East African Safari

A lazy day, Elsie and Joe were choosing and totting up how many orchids they would be exhibiting at the Orchid Show the following week. We went for a drive in the suburbs of Nairobi.
We visited the Safari Park Hotel, in John’s time it was called the Spreadeagle Hotel it struck me as very colonial in concept. In the foyer to reception there was a full size elephant made from papier mâché, as I was looking left at the reception area I didn’t even notice it!!!! At the back was an interesting swimming pool with a water slide chute for the children to slip into the pool, a gymnasium and restaurant. Many nationalities were using the facilities. We then went on to the Windsor Golf Club on the way many new houses were being constructed with complicated roofs and there were still some coffee plantations. The Gold Club apparently was virtually unchanged since Independence. In more or less the same area were all the Embassies, the new American Embassy is surrounded by a high wall after the bombing of the glass building in Nairobi that caused so much damage, deaths, blindness and suffering. Nearby is an enormous UN complex.

We then decided to go and have a meal at an Indian Restaurant, on the way were held up by the biggest traffic jam ever, with the Matatus, in order to keep on schedule took to the verges to arrive at the head of the traffic!! Finally we arrived at the restaurant, we were the only diners, the food was enjoyable if quite different to any other Indian food I have tasted.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2003 at 12:58 pm and is filed under East Africa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.