In order to maximize our time here and get to experience some unique African adventures in between long work weeks, we’re looking forward to spending our weekends taking trips to nearby locations. Our first weekend, we decided to use our Saturday to visit a couple of awesome locations that we had heard about: Kruger Farm and Kerio View.
Kruger Farm is a 3500 acre piece of private land that hosts tourists on a 2-3 hour guided hike on an adventure trying to locate the 15 giraffes that roam their property. The most incredible part is that the giraffes are in fact free to roam a massive plot of land (as evidenced by the several miles we hiked across hills and plains trying to locate them) rather than within a cage that prevents them from acting as they normally would in the wild. When we were finally able to follow the tracks and signs of their presence, it wasn’t much longer before we were slowly approaching one that was feeding on leaves from the top of trees. We were able to walk with 25-30 feet of most of them before they wanted to increase the distance, and at one point we were even surrounded on all sides by 7 or 8 giraffes. The pinnacle of the experience came right before we began our hike back to the entrance of the farm, at which time one of the giraffes began charging at us and stopped 15-20 feet away, shaking its head at us, and allowing us to get the best pictures we had gotten of our entire time there. It was an absolutely surreal experience.
Kerio View is an area that professional/Olympic athletes often visit for large chunks of time throughout the year to participate in high altitude training. We didn’t get to see much of the training grounds, but we visited the Kerio View restaurant for lunch, which had incredible food and an unfathomable view that isn’t remotely done justice by the pictures I was able to collect. One wall of the entire restaurant is completely made up of glass panels and all of the dining tables are located adjacent to the windows, providing the most incredible view you could ever have during a meal. Furthermore, all of the landscaping as well as the unique stone work, art, and architecture throughout the property were amazing, which added to the feeling of being at a resort for a brief period. On a side note, although the food was extraordinary, it only added up to about $17.50, which definitely made it taste that much better.
What made the trip even more wonderful was our driver (Ken) over the course of the day who participated in all of the activities with us. He added quite a bit of dialogue regarding some of the Kenyan culture and politics, various bits of information dealing with some of the sights we were seeing, and was even open about his personal life, which was a nice change of pace, contrasting the typical closed-off nature of an individual’s family life in Kenya.
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