Africa- Last Day

Right after we got back from Diani, we went to lunch at this cute little cafe and went shopping (pictures from the first post) and I survived without any real emergencies!  But later that night I was hurting.  As if I had been on my feet for too long and exerted too much energy.  The next day Jaclyn had planned to hike the Ngong Hills and I was so sad that I knew I couldn't handle it.  Amy didn't feel up for it either.  So we let our friends go do the hiking without us and we ventured out on our own with an Uber (after getting much direction from Jaclyn).

This is the Kindle tree!  The Kindle logo has a silhouette of a tree that looks just like this with a person reading a book under.  Love that the girls took this picture.  

Amy had been reading the book Out of Africa and so she wanted to go to the Karen Blixen museum.  I had no interest in that, and knew nothing about any of it, but Amy wanted to and it was within 20 minutes from home and had a bathroom so we went. 

Then we headed over to the Giraffe Centre.  I just love giraffes! Feeding them was really fun.  Amy and I had a nice afternoon together.  

There was a giraffe nature trail across the street that we wanted to explore but a worker at the Giraffe Centre said it was closed because someone had seen a Cheetah in there recently.  Oh well, we figured it wasn't meant to be since we weren't sure how much walking we could do anyway.  We ordered another Uber to get us home and when we walked out to meet him we saw people entering the trail into the forest.  Hmm.  I guess it's not actually closed?  Maybe there were parts blocked, I don't know but it was too late.

So that was it.  We had to go to the airport late at night, wait in a very long line that I worried would not move fast enough for us, find our way through the airport, but we got there and it all worked.  The only hiccup was one of Karlee's bags didn't make it on the plane in Denver, so that was a couple days late unfortunately.  Otherwise everything was really great.  On the way there we had to show our documents a bunch of times, including a negative Covid test for me since I didn't have a vaccine card.  And when I did get to Kenya the guy at customs was not happy about how many hours had passed since my covid test.  He said it's supposed to be within 72 hours.  I said, it was when I got on the plane. I had traveled for over 20 hours.  Then he flipped to the letter from the US Embassy that Cameron had wrote listing us as his personal guests and that must've done the trick because he just handed me my papers annoyedly and waved me on.  Phew!  On the way back, our valuable US passport was all we needed and it was easy.  I sat in the middle of two very nice gentlemen on the first leg, which was nice because I didn't feel bad if my knee drifted into their space when I was trying to sleep.  I didn't sleep much.  On the last leg, from Amsterdam to Salt Lake, I sat by Marci again and that was great because I got myself comfortable against the window with my ostrich pillow (as my kids call it) and Amy's foot hammock and I got at least a couple hours of sleep.  That was all I needed to feel fresh enough to stop at Trader Joes, get Amy to the Riverside exit, and drive the rest of the way home without getting really sleepy.

WHAT A TRIP!!