An unforgettable 40th Anniversary (Vacation Day 6)
on A Serendipitous Journey (Kenya), 25/Oct/2009 12:03, 34 days ago
(September 20, 2009)September 20th was my parents 40th wedding anniversary and I’m sure none of us will ever forget this day!We ran into some Norwegian friends who I had met in Nairobi just weeks before and we all decided to take a boat trip over to Crescent Island, where Out of Africa was filmed. Crescent Island was once actually an island in Lake Naivasha, however due to the lake drying up it’s now a peninsula. Nonetheless, it remains a national park where the animals enjoy a predator-free environment and when they die it’s usually of natural causes.Our energetic Kenya Wildlife Service guide Moses was a self-proclaimed comedian and kept us entertained with fables, jokes and stories about the animals the entire 2 hours that we walked around the island. My favourite was his“RIP” comments every time we passed a carcass explaining the animals were “Resting in Pieces”. :-)Having lived on Crescent Island for 15 years and coming from Samburu tribe, Moses explained quite seriously that neither hippos nor pythons scare him, but that Nairobi does! All of the animals know him and therefore let him and his guests get really close to them - especially the giraffes, as he supposedly plays‘hide and seek’ with the babies when he isn’t accompanied by tourists.Highlights included being within 2 feet of a python, walking around the island unbelievably close to a large family of giraffes and standing on the shore of the Lake watching hippos cooling off in the Lake, including a newborn.It was a really fun day, full of laughs, and was especially nice to share it with new friends.That evening , the staff at Elsamere made my parents' 40th wedding anniversary truly unforgettable. At the beginning of the evening Jean, a Sr. Trustee of the Elsamere Conservation Trust, presented them with a beautiful floral print painting. Then after a delicious meal the full kitchen staff, some draped in Maasai cloth, emerged from the kitchen boisterously singing, clapping and dancing around our table with a burning tree in hand and presented my parents with a beautiful cake! My parents were overwhelmed with the generosity of the staff and board… it was the perfect finish to an unforgettable day.