We arrived early into Amsterdam and circled until the airport opened at 6:00 AM. This was the first of 4 early arrivals. Gotta hand it to KLM/Northwest for that. Arriving in Amsterdam we all met in the terminal and headed over to the gate for our Nairobi flight. I found my parents and sister, who had flown in from Richmond, via Detroit. They were waiting on the KLM transfers line in hopes of getting an emergency exit or bulkhead seat. My sister got the emergency exit row seat...a middle seat, but it beat a middle, non-emergency exit row seat.

We had about 3 hours in Amsterdam so I got some money from the ATM and bought some breakfast and a bottle of water (I figured it would only cost more in Nairobi and would be useful to have - just in case). I also picked up 4 postcards and some stamps and sent postcards to some people.

Another nice flight, food and service were very good. Both flights served free alcohol. Too bad I don't drink, I could have gotten some really good jetlag! This flight was about 8 hours. I got a bit more sleep. Probably a couple more hours.

We arrived in Nairobi and the airport was on emergency lighting because of the drought. They receive most of their electricity from hydro-electric plants (in Uganda I think) and the low water levels were causing shortages. I had read a warning before going that residences were restricted to 4 hours of electricity a day. We met the Park East Tours people, got our luggage and boarded buses to the Safari Park Hotel, just South of Nairobi.

The trip through Nairobi was somewhat reminiscent of the South Bronx and other inner-city areas in the US. We made it to the hotel in about 30-40 minutes. We were greeted with a fruit drink of some type that was quite tasty. We took a picture in front of the large stuffed elephant that occupied the center of the main lodge where we checked in. We then collected our luggage and headed off to our rooms.

Our beds had mosquito netting, and there was a TV in the room. 7 channels, nothing particularly interesting - CNN, which had no sound and some local channels. I fried an adapter, didn't notice that it only accepted 120V. Oooops. We went to bed around 10 PM and I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare. I was still terrified...for no obvious reason. Gotta love jet-lag! I went to the bathroom and completely failed to find the light switch (oh, on the outside of the door!) I managed to get back to sleep and slept through until the wakeup call (and my alarm) went off.

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