interesting to hear how they rehabilitate the elephants and reintroduce them back to the wild. It can take up to five years before they connect with a herd.
We headed back to our hotel for lunch before departing Nairobi for Kibo Safari Camp just outside Amboseli National Park. The 250km trip took about five hours!
We passed many different markets along the way and saw the diverse economic population of Nairobi and other communities.
Because it was Sunday, we saw lots of people socializing everywhere! There were lots of people in the shade of a pedestrian bridge, just hanging out and visiting.
We saw several large cement plants along our drive, too.
The closer we came to Amboseli, the more rural it became and we started seeing more wildlife.
And the clouds finally started to lift and we caught a glimpse of Mount Kilimanjaro - the flat mountain on the right.
We have arrived! Kibo Lodge is beautiful and we are looking forward to a good night's rest!
This is our room!
We have another early morning tomorrow and the internet is SLOW so I will try to post tomorrow!
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