To the Masai Mara

To the famous, Masai Mara (the Masai Planes)! This was to be our major travel day, long distance and an extremely difficult dirt road stands between us at the Lake Nakuru Lodge and the Masai Mara Fig Tree Tent camp. Roll out was at 7:30 am! We were all eager to see some more animals, but today was NOT the day for stopping, at least not for animals. Not a lot of exciting things to mention about the drive there. We stopped for a bathroom break, and at each of these rest stops there are sales people ready to pounce and convince you to buy the goods at this store, same goods as the last stop. But today's store was a little different, prettier, cleaner and nicer, so I looked around. Well, I ended up buying an African mask, orange colored, a zebra head mask and a painting direct from the artist. My salesman was the artist, trying to get his style noticed in the difficult market of curio shops, and still working to pay the bills. He was a charming young man and I really liked his work. He even convinced me that he would give me a better price, if I traded him my flashlight also. I had brought my favorite flashlight with me, but I knew that it was important to him and I'm sure it would be used more by him than me. Win win! The rest of the drive was rushed and tiring, but we did get to stop at another school to five out 2 more soccer balls. Today we made sure the other 2 vans had balls too and we passed them as they were giving theirs away. We stopped at a gated school and visited the head teacher, gave her 1 ball for the school, then found out the school consisted of almost 500 kids. We made a quick decision to give a 2nd ball, this one was the the girls! The kids loved it and instantly started kicking it around! Some of the other kids wanted their pictures taken and to see the photo. It was very funny to me that since I had a tank top on, and my arms were exposed, a few of the girls actually stroked my arms and one gave me a little squeeze, I think they wanted to see if my pale skin felt the same. As one of the other buses drove by our school, they said it was thrilling to see a blue soccer ball fly straight up into the air, they could tell we're we had been there. A few hours later, we made it to the dirt long rough dirt road. I don't know for certain, but it was probably 50 miles or so, and as rough as you could guess, I felt like I was back in my 4 wheelin days. We thought we were done when we got the main gate, but we still had 8 miles to go, ugh. It was a great relief to get out of the vehicle and be on steady ground. As relieved as we were, there is only one way I to the Massai Mara, which means we'll be on the same road again in three days and I feel like I'm covered I 7 layers of dust. Once settled into our tents and fed lunch, we headed out for a long walk with 2 men from a Massai tribe, to learn about animal dung and what they do with it, hear about the vegetation in the area and were taught some of the the ways of the tribe; very educational. Rest was in order for the remainder of the night, as we head out for an all day game drive tomorrow.