Day 3 – Scorpions

We woke up early this morning to go to the Tsavo National Park. The power was still out and it was raining. The rain made our drive very scary and exciting. The roads were muddy and slippery and it made it hard for the trucks to get up the hills. It also caused many accidents. When a trucker breaks down here he puts branches and rocks behind his truck and then he just leaves the truck. So Dad had to maneuver around the broken trucks and slow cars and accidents, sometimes while driving into oncoming traffic. One time he had to squeeze between a broken down truck and an oncoming matatu, very scary. The people here walk a long ways to get where they need to go, they also dress very well so it is very hard to tell who is poor and who is not. Many times we saw guys in suits riding bikes or in a wagon pulled by donkeys.

After we made it out of the muddy roads the ride wasn’t quite as scary, you still have to pass the slow cars as oncoming cars are coming sometimes making it with only feet to spare, if you ever want a thrill ride come to Africa and take a drive along the highway to Mombasa.

We had our first experience with dickering for local crafts at a gas station on the way to the park. They started out high but soon realized we were cheap and by the time we were leaving were selling us stuff through our car windows for very cheap. Incidentally, I ended up with way more giraffes than I needed.

Once in the park one of the first Animals we saw were elephants. We also saw, dik diks, giraffes, gazelles, impalas, zebras, baboons, monkeys, hippos, and lions and their cubs. The lions had a kill they were eating and so we were able to see them several times during the day, it was fun to sit and watch the cubs play, and the adults chew on bones.

The place we stayed at was very nice and the people treat you like royalty. We were able to stay in a suite which made it even nicer. As we were eating dinner we saw zebras, cape buffalo, baboons, and impala come into the water hole. We were very tired by dinner time, almost too tired to eat, then the manager told us to watch out for scorpions on our way to our bedrooms by that time I was wide awake. Philip and I walked carefully back to our room and found two very large scorpions right outside our room. We tried to take their pictures but it didn’t do them justice. I made Philip put towels at the bottom of our door to try to keep them from coming in our room and worried all night that they were crawling on me.