Here’s a bit of what I got to do over the weekend.
[At the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust]
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is an elephant orphanage where they rescue baby elephants whose parents have been killed by predators, poachers, etc. They currently have 20 elephants. The two above are 4 months old and 6 months old (the bigger one being the youngest one). Aren’t they adorable?? Makes me want to adopt an elephant.
After 24 hours of travel, I finally arrived. I’m in Nairobi! The sky is clear, the weather is cool and people are extremely friendly. As soon as I opened the cab door, I could hear the loud voices of the crowd sitting on the patio of the hotel restaurant. Apparently, there is an all-you-can-eat buffet of pork ribs every Thursday night that attracts people from all over town. Sounds pretty good to me.
Hopefully I get to taste a lot of the local food, and take pictures. Stay tuned.
With a population of about 65,000 and with offshore finance as its primary sector, Bermuda not only boasts beautiful turquoise waters but also one of the highest GDP per capita in the world. It doesn’t come as a surprise then that island living is fairly expensive, the average house costing around $900,000. It was claimed as a British territory in 1609 but as was rightfully pointed out to me by a taxi driver at the airport, it was actually first discovered in 1505 by Spanish sea captain Bermudez. Bermuda is perhaps most well-known for being the easternmost point of the Bermuda Triangle. And indeed, you can find a lot of shipwrecks around the islands and even take shipwreck snorkeling trips (we did go snorkeling but didn’t get to see any shipwrecks).
Overall, we had a truly wonderful time discovering the main island. But what struck me overall was how friendly everybody was. Of course since tourism is so important for Bermuda’s economy, you’d expect people to be welcoming but on more than one occasion, people really went out of their way to help us. The bus driver let us ride for free when he saw we didn’t have exact change, people got out of their cars to ask if we needed directions when we looked lost, and our Couchsurfing host Angelo welcomed us into his home as if we were old-time friends.
So in honor of Bermuda and Bermudians, here’s the first installment of a two-part guide to Bermuda (addresses at the bottom of the post). I can’t wait to visit again!
Petit Plat 