About every forty-five minutes of our bus ride to Nairobi, someone would fart the foulest smelling gasses at us. For hours I thought it was Matt and he thought it was me. Having eliminated each other, we now suspect the resting driver across the aisle who kept slapping his big belly.

The "Royal Class" bus to Nairobi turned out to be neither very royal nor classy. They were telling the truth about there being only three seats across, which was very nice, but there was the same leg room as any other bus. Also, it was old and had virtually no suspension... a problem on Kenya's typically abysmal roads. One of the drivers would shout incredibly loudly to no one in particular. For hours I thought he was talking to the other driver. Not so. He just enjoyed shouting.

"Nairobi has a reputation."
We arrived just before sunset and decided not to press our luck on our first night in Nairobi. We checked into the hotel at our bus office and kept a low profile. Nairobi has a reputation.

But we lived to see the light of day and discovered Kenya's capital to be a bustling, western-leaning city. There's definitely an edginess that keeps you from feeling safe, but seems like we've returned to civilization. You hear English being spoken everywhere. There are skyscrapers and displays of wealth everywhere. Central Nairobi, while by no means a terribly safe place, is a far cry from the legendary slums that ring the city.

"Security is noticeable and intenst."
We're not sure if it's because Colin Powell is in town, or just a hangover from the American embassy bombing... but the security around so-called "western interests" is noticeable and intense. We wanted to visit the British Airways office this afternoon and were asked by security for our passports and any metal objects we might be carrying. This after having AK-47's pointed at our torsos by the security guards on the street.

Later, as we ate pizza across from the Nairobi Hilton, we scared ourselves a bit with the thought that if anything's gonna blow up in the world today it's probably the Hilton where America's secretary of state is visiting. It didn't.

We'll be around Nairobi for several days. Matt's gonna head off on a safari in Masai Mari this weekend. I saw my fill of animals in South Africa and Nairobi, so I'll stay and check out the urban wildlife. Sometime next week, visas willing, we'll head toward Ethiopia.