It’s been a lively morning in Nairobi so far — my sister and I spent an hour watching baby elephant orphans drink milk, then we kissed some giraffes, and now we’re at our final destination: the Karen Blixen Museum.
Karen Blixen was a Danish author who moved to Kenya in the early 1900s to start a coffee plantation with her Swedish husband. He was unfaithful and eventually they split up, and she became involved with an English big game hunter. Karen detailed these relationships in her autobiography, Out of Africa, and in 1985 it was made in a film starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. It went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture that year.
[images via Today, visitors can tour Karen Blixen’s home for around $12. This price includes a private guide and access inside the house (it’s free to roam the grounds if you just want to do that). Photography is not allowed inside.
That is Karen Blixen on the right below:
The tour is short and sweet, but we learn more about Karen Blixen than if we’d just wandered the grounds on our own. Plus the interior of the home is impressive — think taxidermied animal heads (hunted by Karen’s second husband) and stately furniture. Here are some photos I found on-line to give you an idea:
I wish they allowed photos, because there’s behind-the-scenes elements from the 1985 film — outfits worn by Meryl Streep and Robert Redford are on display, as well as key props and artwork.
Our guide leads us to an area where they once processed coffee beans.
Here’s what coffee berries look like. Karen’s plantation failed in the 1930s, but some bushes are still noticeable around the property:
There’s a lovely gift shop at the Karen Blixen Museum. Afterwards, Bethany and I head back to the Galleria Mall in Nairobi for lunch and a little shopping. I take her to Artcaffe where my friends and I devoured this Tricolad chocolate cake one week earlier. Bethany is impressed.
We’re about to fly to Tanzania to hike Mt. Kilimanjaro in a few days and my current hiking boots are looking worse for wear:
I bought them ten years ago just before I studied abroad in Europe. Since then I’ve only used them sporadically, but they’re LL Bean and have held up well… until now. I wore them chimp trekking in Uganda a few weeks earlier and the base of the boots started to fall off. Duct tape was a last-ditch effort to save them. It’s not advisable to buy new shoes before a major hike as they won’t be properly broken in, but at this point I have no choice. I plunk down $30 for these new boots below. WAY better than my duct-taped ones!
I’m grateful we are in a major city where I can easily pick up new boots. Whew.
Here’s a few more details on how Bethany and I planned our day, since I haven’t explained our mode of transportation in these past few posts — we paid around $45 for the day (if memory serves correct) to use a beloved taxi driver that my overland guides highly recommended. He picked us up early that morning, dropped us off at Artcaffe for coffee, then took us to the elephant orphanage followed by the Giraffe Centre, and finally to the Karen Blixen Museum and back to the Galleria Mall where he waited about 90 minutes for us to eat and pick out those new boots. All in all, it was totally worth the convenience factor of hiring a taxi driver for one day, as we saw everything we wanted to see in a timely manner. And split between the two of us the price wasn’t too bad.
