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| Elephants at the Masai Mara |
With a few days to spare in Nairobi we decided to attempt a quick trip to the Masai Mara. According to the Lonely Planet, Narok is the gateway town to the Masai Mara. We didn't have our own transport so we would be replying on public transport and hitchhiking. We took a local bus and arrived in the evening. We spent a few hours wandering around the town trying to find somewhere to stay, everywhere seemed to be a "Butchery and Hotel" yet we couldn't find a room. The standard of accommodation was well below average, pretty seedy especially the 3 places mentioned in the Lonely Planet. Eventually we found a place that seemed reasonably clean, secure, wasn't attached to a butchery and had the possibility of meeting some other tourists.
The next morning we planned to go to the Masai Mara so our attempt at meeting people traveling this way started with dinner at the hotel restaurant. This didn't work out so well then just as we were leaving we met a large group of Japanese tourists who had just arrived at the hotel. Our lack of Japanese and their lack of English made for an interesting conversation but after some discussion we determined that they had hired two vehicles, were leaving at 6am for the Maasai Mara. They had room for the two of us and they said we were welcome to join them.
In broken English they explained that they had registered on the website and were surprised that we hadn't done so. We didn't quite get what this was about but we figured we'd be able to pay at the park entrance as we had done in Nairobi National Park. We said our goodbyes and arranged to meet at 5:45am the next morning.
About 20 minutes later the only guy who spoke some English arrived at our hotel room with a laptop and a few cables that hooked his phone up to another gadget that connected to his computer. He was able to access the Internet using his Japansese mobile and and a satellite! He said that it would be easier for us to register now so we sat and waited for the page to load. Slowly row by row the page loaded and what we saw was a website for the Masai Mara Marathon and a photo of a group of tourists and Masai Warriors running through the Masai Mara with a herd of wildebeest in the background!!
These guys weren't going to the national park at all, instead they were going to run a marathon in the conservation area surrounding the Masai Mara game park, about 70km away from the entrance! I thanked the guy, explained that we had no desire to run in the Massai Mara Marathon and apologized for the confusion. At 5:30am the next morning we started walking out of town in the direction of the Masai Mara. To be continued...
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