Everybody told me I should visit Nairobi National Park, a wildlife park within 7 km of the city, separated by an electric fence from the metropolis. So I duly did.
The driver was 30 minutes late. By the time we arrived at the park, there was already a queue at the ticket office. In any case, the ticket office also opened late by more than 30 minutes. After enduring almost 45 minutes of waiting to purchase an entrance ticket, exacerbated by the excruciating inefficiency of a mixture of manual and computer processing methods, we finally made it into the park. At the ticket office, there was one man writing down on a piece of paper the purchase items: number of local visitors (the driver), number of foreign visitors (myself) and number of vehicles, which he then passed on to a woman who entered the information into a computer. The woman also demanded to see the identification papers again before the computer slowly churned out the tickets. At the entrance, the guards who examined the tickets decided that the ticket for the car was the wrong kind, so the driver collapsed the backseats of the van to pass it off as a small vehicle. What could have been a simple operation turned into a lengthy process that called for infinite patience.
There were more cars than animals on the day. It was a disappointing introduction to safaris.
I suppose it was luck whether I got to see all the animals including the lions at the park. Whilst waiting to purchase the entrance ticket, an English woman excitedly told me that she visits the park everyday to watch the lions at location 7, including her lunch breaks during the week. Such dedication. Later I saw her jeep parked at location 7 but nowhere were the lions to be seen.
The driver was 30 minutes late. By the time we arrived at the park, there was already a queue at the ticket office. In any case, the ticket office also opened late by more than 30 minutes. After enduring almost 45 minutes of waiting to purchase an entrance ticket, exacerbated by the excruciating inefficiency of a mixture of manual and computer processing methods, we finally made it into the park. At the ticket office, there was one man writing down on a piece of paper the purchase items: number of local visitors (the driver), number of foreign visitors (myself) and number of vehicles, which he then passed on to a woman who entered the information into a computer. The woman also demanded to see the identification papers again before the computer slowly churned out the tickets. At the entrance, the guards who examined the tickets decided that the ticket for the car was the wrong kind, so the driver collapsed the backseats of the van to pass it off as a small vehicle. What could have been a simple operation turned into a lengthy process that called for infinite patience.
There were more cars than animals on the day. It was a disappointing introduction to safaris.
 |
| Nairobi National Park |
 |
| Zebras grazing with human habitation in the background |
 |
| The odd buffalo roaming the park |
 |
| Impalas |
 |
| Gazelles |
 |
| The odd giraffe |
 |
| A baboon surveying his territory |
 |
| Zebras close up, against the Nairobi skyline |
 |
| Tourists straining their eyes to see a lion's head |
 |
| Peace and quiet at the park |
