Safari On Canvas: April 2013

After a bit of a stressful time at Nairobi airport we were pleased to meet a guy called John who was our transport to the next airport. John is subsequently getting involved with my project in September as driver, guide and occasional camera man! So here is a little story of our arrival at Nairobi and first meeting of John!

So when we arrived at Nairobi airport it took ages to get through immigration, probably about 2 hours! It was getting quite stressful and then, to our dismay, when we finally got through to luggage collection we could only find one bag! Gemmas bright pink suitcase was no where to be seen! Disaster we thought! after such a good wedding we knew something had to give so karma was restored lol! Another 40 mins of frantically asking different people with no success one guy suggested I look at Conveyor 1 (ours was conveyor 6) I thought to myself "don't be silly why on earth would it be there!!!"

A few minutes passed with no other ideas or news I started walking over to the other side of the airport to check conveyor belt one. I was about 100 yards away when "YES" I know that garishly bright pink case. My walk now turned to an enthusiastic jog soon arriving at what was definitely gemmas suitcase! Well I was beside myself and so obviously relieved the other tourists around me at conveyor one looked on with knowing sympathy, amusement and shared relief. So I soon bounded off along my way, enthusiastically high fiving some guy who had been chuckling at my lucky turn of fortune.

Drama over. Next step is to find our driver who had been waiting ages for us our plane had landed 2.5 hours ago so I hoped and worried whether he was still there

We walk out the airport like lost lambs (happy and relieved lambs tho!) looking for our driver. I see my name written on card held by a big friendly chap in jeans and green military top and cap. This must be John! who on making eye contact smiles and welcomes us with a big warm hand shake as we march off out the airport towards his vehicle for our ride to Wilson Airport. We are both so relieved to be out the airport and seeing some real Kenya for the first time! I chat to john retelling him of our near panic. He chuckles with sympathy and I breathe a sigh of relief cheered up by the warm personality and wicked sense of humor of our new friend John.

John explaining

Ross & John after our last lunch together

We only had an hour with John before we got to Wilson airport for a flight to the Masai Mara. So skipping over the safari i'd like to remember the awesome time we had with John when we came back from safari. John picked us up from wilson ap and as we had a good few hours to spare we all went for lunch. John took us to an all you can eat Brazilian restaurant. We had a couple of beers and started the impending meat feast regularly interrupted by hysterical laughter from the pair of us.

John shared my sense of humour and he soon had tears of laughter while I held my sore cheeks down lol! Unfortunately we eventually had to leave to go to the airport to catch our return flight home. I was sad to leave, luckily though we exchanged email addresses and got in contact when we got home! I emailed John a month or 2 ago to say im returning and asked whether he would like to be my guide/driver for the week. I'm pleased to say he is! We are getting a 4x4 so we can travel anywhere! We hope to travel to rural Narok to meet an artist there that has been in touch!

Look forward to our adventures John, see you soon dude! :)