"Wageni, mwakaribishwa! Kenya yetu, hakuna matata!"

The wonderful thing about having Ali here is that I:

1.Get to have a lovely friend around to spend my time with!
2.That I get to experience things I normally wouldn't.

After hiking the Ngong Hills/Rift Valley, going to Maasai market, and seeing a bit of Nairobi, we got down to some even more interesting stuff. I was worried for a while that it might not all pan out, but of course it did in the end.

We stayed at Bamburi Beach Resort in Mombasa. The staff were ridiculously kind, and as you can see the view was amazing as well. If any of you come to visit, I'll be sure we stay a night here. Best Part: All Vegetarian menu. Worst Part: Beach Boys (they wait on the beach for you to come from the resorts, then offer you 'snorkelling, dhow rides, and more')

Our next exursion took us to Naivasha, a town about 1.5 hours out of Nairobi. Its a small town in and of itself, but is home to tons of flower farms and Hells Gate National Park, where we spent out day.

The beginning of our Naivasha trip, before moving on to the gorge. Something silly happened here but I can't for the life of me remember what it is.

We hiked down into the gorge, which was carved from the volcanic eruption of Mt. Longonot which occurred in the early 1900s. The spot we are in here is called 'The Devils Bedroom', titled by the Maasai tribe because of the many of them killed here post-eruption. Joram had a 'family emergency' that day but was able to join us :)

Ali expressed her distaste about the black mamba baby we almost stepped on. Hint: This type takes home the prize for being among the the deadliest snakes in the world--its the fastest, most aggressive, is highly poisonous, and it attacks without provocation. We felt brave afterwards.

The view was breathtaking.

I took Ali to the the Nairobi restaurant called Carnivore. Concept: They walk by your table with a variety of meats, and slice it directly onto your plate from the sword it was roasted on. Until you flip the sign Ali is hiding behind over, in all you can eat meat defeat. Ironically, this place had the best vegetarian food I've ever had. Some drunk tourists were singing this song that went "Wageni, mwakaribishwa! Kenya yetu, hakuna matata!". Translation: 'Foreigners are welcome! In our Kenya, we have no problems!'. I'm not sure they were welcome after their 3rd bottle of wine/10 millionth recitation.

We went to the Giraffe Centre in Karen, where you can feed the giraffes--and they are eye level! Apparently you can use some feeding technique to get them to kiss you. I did not want to find out much about that however.

Last but not least! City Park in Ngara. I lured Ali here under the pretense that the monkeys were actually pretty friendly, but after one ran up my back and sat on my shoulder I changed my tune. Ali ended up getting comfortable with them but I was still so distrustful. Ha! I felt betrayed.

A wonderful time having Ali here. I hope she will come back, but until then you all are invited!