Baby Elephants and DUNG BEETLES!!

If you're like me, you often wake up in the middle of the night after dreaming about rolling around in the mud with baby elephants with dung beetles nearby. You may find yourself thinking, "That could never happen in real life..I"ll never get to see and play with tiny little baby elephants and see a dung beetle at the same time". Well my friends, in Nairobi, that dream can be your reality.

Introducing the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage.  I've blogged about it before because I go there whenever we have visitors in Nairobi - But there is no fulfillment threshold for baby elephants.You just want more and more and more! When my brother came to visit a couple of weeks ago, a stop at the elephant orphanage was on the agenda for the first day of activities. 

Me getting ready to pick them up at the airport - oh boy was I excited. And I had my little airport pick up sign ready to go! It says NEAT not TAEN.  It's a mirror people!

 On to the elephants!

awww...they're so cute. I love the littlest ones that have to wear a blanky

awww...they're so cute. I love the littlest ones that have to wear a blanky

Most of the babies are little orphans because of horrible evil poachers that killed the moms

Oh this little guy was TINY

Oh this little guy was TINY

PHOTO SPOILER! I was about to take a nice couple shot of David and Ali and then some woman decided to walk right in front of me all incognito with her scarf on her head. It's like KONY 2012..i'm gonna make her infamous for spoiling this PHOTO!

Let's try that again. Such a lovely couple ;-)

Let's try that again. Such a lovely couple ;-)

  Another highlight of the elephant orphanage was when David spotted the DUNG BEETLE!! He was so busy rolling dung. He traveled like 40 feet in 15 minutes. 

Interesting enough - they sort of walk on their front legs and push the dung with their bag legs

Interesting enough - they sort of walk on their front legs and push the dung with their bag legs

These guys are pretty small - the dung ball was larger than he was! Dung Ball. lol.

These guys are pretty small - the dung ball was larger than he was! Dung Ball. lol.

 

After the elephants, we went to lunch at one of my favorite spots. Talisman Restaurant in Karen. I ordered WRONG.

I ordered fish...this may be the most unappetizing food photography EVER. I'm good at these. Somehow my fish had lips and teeth....it looks like a gross body part.  It tasted okay - But a little too much work for my taste. Lots of bones and skin and teeth and lips to dig through. It felt like a game of Operation to eat the thing! lol.

And a zoomed out unappetizing food photo of the fish

And a zoomed out unappetizing food photo of the fish

And top view of the fish. Under all the tomato stuff, the actual fish was pretty good.

And top view of the fish. Under all the tomato stuff, the actual fish was pretty good.

 

 Do not let this be a testament to the entire menu at Talisman. They have really good food. The feta and coriander samosas could easily be a healthy substitute for heroin.

Okay, that's it for me. Next post I will do a thorough sarcastic but serious review of  the Insanity work out and anything else that comes to mind.

Beach Trip with Mume

(Sergio will here forth be referred to as Mume - Swahili for husband)

There we were last Monday night -  finishing our packing for the beach and about to go to bed when I decided to check our ticket print out for the departure time..WHICH WAS 8am MONDAY MORNING! Meaning, we missed the flight to the beach by about oh 16 hours. Not sure what I was thinking...I really thought I booked that flight for Tuesday morning. Damn! So I found myself on the phone with Kenya Airways at 11pm trying to get a flight for us the next morning. She rebooked us and told me it would be $80 extra per person..but no where along the way did anyone actually make us pay so that was sort of awesome.

The beach was awesome. We had the best time just doing nothing - well, I did nothing - sergio did scuba.  My big thing is hunting for coral and shells on the beach. I could do it for hours. You can find huge chunks of DEAD coral (promise I'm not collecting the stuff still alive).
There was  hardly a soul anywhere to be seen. I love it like that. We stay at the same place each time so we know all the staff which also makes it a special place for us. My mom went there when she came to visit too and they always ask about her and it's just a nice little home away from home and it's about $80 per night. If you come to Kenya and go to the coast - stay here! Here's some photos of our beach weekend and our favorite little hideaway:

Living room

Swahili style bathroom

Our balcony area

awesome bathroom...love the swahili design and decor

The room we moved to on the 3rd night

the lounge

My artistic shot of my Mume

Me, trying to be cute.

Sergio with Dominic and Alex - staff at Kennaways. Love those guys.

Other things we did included getting daily hour massages for $10 and....:

We rode in matatus - public buses...oh we are just nuts (sarcastic)

we saw a lot of monkeys - these are colubus - they are so cool looking ..long black and white hair. They try to steal your food

 

For our anniversary night, we went to dinner next door to the most amazing luxury resort - Almanara. The place looks like something transported from Dubai - the restaurant there is called Sails. It's amazing and about the cost of long john silvers for the quality of a 5 star restaurant. Here are some photos of our dinner there and the rest of this amazing place:

This was actually a photo we took the night before...but i can't find a photo of us that exact night. I had such a great time with my Mume.

Seafood Platter from Sails Restaurant. Lobster, Tilapia, calimari, prawn, salad, potatos ...all for $18. I'm telling you, come to Kenya.

Photo of the villas at Almanara - these places are nuts. I got invited in once when a friend of a friends family came from the US during Thanksgiving and stayed here - it's like a 3 story Arabian palace with a full-time chef, butler, waiters and a roof top lounge. NUTS.

Sails Restaurant

The Pool there

The Diani Beach. It really does look like this.

 Listen, I know Kenya is far away (17 hours by flight) and the tickets are a bit expensive ($1100 - $1600) - but all of you reading should really really make it Kenya once in your life. Despite the cost of getting here, once you arrive things are very affordable (beer is $1.50, wine is $3.00/glass- enough said)  and there  are soooo many incredible things see and experience.  This country is just breathtaking, from the coast to the game parks to the mountains. I guarantee you will spend more money visiting Europe and you won't see half the amazing sights that you can see here in Kenya.  It is a life changing type of experience.  COME TO KENYA!

The Newest Iddy Biddy Kenyan

One of the reasons that I try to post every day is because as soon as I take a one day break, it somehow turns into 3 days.  It’s very easy to just not post anything, to just sit on my laurels and relax and just forget about all of this Lenna Living Lightly crap.  But I stop and think of you, my dear, kind  readers (reader?) that seem to take some piece of enjoyment from this blog and I soldier on! Plus some boat was pulling into Mombasa (Kenyan coast) and apparently cut some internet line that runs along the sea floor or something even less technical than that sad explanation and it's caused extremely bad internet for the past 2 days.

Let me first start by sharing the news that my good friend Carly had a baby! After 40 grueling hours of labor – Little Eli Koinange was born at Aga Khan hospital in Nairobi.  One friend reminded me that 40 hours is the equivalent of a work week – Carly was in labor for an entire work week, yes that’s right.  If that doesn’t scare you out of having kids, I don’t know what will.  But Carly is strong like the ox and not more than 8 hours later she was on her feet changing diapers. Incredible. We brought her frozen yogurt and indian food as a trade for getting to see the new baby.  Here’s how it looked …I mean, not the birth – i was not there for that and don’t really think you want to see pictures of that anyways – I want to show you little ELI! He’s such a precious little munchichi – i get to see him again Wednesday.   

Mama and baby - about 10 hours old

Rose with Eli

Me with Eli

Proud papa and grandpa

 And since I never had time to blog about her pre-baby brunch that  we had…why don’t I just do that now! (I hope you are reading Carly – I haven’t shown you the photos yet!) Sort of backwards – I showed you the baby and now comes the pre-baby brunch…but think of it as a brain exercise: practice keeping natural order of events in your head despite what Lenna’s blog is telling you. 

9 months and waiting!

   
The brunch was at Riverside Cafe – Good cooking. And great company – there were lots of interesting friends of Carly and Karuga to talk to, some I already knew, some I didn’t. 

Okay so that is that. Now, since I think it’s too much to throw another  topic on for today…I leave you with a little humor.  So, I recently had a quick trip to Uganda for work and I had to stay in a small town called Gulu. At night, I went to check out my options for food at the small little guest house I was staying at and here’s one of the pages from the menu that I thought was a bit funny but very typical of small town Africa food descriptions in English (shit, even big town Africa).

My favorites are:
1) the Greek Salads (plural) that has carrots and mayonnaise and FRENCH dressing. If the Greeks find out about this, I’m betting that they will have worse riots than those they are currently having from the Euro crises.
2) African Tear Gas.  Do I need to say anything else? There must be some rule against naming food after riot control weaponry. And what are Threads?
3) A Flanny Avocado Salads.  It must mean something to someone. The description is painful as well.


And since I don't know what else to do with this photo – I’ll share with you pig transport in Uganda – You cannot tell but there were so so many giant pigs in that truck and the guys were just the second layer on top of them. You can see a pig arm on the left sticking out of the side– those pigs were packed so tight – that’s a lot of bacon right there! ew!

This little piggy went to the market....

bye!

Neats Visit Kenya - Disturbing The Wildlife Tour

 I never got to do my recap of my family's visit to Kenya - and I know there are some eager readers out there that have lost a lot of sleep wondering how the trip went!

I'll keep it succinct. promise.
They arrived on Thanksgiving Night. It was so so so great to see them at the arrival area at the airport - I was feeling super charged to see them and show them everything. There were big hugs and lots of smiles when we all reunited. I wish we could do it over and over!
Needless to say, they were exhausted from the trip so Friday we planned to keep it local and just see some nearby attractions.
FRIDAY
We started the day by fighting some very ugly Nairobi traffic to get to the elephant orphanage. It was POURING down rain. They brought out the cute little baby elephants and they were just sliding around everywhere in the mud. But those elephants are sooooooooo cute - the rain didn't distract us.  For some reason I cannot find the elephant photos from that visit but just to give you an idea, below are the photos from when I took my mom there during her visit:

The clumsy baby elephants like to play with the soccer ball

awww..look at his little trunk

so playful - love those little munchichis

 After the elephants - we went to the giraffe sanctuary where we all got to show some love to the giraffes. Some of these giraffes will be released into the wild. The center was founded as an effort to conserve the Rothschild Giraffe sub-species. We learned alll about it when we went there.
.

It rained their ENTIRE TRIP. - But everyone was such great sports about it. Happy Campers.

The giraffes head actually makes my brother's look small.

Supa Freak.... of Nature.

Norma and the giraffe - A love story.

Happy Karen

He's eating right out of your hand..literally

My happy Dad

Bottom FEEDERS

me and my biker man

My sister looking like a tooth paste model  -  beauty!

Right before I almost got a giraffe-head smack down

Okay so the next big highlight of the visit was our trip to the Masai Mara game reserve. That's where we saw the real business. We took a tiny little 8 seater propeller plane from Nairobi straight to the Serena Lodge landing strip - it took about 45 minutes and was a surprisingly smooth ride..but the plane freaked me out a bit.

Always Stylin'

A view of our lodge from the air

Poser - just happy to be on solid ground

The plane suddenly looks even smaller

Zebra

Doing jumps at the Tanzania/Kenya Border

Karen and Norma holding up the landmark - And the head of david

Making friends with the park rangers...being friends with the guy with the gun is always good.

we took pictures in strange basket chairs at the lodge

The rare Norma mammal - spotted on the landing strip

In our safari vehicle - ready to roll

Fun

Amazing

We saw a TON of sleeping lions

More sleeping lions

And well, it was also mating season - for about 15 seconds

Then more sleep followed

Love these cranes - so beautiful

Perfect little dumbo.

And last but not least - the highlight of the trip. After we stalked a certain leopard by sitting outside the bush it was hiding in for about 5 minutes - it decided it had had enough of us and completely went ape shit (leopard shit?) - see photo - courtesy of David Neat. I'll never forget the sound of that growl. We, including our driver/guide, all freaked out and cranked our windows up as quickly as possible - because it literally lept at us - we all had  teenage girl spasms for a good 10 minutes in the vehicle afterwards.

This is why it's called the Disturbing the Wildlife Tour

After the trip to the Mara, we played around for a couple of days - we went to Lake Naivasha and boated around with a TON of hippo. One said hippo charged our boat, which was exhilarating and has traumatized my little sister for life. I need to find those photos. On the drive back, we saw an interesting logistical situation on the highway - a scooter carrying two men with a live cow between them - don't take my word for it -  see for yourself:

 And then we did some hanging out in Nairobi:

Karen modeled a designer giraffe mask and a giant African cloth purse. It's a great look all around.

David got a haircut

I tried on skirts at the masai market. Everyone bought a ton of good pan-african stuff. We did our part in supporting the local economy that is for sure.

Lastly - I wanted to illustrate the rainy season in Nairobi - It rained for about 4 weeks straight, including the entire duration of my family's visit. The rains were so so strong - it just seemed impossible that the sky could open like that for so many days in a row. It caused trees to fall down and take out power cords and cause tons of traffic issues - people just could not move on the roads - it was horrible and there was flooding just everywhere. The wall that divides our apartment and the one next to us pretty much just collapsed. It was a pretty intense month of rain.

 Okay, that's I'll share for now. It was a great great trip and everyone had a really good time, especially me. It was such a treat to get to show all these people that I love where I live.  It's a beautiful country.  That's why you, whoever you are, should come visit Kenya. It's amazing here.