Our last entry had us catching the ferry to Tanzania's capital of Dar es Salaam. It was a beautiful day and we expected a fabulous trip on the Sea Bus, a high speed hydrofoil between Zanzibar & the mainland. That of course did not happen. What should have been a 90 minute cruise turned into a 140 minute ordeal for most passengers. The seas were quite rough and one of the attendants started handing out lunch size plastic garbage bags. Rick was quite excited because he thought that he was getting more food, but you all know where this is going. Before long, people started getting sick. If you've experienced this phenonmenon before, you know about the chain reaction effect. Before long, over half of the passengers were using these fine bags. The attendant could barely keep up with those requesting seconds. Some people were in really bad shape. (While all of this was happening, there was an amusing documentary about the Kalahari Desert playing on the video. A bushman looking for water duped a baboon into getting its hand stuck in a hole. The baboon started howling and running around it's stuck arm while the bushman put a collar on the baboon. Rick was howling through this episode, insensitively ignoring the barf-a-rama (Stand By Me) going on around him.)

Janet donned her sea bands and willed her stomach to stay put, despite visual stimulii to the contrary. Rick was one of the fortunate few who wasn't affected by the rough seas.

We had pre-arranged a ride to a hotel where Rick finally got some food.

The next morning, we caught the 'express' bus to Nairobi. There are various classes of busses in Tanzania and we were supposed to get the best one. It turns out that we were had. What should have been an 11 hour trip turned into 15 hours. We saw some great countryside and ingenious enterpreneurship, but our expectations were not well managed here.

We got into Nairobi (affectionately known by the natives as Nairobbery) at midnight and our pick-up was nowhere to be found, as the guy who arranged our travel called for a pick up 4 hours earlier. Now the last place that you want to be in Nairobi at midnight is the bus terminal - and there we were. The bus 'host' was able to find us an obliging taxi driver with a cell phone. Between Janet and the cabbie, we got in touch with our safari operator and within minutes were safely deposited in the Nairobi Safari Club Hotel - much nicer that the bus terminal environs.

After a short sleep we met George, our safari driver and guide. We loaded up the bus (no we didn't move to Beverly) and started our 7 hour drive north to the Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves.