We are back in Nairobi tonight after a wonderful 3 day Safari in the Maasai Mara!  It was a fantastic time and despite less animals this year, we had several unbelievable moments with some of the wildlife.  We saw lots of elephants, gazelles, Water buffalo, giraffe, impallas, etc…..but the most exciting was watching 9 male lions walk directly toward us on the road.  We could hardly believe what we were seeing and amazed at how uneffected they were by our presense.  They literally had to move aside to get around our safari van.  They were so close we could touch them out our window.  It was remarkable and something we’ll never forget.  We followed them to where they stopped walking and had a good laugh as their resting place became the airstrip in the Mara where some people fly in and out of . Watch out Erik when you and your family land here next week! We also enjoyed getting out at the Mara River to view the countless hippos and crocodiles. We took a walk along the river bank, with strick supervision by armed men to protect us. We were disappointed to learn that the Wildebeest hadn’t crossed the river yet, which explains why we hardly saw any wildebeest/zebras in the Mara. It was a drastically different scene a year ago when Deb and I were there the exact same week. We also learned that the smoke we were seeing out in the Mara was deliberately set in an effort to keep the wildebeest from crossing over into Kenya from the Serengetti in Tanzania.  Eventually they will, but it’s one of those sketchy practices you see often in Africa. TIA (This is Africa…….as we often say here!) Another highlight of Safari is staying in the tented campsites.  It’s always an adventure and this one had us laughing hysterically within minutes of settling into our tents.  We were told to lock our tents up to keep the monkeys out and while we thought we had………..sure enough we watched from a distance the swarm of monkeys descend to the front of our tent. To our amazement they started disappearing INTO our tent. We ran down there and it was utter chaos as they were coming out as I was trying to go in!  They got away with a lot of food we had brought in a short amount of time!  It was pretty funny.  One of the pictures above is when we were playing “Farkle,” with our new Maasai friends Samuel and Emerson.  We had taught ourselves how to play and couldn’t believe how quickly our Maasai friends caught on to how the game is played.  What fun that was bringing our two worlds together!  We are reminded countless times a day how communal, friendly, and happy the Maasai people are.  It’s absolutely contagious and something that humbles us every day.  Driving through Narok on the way to the Maura we noticed a young boy had fallen down on the road. Within seconds adult men swarmed the boy, picking him up, brushing him off, and inspecting him to be sure he was alright.  When they were sure he was o.k. they hugged him and went their seperate ways. We all wondered how many of us would do that? So, we are now in a hotel in Nairobi, getting a good nights sleep/shower and heading to Zanzibar in the morning.  We are so excited for this part of our journey.  We have been “roughing it,” out in the bush for many days now and look forward to some comforts familiar to home.  We read a paper today in the hotel and got caught up on current events around the world and were so sad to see the fires in Colorado making the front page of every paper.  Moments like these make us yearn for home, but we trust that things will get better soon!   Our thoughts and prayers are with you all in Colorado! Until next time……….. :>) Julie