The Egyptian Way!!!

Over winter break I went to a place where people don't normally go for an everyday vacation. I went to Egypt and Jordan. We stayed there for two weeks and even stayed for Christmas. It was kind of different but it was still really cool to do.

     So the Places we went were: Cairo, Abu Simbel, Aswan, A Cruise on the Nile, where we stopped at several places along the way; and Luxor, which had a lot of places to go to also. Today I am going to talk about Cairo.

 YYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

     Cairo, in case you didn't know is the Capitol of Egypt. It is rather large, but it is not like the big cities we have in the U.S. One of the coolest and most interesting things about Cairo is that the traffic is so crazy and the pedestrians just walk right through like there is nothing to it. But of course the coolest part of Cairo is Giza. Where's that? That is where the Pyramids are. The biggest things in the whole world in the Ancient Days, the things that were so incredibly built that people thought aliens came down and built them, the massive structures that made scientists believe that maybe the Egyptians had technology almost as advanced as ours... Yes those Pyramids!!!! They are one of the coolest things you will ever see in your life. And they are one of the few remaining ancient wonders of the world. I really thought they were cool.  We got to ride a camel by the pyramids too. My camels name was Charlie. He was a cool camel.

He liked too eat out of my hand. By the way this was the other camel named charlie, it wasnt my camel this was my camel.

 Also in Cairo, actually right outside of Cairo, there was the Step Pyramid, the very first pyramid built by the father of the one who built the Great Pyramid. It was really cool, but not even close to as big as the other 3 pyramids were. Over by that pyramid I got to ride my horse, Amira; which means princess.

Isn't she a peerrrrrrtyyyy one?

 Oh how could I forget to mention the most important part of our trip to Cairo... Our guide!!! Ahmed!!!!!!!

Best Guide Ever!!!!

We also went to the Museum in Cairo. The coolest thing there was that it had a whole section on King Tutankhamen. Way cool!!!

The museum is in Tahrir Square, which is where all of the protests have been and it is also where the revolution started.

This is a burned out government building right next to the museum. 

Although there had been problems in Cairo, we felt completely safe and we had no problems with protestors or anything like that.

See ya'll later when I talk about the rest of my Egyptrip.

"Amusement Rides" in Egypt and Jordan

This year we had an unusual Christmas vacation. We went to Egypt and Jordan. It was really cool and it was a very different experience. I got to see a lot of the things I studied in the 6th grade and it just so happened that Egypt was my favorite part of that class.

Along with the interesting things, there were some interesting "amusement rides."

The amusement rides were Horses, Donkeys, and Camels. Throughout the trip I rode 3 horses, a camel, and a donkey. I got to try all of them and each one was different.

This was in the wide open desert where the pyramids are.  Psych! They are in Cairo. We saw the camels while we were at the pyramids and decided to ride them. Gramma's camel was Moses; mine was Charlie and papa's was Whiskey.

This was at the Step Pyramid. The horses name was Amira which means Princess.

This was Hoda. The horse I had in the Nubian village across from Luxor. I rode this horse while papa and gramma went to the Luxor Museum.

This was the horse that I had in Petra. Gramma fell off her horse here and it looked really funny. I don't remember this horses name. We rode the horses to the Sig.

This was the majestic donkey known as Aususs, which was the father of the mules that my Grandparents and our guide rode. We rode them to the Bedouin village out in the middle of the desert.

I will be writing more about Egypt in the coming weeks. And that's a PROMISE!!!!1

Amboseli day two

Amboseli was the last place we went to. Our second and third days were a little bit different than the first. Early in the morning the second day my GRANDPA/DAD and I went on a nature walk with a couple Masai men who knew their stuff about the area they live in. I learned many interesting things and saw some really cool stuff, for example:

we learned that Dik diks, on right, leave a little black thick fluid that comes from their eyes on different plants, or something like that, to mark their territory.
Here is one doing what I just explained they do.

We also saw some footprints of Aardvarks, porcupines, and elephants. We also heard some really cool bird sounds and looked at different spider's webs.

Later that day we went on an all day game drive where we stopped for lunch later on at the top of a hill. We drove around looking for things when we saw a big group of elephants with hyenas hanging around them.

They kept creeping up to the elephants, but the elephants chased them away. It turned out that there was a dead hippo behind the elephants that the hyenas wanted to get to. The elephants chased them away because they thought that the hyenas were going after them. We sat there watching for who knows how long. When nothing else happened for a while, we eventually got bored and left.

A little while later we saw hundreds of more elephants in the distance. It was just a huge line of them that never seemed to end.

Driving along some more we happened to come by a couple of ragged looking lionesses looking for water and food. They looked like they were exhausted and could not go on much longer. I had to feel sorry for them, they looked like they hadn't eaten in years.
They did not do very much, but since we had the best seat in the house, meaning we were the closest to them, we stayed and watched for a while.


We headed off to lunch and on the way we saw some hippos and elephants in the swamp water. On top of the little hill we were eating lunch on, we could see birds flying in the distance, hippos in the water, and some little sandstorms in the distance. After I was done eating I still had some leftover bread from the sandwich that I had so I was able to feed the birds around me. There was one that liked me and was brave enough to eat right out of my hand. It was cool because, one, I love birds, and two, they are wild birds not pets or ones from a zoo or something.
After that we started to head back to the lodge. We drove by a pond with storks and spoon bills in it.

Awww, isn't that cute. Those are spoon bills, the one behind them is a stork.

That is it for now everyone, I might not be writing for a while because school is starting tomorrow.
see ya

Amboseli day 1

We drove to Nairobi to an air strip and took a plane that only took four people. The ride was very bumpy because the plane was so small.

The view was amazing, I could see some animals from where we were in the plane. A funny thing is that the bumps were so big, that I thought we were going to fall all the way sometimes, but we didn't.

We landed in the middle of nowhere on a dirt air strip with someone waiting to pick us up. His name was David and he had some drinks and snacks with him for us to have.

I took this. Scherzo.

We drove to the lodge, on the way seeing some Maasai Giraffes.

Notice how the pattern is different than the Reticulated one in Samburu

We also saw some Ostriches. When we got to the lodge, they had warm towels to wash our faces off with and they had some watermelon juice for us to drink. The first night we stayed in a cabin, even thought we were supposed to have a tent which we ended up getting the next day anyway. It was very nice, the whole thing was like it was made by hand, or most of it anyway.

We had gotten there early so we went to the Maasai village near by, which we were going to do the next day. We went with a nice young women named Kimberly, who was from Island of Jersey. She works with the local people around the lodge.

We got there and we were greeted by the Chief, who was very young, because he was voted by his village to be the Chief.

The people greeted us with a dance and then showed us the houses, or huts, that the people lived in, then they showed us how they made fire, and then finally we went to look at some of the jewelry made by the women. We got some things as presents for some friends and I got a bracelet.

After that we went back to the lodge and relaxed for the rest of the day.
I will not be talking about Kenya on my next entry, instead, I will talk about my week in Big Bear Mountain.
bye

Lake Nakuru

We did not do anything the first day because we had to drive all the way to the lodge, the most long and boring trip ever. When we got there we had lunch, but shortly after that we went to the room. It was so cool, there was netting on the  beds and the room was filled with all sorts of bright colors.

It rained all the rest of the day so we did not do anything special, so... off to the next day.

The next and last day at Lake Nakuru was the day we went on a drive in the national reserve, which is known for the tons and tons of Flamingos in the lake. As we drove in we saw several baboons, they were so funny to watch because, unlike the other animals, they did not know to get out of the  way of the vehicle. I was worried that we were going to run over one of them, but we didn't thankfully.

All together that day we saw:

• hundreds of baboons with their little ones playing on some tree roots
• Storks 
• spoon bills
• Rhinos
• all sorts of gazelles and antelopes 
• hippos
• hyenas
• elephants 
• giraffes 
• lions in trees  

• and more...

that is all so I will talk to you people later.

Maasai Mara part 3

The third day started out with a morning game drive at eight o'clock.

This is me freezing to death.

We did not see a whole lot of things but we did see a nice sunrise and a huge herd of elephants all together. There were several babies too. There were ones that were playing and having fun and there were ones that just kept walking along casually with no distractions.

look at the little baby Elephant

These elephants are having a fun time.

After that drive we had all day until about five to enjoy the day and relax until it was time to go on the next game drive, which was the one at five.

I got to go on a walk with the manager of the camp to look for birds and plants and to learn a little bit about them. I learned several things that were really interesting. For instance, gazelles and different animals eat the sodom apple when they have a stomach ache but if we eat them we get a stomach ache.

This is Raymond the manager.

 It was not just a night game drive it was also a sun downer in the middle of the bush near all the animals. It was cool to look around and see everything around you. Our guide had drinks and chips lined up on the hood of his car. We walked around and talked until it started to get a little bit darker. This is what we saw before it got completely dark.

I took this picture too. That is what makes it cool.

It would have been many people dreams come true if they were in my shoes.

When it finally got dark, we set out on our drive. Since it was dark, there was a spot light and I got to be the one who held it and spotted all the animals in the pitch black of the night. Luckily at the Mara, you can not go very long without seeing a bunch of wildebeast or something. We would see hundreds of them, but you could only see their eyes because it was so dark. It sort of looked like lights in a city, but only moving ones.

We saw some animals that we could not see during the day, like Bat eared Foxes and hares and some other stuff too. We also saw hyenas and zebras. It was just plain amazing to see or not see, ha ha get it.
I'll talk about Lake Nakuru next time.
See ya

The Maasai Mara Part 1

To get to the Maasai Mara, we needed to go to an air strip in a town near Samburu. The plane was not very big but we went in a smaller one to Amboseli. It was cool to watch out the window and see how the area changed. I mean with the trees the color of everything that we saw. Since we were so close to the ground we could see animals running around and playing and living their life not knowing we could see them.

When we landed in the Mara, there were animals all around us. From the looks of it, I think that the animals thought we were just some other weird animal, the plane that is. Our guide in the Mara's name was Nixon. He was a Masai. In his vehicle he had some beverages for us.
 
The Mara was the coolest place we went to. And it was my favorite, we were there for three days. We stayed in tents that were right in front of the river were many hippos were. It was a beautiful place to stay at and the service was nice, the food was good, you could see animals across the river from your room or the dining area, and I had my birthday there. The Mara was the only place that we were not by ourselves on our drives. There was one other couple with us.

We took our first game drive in the Mara at four o'clock in the afternoon. It was unlike any of the other places, where we had to look so very hard to find one animal at a time, where in the Mara, we could not go ten minutes without seeing hundreds of Wildebeast or Zebras or any Gazelles and birds.

 Road block, Wildebeast style.

Thomson's Gazelle

 We also saw a lot of Topi which are what you see here.

Zebras playing

We were driving along looking for anything we could see, when Nixon, our guide, spotted one lioness behind a rock a little ways away. It was deciding if it wanted to try to take on a buffalo or not, so we watched it for a while, but it did not do anything, it was still interesting to watch though. We left the lioness and went to look for something else. We only went about two minutes when we found two male Hyenas laying down. They look surprisingly a lot like dogs.

This is Nixon

We left the Hyenas and started heading back to the camp, which was called Karen Blixen camp.

That was the end of our first day.
I will write about our second day next time.

Sweetwaters Camp

Hey everyone

Today I am talking about Sweetwaters in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy. We only stayed for one night but we wished we could of stayed longer but it was still nice to stay there. Right out side of our tent there was a water hole where many animals would come and drink the water there. The Warthogs were fun to watch eat, they stick their butts in the air and munch away on the grass.

When we got to the place we had lunch, and sitting or standing right out side the window of the restaurant, was a Maribou, which is like a mix between a Stork and a Vulture.

 And then after lunch, I got to go on a Camel ride. It was fun, but mine was being a bad boy, he kept stopping to eat leaves and he started to run one time.

At four in the afternoon we went out for a game drive. Before we actually started we went to a Rhino sanctuary and a Chimpanzee sanctuary. The Rhino was a blind black one, so he had to be kept in captivity so it could live longer than it would of in the wild on it's own. His name was Baraka.

 We didn't see much at Sweetwaters but we were glad of what we saw. But we did see vultures eating a dead giraffe and lots of gazelles and some giraffes and an elephant.

The next morning we got up and went to the town that was nearby so we could fly to the Maasai Mara. As a matter of fact that is what I will be writing about next.

Samburu the first place we went

Hi everyone,
Samburu was the first place we went after we stayed the night in Nairobi. In case you did not know, Nairobi is the capital of Kenya. We got to Nairobi late at night and we needed to get up early in the morning to get to Samburu. The drive was six hours. Half of it was bumpy roads so it was a bit annoying after a while. We finally arrived in time for lunch. 

Amazed by the beauty and the nature of the place, we walked through with monkeys all around us and many different beautiful birds. At the lunch area, or the dining area, there were two of the local Samburu men that were scaring away the monkeys with their slingshots and using them so the monkeys don't steal any food from the kitchen or from peoples plates.

 It was an enjoyable meal with the scenery and all the stuff around us that's going on at that moment.

At four o'clock, in the afternoon, of course, we went out for our first game drive. At first we did not see anything but birds, but then we started to see a lot of Impalas, dik diks, and other antelope and gazelles. But then we saw the one thing we thought we would not see, a cheetah. 

The next day we saw some water buffalo over by the river, a warthog, a huge herd of oryx and some elephants and three reticulated giraffes. The stay was good, but we did not see that many animals, or at least as many as we thought we would. 
On our way out of Samburu, we stopped by the local village to visit for a little.
The people danced for us sang some of their songs and showed us around their village. It was fun to see all the people and the way they live.

Next I will be writing about Sweet Waters, where we stayed for only one night.