By Bob Van Leer

  (NAIROBI, KENYA - Feb. 4, 1995) - We arrived at our hotel, the Inter-Continental, about midnight Saturday after a flight that started Thursday night in Portland.

  Betty and I left Gold Beach Wednesday for an overnight stay in Salem and Thursday was the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association Government Affairs Conference. At this we meet with government officials to get a feeling on how the session is going. It is off to a fast start. Our lobbyist said bills that would normally not be taken up until February have already passed.

By Bob Van Leer

  (NAIROBI, KENYA, East Africa, Feb. 5, 1995) - After an orientation session on our safari this morning, we took a tour of Nairobi and environs.
It's a pleasant looking city with a lot of flowers visible. Bougainvillea does extremely well, sometimes climbing to the tops of large trees.

  One of the stops on the tour was Mbogani House, the ranch home of Karen Blixen, made famous by the film "Out of Africa". The house was her home and her office for her farm. It has been restored by the Danish community of Kenya. It is a large, comfortable house and is easy to see the attraction to her. Blixen lived in the house from 1917 to 1931, when her farm had to be sold and she left Kenya, never to return.

By Bob Van Leer

  (Sienna Springs Camp, Kenya, East Africa, Feb. 6, 1995) - We are staying tonight in an a well-set-up tent camp in the Masai Mara, not far from the Tanzanian border.

  In game drives this morning and afternoon, we have seen a lot of the African wildlife, including elephants. But we have not yet seen a lion. We arrived here this morning after a 40 minute flight from Nairobi in a DC-3. This was the first successful airliner, designed in the 1930s and its military version served the country well in World War II. DC-3s were in general use in U. S. airlines until the 1950s and 1960s, and were replaced by jets and turbo props. But they are still in use in other parts of the world.

By Bob Van Leer

  (SIENNA SPRINGS, KENYA, East Africa, Feb. 7, 1995) - The Masai Mara,seen from a balloon, is a whole new dimension. This morning, Betty and I went for our first balloon ride. Just watching the balloonist and crew getting the big bags ready is an experience all by itself. The balloon, when inflated, is 110 feet high and 65 feet in diameter. It takes a crew of a half-dozen to inflate a balloon. First, the polyester bag was strung out along the ground and attached to the gondola. Then the bag was inflated by air from two large gasoline powered fans.

By Bob Van Leer

  (SIENNA SPRINGS, KENYA, East Africa, Feb. 8, 1995) - This evening we dined on fresh Nile perch we caught in Lake Victoria this morning. Betty was not interested in fishing, so I went with four others on a 45 minute flight to the lake for a morning of fishing.

  We left before dawn to the Keekorok airstrip ("Masai International"),the same one we flew into, to meet our plane, a Cessna 106. On the way to the airport, not many animals were up yet. A few hyenas were on the road and didn't want to move off for us. We saw several balloons getting ready for launch.

At Mombasa We Board Our Cruise Ship

By Bob Van Leer

  (MOMBASA, KENYA, East Africa, Feb. 9, 1995) - Our safari in the Masai Mara ended today and we retraced our steps to Nairobi and then proceeded to the port city of Mombasa to board our cruise ship, Renaissance V.

By Bob Van Leer

  (LAMU, KENYA, East Africa, Feb. 10, 1995) - This morning our ship,Renaissance V, anchored off Lamu, the northernmost town in Kenya, after a 127 mile trip from Mombasa. The ship was unable to cross the shallow bar and parties were taken ashore by the ship's launch and a Zodiac.

  Betty rested on the ship and I took a dhow tour past Lamu to a tiny village named Matondoni where dhows are made. The heat, even on the water, was oppressive. The water temperature was similar to bath water. Dhows are traditional Arab boats propelled by triangular sails. Many are now also equipped with motors.

By Bob Van Leer

  (ZANZIBAR, TANZANIA, East Africa, Feb. 11, 1995) - Our ship docked in Zanzibar at 11:00 a.m. today. This is the fabled spice island, from which the Sultan of Oman once ruled the coast of east Africa before being ousted in a 1964 revolution.

  A surprise to us is the control the Omani Arabs of the Persian Gulf once had over east Africa. In the 18th century the Omanis controlled the east African coast from Somalia on the north, to Mozambique on the south, a distance of roughly a thousand miles. The Arabs stayed on the coast and never made significant at-tempts to penetrate the interior. The Omanis were gradually moved out but still ruled in Zanzibar until 1963.

  The spice trade has moved elsewhere and Zanzibar has a somewhat run down look.

By Bob Van Leer

  (AT SEA, INDIAN OCEAN, Feb. 12, 1995) - All day we traveled southeast on the Indian Ocean without seeing another ship or plane. The only other thing we saw moving on the water was occasional schools of herring-sized flying fish which look like dragon flies from the deck of our ship.

  Our speed was just over 13 knots so the 42 nautical mile trip to Anjouan, Comoros, takes 36 hours. The water on our route is deep, 2500-3500 meters, over a thousand feet. The color is a cobalt blue.

By Bob Van Leer

  (ANJOUAN, COMORO ISLANDS, Indian Ocean, Feb. 13, 1995) - Anjouan has all the outward appearance of a tropical paradise. It is a high, volcanic island covered with lush vegetation including banana plants and swaying palm trees.

  But the island has a rapidly expanding population trying, with limited success, to adjust to the last half of the 20th century. We took a tour of the island on "bush taxi". The taxi is a compact pickup with a canvas cover and fitted with board benches in the bed. The taxi seats eight, but not very comfortably.

By Bob Van Leer

  (MAYOTTE, COMOROS, Indian Ocean, Feb. 14, 1995) - Our ship anchored this morning at Mayotte, the Comoro island still under French administration. Mayotte is the most developed of the islands and has the distinct character of a French colony. Mayotte chose to remain under French rule and is still subsidized by the French and is the most prosperous of the Comoros.

By Bob Van Leer

  (NOSY BE, MADAGASCAR, Feb. 15, 1995) - We anchored between Nosy Be and Nosy Kamba this morning on our visit to Madagascar. Nosy means, simply, "island". These are two islands just offshore on the northwest coast of the main island, Madagascar, which is the fourth largest island in the world.

  We started the morning with a 45 minute trip to Nosy Kamba, a small island which is a lemur sanctuary. Madagascar is reported to have 75% of the world's lemurs, a distant ancestor to man. We went into the sanctuary with bananas. The lemurs are not large, perhaps 18 inches to two feet tall with big, round eyes and long tails.

By Bob Van Leer

  (AT SEA, INDIAN OCEAN, Feb. 16, 1995) - Our ship, Renaissance V, is cruising northeast at a leisurely 14.5 knots with our next port of call Desroches Island in the Seychelles, 595 miles from our Madagascar stop. There will be no stops today.

  Except in, port, we still have not seen another vessel. Today we did see something else moving, three birds, identified as boobies, trying to catch flying fish. This would not be a good place to be in a life raft. We can cruise for a full day seeing nothing else moving but flying fish.

SEYCHELLES AHEAD OF IT'S NEIGHBORS
By Bob Van Leer

  (PRASLIN, SEYCHELLES, Indian Ocean, Feb. 18, 1995) - Our ship anchored at Praslin, the second largest of the Seychelles, this morning and we went ashore by launch. There is no deep water dock on the island but there is a dock for our launch.

  The highlight of the morning was a tour of the Valle de Mai, a World Heritage site. The feature of the park is it's groves of Coco de Mer, an unusual palm tree that grows naturally only two places in the world and this is one of them.

By Bob Van Leer

  (MAHE, SEYCHELLES, Feb. 19, 1995) - We disembarked our ship, the Renaissance V, at 9:00 a.m. today and went for a bus tour around the island.

  According to information from the ship's bulletin, we sailed 1886 nautical miles from Mombasa, Kenya, to Mahe, Seychelles, at an average speed of 13.38 knots and spent 138.5 hours at sea.