Elephants and Giraffes and Camels, oh my!

Hello!!

What a day!! I've never seen so many animals in their natural habitat!

Our day started with a visit to the the David Shelrick Wildlife Trust we we got to hang out with orphaned baby elephants. Most of these elephants have been victims of human warfare, and their stories were incredibly sad to hear. The youngest elephant at the orphanage was only 3 months old. He had been at the orphanage for only three days after being rescued from a human machete attack. It gave you a pure sense of joy to see these larger than life animals just running around and interacting with all the people. The people who run the orphanage told us that each elephant has a designated caretaker 24 hours a day, as the elephants are lacking nutrients and need to be fed milk every three hours. One of my favourite things about this part of the day was our drive from the orphanage to the main road where monkeys and baboons were everywhere. Monkeys are my most favourite animal and I was in love the moment I saw them :)

From the elephant orphanage we headed to the Giraffe Park which we have all been eagerly waiting to see after having heard about it almost 8 months before. Nikita almost died when she saw the giraffes which are her favourite animals. You pay less than $3 Canadian dollars to get in but the experience was worth much, much more. The giraffes literally come over your shoulder and grab food from your hand. You can also put food in your mouth and they will come and give you a big giraffe kiss while grabbing the food from your mouth. You can help but laugh even though there is copious amounts of giraffe slobber all over your lips!

After the giraffe park we went to the Crocodile and Ostrich Park (although we only saw one ostrich). The workers are actually crazy and jump into the pit of crocodiles and aggravate them in order to put on a better show for the crowd. We got to hold baby alligators, luckily with all of us making it out alive ;) There were also turtles nearby and I immediately thought of my friend Kelly who had frolicked with turtles a couple of weeks back ;) We also got to ride a camel and made our driver for the day our paparazzi so we could get some good shots! There were over 1000 school kids at the park and it got a little awkward after a while as throughout our 10-minute camel ride we had 5-year olds pointing and shouting "muzungu, muzungu"!

I'll try and get some pictures up, but it's 2am here and we have to catch a 9-hour bus ride to Homa Bay in 5 hours! Nairobi has been tons of fun, but all three of us know that our real adventure begins now :)

Thanks for letting me ramble!

Love,

Shahla