Day 9: Drive to Fairmont Safari Club

You haven't heard the last of the trip yet! I've been slacking but also I'm trying to drag this out. We are trying to plan a reunion for next month, so I'm hoping to finish these updates by then.

Our last day in Oloosiyoi, we said a sad goodbye to our Free the Children family, who had been so awesome and hospitable our entire stay. Flo, Wilson, Finn, Rudi, "Maji Moto," Andrew, Maxwell, William and everyone else - we had made some new friends and we weren't ready to leave them yet.



We took a group photo and in order to get Paul in, we had to use the Land Rover as a tripod. It did the job.

En route to the Fairmont - if this looks bad, you should have seen the river we tried to cross. Three days earlier it was low enough for us to cross on the raised cement driveway, but heavy rains had almost flooded the river and we were unsure that we'd be safe going across. 
So as a test we sent the luggage car ahead, and when it stayed on course we let out a big cheer and climbed back into our cars to get across.

Upon a sweaty and dirty arrival at the Fairmont, we were greeted with cold towels and mango juice.

And then an hour later, we were on our first safari!

The weather changed pretty quickly - here is a rainstorm off in the distance.

A pair of Thompson Ghazelles preparing to headbutt

A hyena comes towards us menacingly

Ashley in the other car. It was never decided which one was Car 1 and which one was Car 2 but we kept to the same group and driver for our stay there. Our driver's name was Keefer.
A rare sight! This lion was so hungry he risked being killed by a heard of buffalo. His two brothers were off in the distance - not too far but not too close either. The drivers were so excited to see this as they'd never encountered such a sight before. The lion was actually in another tree earlier, and when he thought he was safe enough to run, the buffalo chased him into this one. Here you can see him eyeing the calf at the bottom right.