January 15, 2015

This blog entry will begin with something that JUST occurred and it is toooooo funny not to share! Gail has officially become the craziest one of us all! We are sitting in the courtyard of our hotel waiting for our dinner and as we are at the front of the hotel there are people coming and going. some of them are dropped off by car and others of them are walking up from the parking lot. Now for the funny part....not only our table but the entire courtyard filled with people at tables are also laughing at Gail and her latest faux pas. A man was dropped off by car and once he was out and walking up the path Gail began to scream and wave her arms at him and the fact that his car was rolling backward-he'd forgotten to put it in park before he got out! The funny part is that he wasn't the driver at all....he was a passenger and the driver was still in the car driving away. Oh yes....cars here are right hand drive and they drive on the left hand side of the road. Needless to say that Gail is suitable embarrassed and the poor man who she yelled at is likely under the care of paramedics for the heart attack she gave him. The rest of the courtyard audience who witnessed the faux pas are still chuckling. Yep....Gail has officially become the entertainment for the evening! Now to backtrack till this morning. Breakfast (included with our room) was amazing! Service extraordinaire and the food was pretty good too! Massive smorg and almost the whole place to ourselves. Weirdest things we tried were ox kidney and boiled arrowroot. Tomorrow morning the chef said he will have our breakfast ready for us by 5:00 as we will be picked up at 5:30 to go back to the airport for our flight to Arusha. After b'fast, the four of us headed over to "the big house" as dubbed by our resident jester (Gail). The big house in this instance is the big Boma Hotel that is adjacent to our little Boma Inn. The big house is where the pool is and as guests of the Inn we are able to access all the services there. Once we arrived at poolside (where we enjoyed iced mocha's) it wasn't long before Lynda decided to go to work. There was a young woman from India (Nina) who was trying to swim across the pool and struggling terribly. Swim coach Lynda had Nina swimming in no time and Nina was thrilled with her success. So now we know that Gail is hard at work as our court jester, Lynda is working as a swim instructor, and I haven't told you yet but I worked as the hotel plumber last night. Yes....it was after I wrote in the blog, my head was falling off my neck I was so tired and the toilet our room sprung a horrible leak! The pipe that refills the tank started shooting water against the side of the tank and the lid and from there it was a direct line to the floor. Within minutes I was facing a flooded bathroom while Lynda slept soundly on the other side of the wall. I mopped and wiped and cleaned and decided I'd better figure out the cause of the problem or I'd be doing this same thing in the middle of the night and then again in the morning. So.....I did it and I'm pretty sure it's never worked as well. I am glad to be leaving in the morning before they find out what a skilled plumber I am as they may want me to redo all of their hotel bathrooms! Now all that is left for us to discover is what Darlene's special talent will be in this trip. I'll bet it will have something to do with monkeys as she loves them! This afternoon while Gail, Darlene and I were at the pool, Lynda caught up on some sleep she missed last night. While we were at poolside the three of us took one for the team and taste tested the local spirits. Gail and Darlene dove into the Tusker beer (extra large bottles of course) and I decided on the Kenya Cane Rum (a double to keep up with the girls and their extra large beers). We've all just raised our glass of bottled water in one hand and our malaria pills in the other as tomorrow we officially enter the Malaria Zone! We're looking forward to the promised side effects to the meds. Drowsiness and dizziness sound fun when you're giddy with sleep deprivation and on your way to an early night. That's it for this day.....till Tanzania...... Kwaheri, Darlorlynga p.s. photos are of "the big house", Dennis (he's an option for you Leah), iced mocha's at poolside, and Lynda with her students.