Long overdue for an update. We've been busy traveling around, which has been incredibly exciting, but has also meant less reliable internet connections. Sarah & Wairimu finished their work in Kisii and gave their final presentations before we all headed to Nairobi. I had hoped that Sarah would catch the blogging bug while I was away, but it looks like a joint, belated post is more our style. Our friends from the Pacific NW – Sadie from Lummi and the McBrides from Seattle – flew in to meet us for a couple weeks of traveling together. Chris & I headed to Tanzania to try our hand at Kilimanjaro. That first weekend, while we worked our way up the first few legs of the Kili climb, Sarah, Sadie, and the remaining McBrides headed to Castle Forest Lodge, at the base of Mt. Kenya, where they stared down elephants in the dark, blissfully unaware of just how dangerous they were. They hiked trails and road horses, gazed at the night's stars and ate home-baked Danish pastries made by the ex-pat lodge owner. By all accounts, it was a wonderful weekend before Sarah's last week of work in Nairobi. 
That final week was a bit of a slog for us both – me up the mountain, and Sarah and Wairiumu as they wrapped up project work back in the city. The highlight of Sarah's week was a trip to the Kibera slums, where Sarah and Wairimu visited with some residents in their homes. Kibera is thought to be the largest urban slum in Africa, most immediately recognizable from the aerial shots in The Constant Gardner. My highlight was of a much more rural nature as I trekked through several ecosystem changes, weather patterns, and lower air pressure. Somehow, we both made it through. Sarah finishing her project and giving her final presentation in Nairobi, Chris and I to the summit, climbing over snow and past glaciers, just a few clicks south of the equator. 
Both of us ready to relax, we met back up in Nairobi for some delicious Ethiopian food before heading on safari to the Maasai Mara. Despite being at the tail end of the dry season, every animal had babies: cheetahs, elephants, zebras, gazelles, impalas, hyenas (surprising cute babies!), hippos, pythons, wildebeest, giraffe, warthogs, and many others. We stumbled across a pack of seven cheetahs walking towards shade and a group of lions feasting on a just-killed zebra. We also waited patiently for two leopards to emerge from the bushes and claim the carcass of a still-warm impala. Along the Mara River we watched in awe as a herd of zebra attempted to cross, despite the gathering crocs, while two hippos fought on the rocks for dominance and several elephants crossed to the other side as well, blasting their horn at the zebras in their way. It was intense seeing so much life happen all together and in such close proximity. No amount of re-watching Planet Earth episodes (and we've watched a lot) prepared us for the feeling of actually being there.
After several days in the Mara, we headed to Lake Naivasha, where Sarah and Kelly trained as Peace Corps volunteers. With Elsamere as a home base – literally the jumping off point for the conservation movement in Kenya – we explored Crescent Island on foot where we walked among giraffe and later road bikes through Hell's Gate National Park, beside gazelles and zebra. It felt good to get some physical activity in. Despite the adventuresome sounding word “safari,” it's a surprisingly sedentary activity, and we were thankful to experience some of these animals outside of a vehicle. 
And now, with only a few days left, we've been hiding away on the coast. First, a night in Mombasa, a city with some incredible history. Despite Kenya's claims to early mankind, the country is largely devoid of the kind of structural reminders of generations past. Mombasa is the exception. Buildings are hundreds of years old, and the island is a melting pot of Portuguese colonialism, Indian influence, Christianity and Islam, and a strong sense of Swahili culture. We walked through Old Town's maze of streets, where fabric vendors and street food are commonplace, and where the blue-green waters of the Indian Ocean were visible at the ends of several blocks.
But despite all that tempting history, we've been tucked away at a house on Diani Beach, just an hour south of Mombasa, with a marine-filled reef just off the shore line, easily visible at low tide each afternoon. And to our extreme delight, the strongest culinary influence on this small beach town is Italian(!). So, we've found wood-fired, brick oven pizzas and raised our gelato consumption to Rome-like levels. There is an enormous baobob tree in front of our palm-thatched cottage, where Sykes, Colobus, and Vervet monkeys compete for the banana-scented flowers, and sunis scavenge the ground for something to eat. It is a blissfully sun-baked existence that we are savoring as we brace to return to Seattle's early spring.
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