No Simba, But Safaricom

We're just leaving the national park and while we got some incredible video and photos of rhinos, monkeys, giraffes, etc., we weren't able to find the lions. We also found out the park is too small for elephants, so I missed out on the two animals I most wanted to see. I think I'm going to try a different park next weekend, and if not, I'm sure I will have the opportunity in South Africa.

Once we get back to Nairobi tonight, I will start posting the photos and videos. You may be wondering, "Well how are you writing this post if you're not connected to the Internet?" The answer is almost as cool as the safari.

We figured out it is way less expensive to buy a cellular USB modem than to pay for the hotel's Internet access. So, I'm driving through a rural part of the Rift Valley (think monkeys, impalas, etc. on the sides of the roads) with my laptop connected to the Internet at 3G speeds for a fraction of the price that it would cost in the US.

It's counterintuitive that mobile technology can be more widespread and less expensive than the US, but the cellular networks are often developing countries' first and only nationwide communications system. The economics of developing nationwide land-line just didn't work, so they were never built.

So today there aren't a bunch of companies and investors with massive amounts of capital invested in copper wires / fiber optics criss-crossing the country; the price of the underlying technology has been subsidized by the consumers, investors, and governments of the industrialized world who scaled the industry; and there is a lot of pent-up demand among people who are suddenly able to leapfrog from having virtually no access to any form of modern communication to being a button's push away from anyone, anywhere.