Africa!

Second leg of our Africa travel journey - complete. We are currently sitting in the Nairobi airport - waiting the long 5 hours until our next transfer flight onto Johannesburg. This airport is like a ghost town. They were not kidding - the airport actually burnt down! There is a lot of construction going on - men all over buildings in hard hats, but no safety nets and barely any scaffolding. Almost comical to see. There seems to be lots going on - but also lots of people just sitting around resting too.

Let's start from our departure from Melbourne. Dad and Jude drove me to the airport where we met Lisa, and her mum Marline and her partner, Grahame. We checked our bags in a went for a drink at the bar. With all Deb's pencil gifts and mum's Run Ballarat caps - my luggage only weighed 17kg, not a bad effort!

The famous walking through the international gates was hard- only a couple of small tears, and I managed not to look back at Dad once - even though it's always hard not to! Before leaving Melbourne, Lisa already had her larger-than-100ml bottle of sunscreen confiscated from her, and been 'randomly selected' for an explosives test! Oh Lisa… Now your the dodgy looking traveller!

We spent our time on the plane challenging each other to epic tournaments of Tetris (I think we can safely say Lisa is the clear winner here), watching movies and catching up on the newest episodes of Grey's anatomy! We also made friends with a lovely Greek lady and her daughter who gave us numerous travel advice warnings of Africa and kindly shared her gigantic block of Toblerone with us! We were able to catch a few hours of sleep, although difficult with the constant changing timezones!

Our stop over in Abu Dhabi was fine - we got lost to start with, walking down the wrong corridor and having to walk the entire distance again to go backwards. The exact same mistake I made with Nicole on our stop over to Greek Islands- oops! I still maintain that clearly the signs are not as easy to understand as they should be! This is probably the moment when we realised that being two young white girls on our way to Africa definitely put us in the minority group!

During our flight to Nairobi we sat next to a lovely Kenyan man (Robart) who gave us a run down of the history of Kenya, showing us beautiful photos of the places we should visit. He was on his way back to Kenya to surprise his family after a year of working abroad. He works in poultry farming and loving described Lisa and my job as 'teaching the children' and his job as 'feeding the children'. Before disembarking the plane he pointed out areas on a map that we were to promise him we would not visit. He says that Kenya is a beautiful country, but the Kenyan people are not always so kind in some areas.

The weather and how green the area was surprised us most. Green and lush - not the dry grassland that I expected, and the weather? Overcast, raining and 17 degrees. Getting off the plane in Nairobi we were directed onto a bus, quite a confronting experience when everyone was squished together and Lisa and I were 2 of about 5 people that's clearly looked out of place. We were relieved to see Robart at the back of the bus who directed us to two empty seats. It was difficult to see where the bus was going to take us- there were a few tin sheds, some new construction buildings going up, and a fair bit if rubble, high fences and barbed wire. Sure enough we found ourselves in one of the tin sheds. Not where we needed to be- but soon enough a kind air hostess had us back on another bus to the airport gate terminals. This area is still under construction, but must be a small part of the airport that did not burn down in the fire. There are a few duty free shops, one restaurant/cafe and a few coffee stalls. There is also one ATM (but this was out-of-order). This is also where we saw our first soldier with a machine gun.

……..

We spent our 8 hour stop over in the deserted section of the Nairobi airport, talking AFL and rugby with a local white South African man and a British rugby fanatic at the only bar in the place. They were great value, and loads of tips and tricks to watch out for. 8 hours is a long time to wait!! It sucked! We ordered some toasted sandwiches for tea. Our flight was delayed, which made lots of people angry- but mainly just made Lisa and I stress out! We had booked transfers to our hotel, however the booking sheet informed us that if we were over an hour late after our scheduled arrival time- we would have to make our own way to our hotel! Eek! Lucky we were able to get in contact with our driver who said he would sort something out for us… However it all sounded very unsure! A nice business man overheard our stressed phone calls and afterwards approached us with an offer of sharing his business driver- explaining that it was dangerous to catch taxis late at night in Johannesburg. He said he would wait with us to make sure our driver turned up. It was very lovely of him. We actually thought he was an Aussie man, but it turns out he was a local also!
We met another lovely local Johanesburg man (Keith) on the plane who told us places to eat and explore- again, warning us about keeping indoors at night, avoiding certain areas and how to avoid the many many con men! He gave us his business card and told us to call him if we ever found ourselves in difficulty. It's been nice to have complete strangers looking out for us.

When we arrived in J'burg we were instantly relieved seeing our bags on the conveyor belt. The airport was ver fancy- much nicer than Nairobi- however again, hard to tell what Nairobi must have looked like before the fire. We headed with our new-found friend to the exits and sure enough our driver was standing there with a big Intrepid sign. His 160km/hr driving and him running a few sneaky red lights scared the crap out of us- but when we saw our gated impressive looking hotel, we began to feel relaxed. Our business man that offered us his driver told us that Johannesburg was like having Europe in Africa. I think he is right- our short drive through the city showed a much more developed city than what we saw of Nairobi.

Checked in- had a shower- ready for a much needed sleep after a big few days!

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