Chaim and Hillary (and Jon) do East Africa

Greetings from Nakuru, Kenya!

This is where I plan to post updates (and maybe pictures) from my trip to Africa.
You can also check out Hillary's blog at
journals.worldnomads.com/hnmenk

We decided to do them seperately for a few reasons, but mainly because we figured that it would take too long to agree on how to word our posts. (We both want them to be clever).

Anyway, you can read both and decide which is better (and funnier).

I've also added the first e-mail that I sent out.

Hope to be in touch!

Kwa heri (goodbye)





Dear Family and friends,

I again have to apologize for sending out a mass e-mail.

Yesterday I began a 2 month trip to East Africa (Keyna, Tanzania, Uganda and maybe Rwanda). I wanted to send a quick e-mail to tell everyone that so far the trip is going great.

This will hopefully be the last mass e-mail as I plan to start up my blog again with updates from the trip.
I'm travelling now with my friend Hillary and we will be meeting another friend, Jon, in Tanzania in 2 weeks (if all goes to plan of course...).

Hillary and I flew yesterday from Tel-Aviv to Nairobi via Addis Ababa on Ethiopian Airlines.
The plane couldn't land at first in Addis so we were diverted to Djibouti. The pilot did not provide very much information and basically said "it's cloudy in Addis so we are going to Djibouti instead".

Anyway, we basically landed there to refuel and then return to better weather at Addis .No information was provided at all when we were sitting on the tarmac in Djibouti. A man sitting next to us said "welcome to Africa"
Luckily we were able to make our connection to Nairobi.

Nairobi is nicknamed in some guidebooks as "Nairobbery" so we tried to be extra vigilant with our stuff on the street. (it is no surprise that we stand out everywhere we go)
We decided to stay at a place on the outskirts of town to avoid trouble. The night went by uneventfully.

There were Israelis staying at our hostel. Big surprise.
They didn't seem to care that we spoke Hebrew. Another Big surprise

Today we made our way to Nakuru which is North West of Nairobi.
The first half of the 3 hour ride was very pleasant.
Then we hit the end of the paved road.
The rest of the ride was less pleasant.
It reminded me of the time that I went luging in lake placid. There the ride was very bumpy and my head got rattled around a lot (same principal on this ride).
The only difference is that at lake placid the ride lasted 60 seconds. Here, it was an hour and a half.
But, I should point out that the lake placid ride cost me (well, cost my father) $30 whereas this ride was $4.50

I left my camera on the bus (well, its more of a minibus called a matatu) and with the help of G-d we were able to find the driver, get back into the bus and retrieve my camera.

After we found a place to stay, we made our way to the top of the Menengai Crater which overlooks a beautiful area of kenya.

The view was amazing (in fact, so was the drive) . At the top, there were a few local merchants selling souvenirs.

I traded my hat (to be fair, it's really my brother's hat - sorry adam -) for a little dolphin.
I really loved that hat ("Tibetian Tea, lose weight the natural way) but I think it was a fair trade (especially because Adam got the hat for free from a drug store in Israel).

Now I'm sitting in a pretty decent internet cafe in town in Nakuru.

Tomorrow we're planning on heading to Nyahururu for shabbat.
We've heard good things and hope to be able to hike to a waterfall there.

After that, we're planning on trekking Mt. Kenya and then return to Nairobi for a 3 day safari.

Of course, plans can change quickly and its not always possible to count on transport / weather.

Hope everyone is doing well.
Stay in touch.
I'll do my best to update the blog as often as possible.

There is so much more to tell and so many things on my mind but that will have to wait for later posts or until I get home. Coffee anyone?

All the best,
Chaim