Ultimate road trip: safari edition

We had a four-day weekend for the Easter holiday, so Maggie, Sophia (PiAf fellow at Sanergy in Nairobi), and I packed into a rented car and headed south to Tsavo West National Park (see the crew at left!). We passed through small towns, careened over many a speed bump, and wove around the many, slow lorries headed for Mombasa. Roadside fruit and vegetable stands lined the road (we saw more onions in one town than I've seen in the whole of my life) and we drove past bizarrely bronchial baobab trees. The videos below are snapshots of the drive to and from the park (excuse the sing-a-longs in advance)! 

The DIY safari was far and away one of the coolest things I've done here. It exceeded all my expectations; we saw at least 12 huge elephants within an hour of being in the park, a lion, hippos, water buffalo, giraffes, zebra, a rare antelope called the lesser kudu, and tons more. We drove through these lava flows that we're 99.9% sure inspired the Shadowlands in The Lion King, and we explored a crocodile and hippo-infested river walk (that was eerily similar to the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland). We drove through a torrential rainstorm(see picture at right), caramelized onions over a campfire, ate 24 hot dogs between the three of us, and got bougie on Monday morning with coffee at the luxurious Serena lodge.Check out the pictures below for more from our trip!

Sophia and I having a Rafiki - Simba moment at left and at right, the view from the top of Roaring Rocks. We drove aimlessly for over an hour looking for the mountain, and once we did locate it, it was an underwhelming 10-minute hike to the top.